Few People Know or Care

Few people know or care that I'm half Syrian.  When I was a child, growing up in the rural sticks of Canton, OH, my classmates seemed to care but in a pejorative way - calling me Eagle Beak (my brother was called brother of Eagle Beak), hunky, Olive Oyl.  I looked different from them.  I remember once in gym class locker room, a girl asked why I had a tan on my stomach.  I told her it was from wearing my Mom's two piece bathing suit.  This was true but I also paraded around in midriffs and shorts all summer, becoming the proverbial "brown as a berry".

My mother's family cared because that meant we were half-bloods and not real Syrians like they were.  We got part of the good, dark Syrian looks but not the thick, long, black eyelashes of my cousins and most of all, not the legitimacy of being "true" Syrians. 

Years after both my Mom and Dad had died, at a family get-together in Canton, another uncle, demented and ill by then, told me that his Mom asked my Mom "Where did you drag that in from?" when she met our father, a non-Syrian of German extraction.  At that same get together, my Mom's sister expressed contempt for my Dad.  I don't know why they heaped all that on me when I had traveled to visit the family - perhaps I reminded them too much of my father.  Even though others at the get-together were very kind to me, I cried throughout the evening each time I remembered anew the cruel words about my father and by inference, me, and also when I thought about all the years that had passed without my visiting Canton and being a part of my Syrian family.

My daughter seems to identify completely with her Dad's side of the family - the Russian, Polish and Jewish background.  That's probably because I've had little to do with the Syrian side all of her 32 years so she doesn't know them.

People where I live now don't know or care that I'm half Syrian.  They are an international cast of characters themselves!!

Yet, at the library, I saw the DVD The Syrian Bride on display.  My husband and I had seen the movie at a theatre in Santa Fe.  I felt such a swelling of pride at seeing the word "Syrian" in the title.  I took it out and watched the special features.  The movie centers around the events leading up to the bride leaving the Golan Heights to marry a Syrian man.  The conflict is that she must forever leave her family who are living in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.  There is a lot of humor involved.  Coincidentally, my family says our Syrian ancestors were from Mount Hermon near the Golan Heights.

Anyway, even though few people know or care that I'm half-Syrian, I'm very proud of my Syrian heritage!