Ahlan

by Miriam (Egypt/Israel/USA)

If I write marhaba ya shabab ya ru’asa’ al-mustaqbil wa kayf halkum will that help you decide who I am? Does shalom chevrei, ani dai smecha lihitztaref le-atar internet shelachem do anything to clarify what I might look like? How about my name: Miriam Asnes. It sounds plausible in each language.

When my parents named me, did they know that this name is sacred in three religions? That not only was Miriam a prophetess in the Old Testament and the sister of Moses, but that the name مريم would be given to the mother of Jesus and be respected in both Christianity and Islam? Could they have imagined how many customs officials, professors, activists, and religious authorities would sound out “Me-ri-am Az-nis” with a quizzical look and let me pass? I was blessed with a chameleon moniker, one that has let me move fluidly through the cultures of the Middle East and feel the pain of the transition between them.

I suppose it is these Miriams which have goaded me into trying to live by Gandhi’s famous words, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” For me, learning to speak Arabic and Hebrew with equal fluency was like getting the keys to a potential future for the world. These languages are my visas into the sovereign nations of people’s closed communities. They also prevent me from ignoring the interlocking paradoxes that form the Venn-Diagram map of the Middle East that I move through, jumping from sector to sector, trying not to fall into the gaps between the circles.

That’s me. I’m honored to be invited to be a part of this platform. I’ll be posting some reflections on the years 2003-2006, which I spent in the Middle East, and talking about my continuing work with Jewish and Arab communities here in my own American homeland. With the occasional recipe thrown in.