A small window on the Middle East opened for a couple of hours Thursday night, and St. Thomas residents got a look at the so-called Arab Spring through the lens of visiting journalist and filmmaker Anisa Mehdi.
Speaking to a small but appreciative audience as part of The Forum’s lecture series, Mehdi described the popular uprisings that have rocked Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria in the past year as “a symptom of an ongoing global thirst” for self rule, economic stability, and equality. She also warned against viewing the events too narrowly.
The popular belief is that the upheaval was touched off in December of 2010 when a marginalized street vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire in frustration over his plight. Mehdi noted this was far from the first protest in the region. Ironically, “The Arab Awakening” was chronicled in a 1938 book and, she said, arguments can be made for any number of historical events that have marked such stirrings. If the beginning is in doubt, the end is definitely an unknown.
“The morning after, the Arab Spring has not yet arrived,” she said. Western observers may be too “optimistic” in believing the countries are headed for utopian democracies that will melt away sectarian differences and automatically resolve all their problems.
Earlier in the day, she spoke to about 100 students at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, a visit coordinated by the Forum and sponsored by the Lana Vento Charitable Trust. She told the attentive group about her life, her career, and the “Arab World,” stressing that there are many and sometimes profound differences among the various countries and cultures that are commonly lumped together under that single label. She also spoke to the commonality of all peoples.
Mehdi personifies the cross culture life she depicts, being the child of a Moslem father from Iraq and a Christian mother from Canada. She was born and raised in the United States, mostly in the New York area, and said she made her first trip to the Middle East in the 1970s. She has been there frequently since, including a recent one-year stint in Jordan as a Fulbright scholar.
A journalist for 20 years, she established her credentials as part of Dan Rather’s CBS team and moved on to producing her own documentaries, most notably a PBS Frontline production “Muslims” and a National Geographic special that traced the spiritual journey of three Moslems from different parts of the world, “Inside Mecca.” Produced in 2003, it is still aired frequently. She is currently working on a film documenting the friendship and spiritual bond between a group of Moslems and Christian Trappist monks in modern Algeria, and showed a clip of it Thursday night.
Mehdi said the U.S. – and other western countries – shouldn’t meddle in the events currently taking place in the Arab world, but “what we can do is try to get to know these people we fear.”
She recounted a time she took a group of visitors to Jordan on a hike through the Jordanian hillside, a spiritual and cultural trek on Abraham’s Path. In the midst of a sudden, violent rainstorm, a nearby resident invited them to shelter in her home and welcomed them with tea and biscuits.
Those of us watching events unfold and wondering how to react could emulate that hospitality, Mehdi said. “We could invite in strangers.”
