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FEATURE

egypt’s brooklynites

despite a lingering backlash from 9/11 and a tougher-than-ever us immigration regime, brooklyn’s arab community remains a well-established ingredient of new york’s melting pot

by ursula lindsey

bay ridge looks a lot like the rest of brooklyn – low buildings, wide sidewalks, a profusion of aluminum siding and brick. but there’s a difference: between the irish pub and the italian pizza place, the casual visitor may very well find a shop peddling hegab (female islamic dress), or a middle eastern-style coffee house – an ahwa – that would look more at home on the corner of al kasr al ainy street. a small sign on the building adjacent to the neighborhood’s multiplex cinema, meanwhile, reads, “islamic society of bay ridge.”

on fifth avenue, an amr diab poster hangs on the door of a store called pyramids gifts – an easy indication of the shop owner’s nationality. inside, store manager iman and her daughter rawan sit behind the counter.

pyramids gifts sells tapes and cds, along with the same pharaonic-themed, tourist-friendly trinkets found in such abundance in cairo’s old market par excellence, the khan al khalili. one wall is stacked with videos on which are scrawled handwritten arabic titles: “egyptian movies” explains store attendant kimo, who left cairo for the states 15 years ago.

the shop’s clientele consist mainly of local, second-generation arab immigrants, who buy tapes “to remember their music,” explained kimo. non-egyptians, he added, only come to the store occasionally, to buy belly-dancing gear, which has recently come into vogue in the west.

arabs of new york

large-scale arab immigration to new york began in the 1880s, as arab families fled the hardships of the ottoman empire, europe’s sick man. after 1908, when the ottoman government decreed military conscription, untold numbers of christians and jews from the levant passed through ellis island on their way to new lives in america. many of these immigrants settled on washington street, situated, as a recent article in the gotham gazette points out, “in the shadow of where the world trade center would be put up a century later.”

over the course of the next century, most of this community decamped and headed to brooklyn, a less-established borough to manhattan’s southeast. immigration from egypt was part of a more recent wave of migration, which took place mostly in the 1970s. according to kathy benson, curator of a widely acclaimed 2002 exhibition on arab-american history at the museum of the city of new york, little information is available on egyptian immigration to the big apple. she went on to note that there was “little documentation on arabs generally.”

according to sheikh muhammad moussa of bay ridge’s islamic society, egyptian districts are found mainly in the boroughs of brooklyn and queens, and in new jersey’s jersey city. the different communities, he added, often come together for cultural events thrown by the egyptian consulate.

moussa says the community has hardly forgotten its roots, and boasts “a strong relationship with egypt.” community members often donate money to egyptian humanitarian projects – such as cairo’s cancer hospital – and organize trips for young arab-americans to visit um el-dunya (the mother of the world, as egyptians affectionately refer to their country).

living costs: here & there

meanwhile, in egypt, as citizens complain about rampant inflation (particularly since january’s currency devaluation), many egyptians doing business in brooklyn are also complaining about rising costs of living.

in fact, mohamed abdel magid, who owns a furniture store on fifth avenue, compares new york unfavorably to cairo in terms of living expenses. “five hundred dollars is enough to live in cairo,” he says, “but even 5,000 is still not enough for new york.”

the relatively high costs of living are reflected in the prices at the café arabesque across the street, where a shisha (water pipe) and a cup of mint tea will cost you about $6 – as opposed to about a pound and a half in cairo.

the business is run by aziza and esam mostaffa, who have lived in the states for the last 30 years. currently, esam is in cairo watching over their children and selecting items to ship to the states, while his wife manages the shop in brooklyn.

on any given friday afternoon, arabesque is filled with the egyptians of bay ridge – of all ages.

several young men – in denim shorts and sneakers – order tea, while behind them, a group of old men play cards while smoking water pipes. the coffee house boasts a massive color tv featuring arab satellite tv channels – customers watch al-jazeera for a while, until the owner flips the channel to a black and white movie from egypt’s cinematic golden age.

the american dream’s dark side

the bay ridge community was hit hard by the september 11, 2001 attacks, which were followed by a brief backlash from which anti-arab elements were not absent. the fact that one of the most prominent of the attack’s perpetrators, mohamed atta, was egyptian hardly helped.

according to some residents, there had been residual antagonism directed towards arabs ever since the first world trade center bombing in 1993, in which another egyptian, the blind cleric sheikh omar abdel-rahman had been implicated.

after 9/11, though, “it got worse,” according to amira habibi-brown, the director of the arab american family support center near atlantic avenue. “arab-americans were singled out, targeted and racially profiled. people lost their jobs. friends and neighbors treated them differently. kids in school were being harassed,” she said.

mahmoud gouda, a prominent member of brooklyn’s egyptian-american community, describes the way a neighbor treated him after the attacks. “the first day he wouldn’t talk to me. his answer was rough. i acted normal, but i felt that it wasn’t the same from his side. once we spoke about what happened, though, he switched back. we talked about how bad it was, and how it affected everyone. but i still feel like it’s not the same,” gouda said.

according to pyramids gift’s kimo, all businesses suffered after 9/11, “especially arab ones.” as a result, he added, “a lot of people left the us because they didn’t like the situation.”

exact figures for brooklyn’s post-9/11 arab exodus are difficult to determine, but community leaders agree that many families in their neighborhoods repatriated themselves shortly after the attacks.

the brief spate of hate crimes, and then – perhaps more significantly – tough new immigration policies that came part and parcel with the so-called “war on terrorism,” made many feel they were being collectively punished.

this year alone, thousands of arab immigrants – men over 16 years old from over 20 arab or muslim countries – were required to register with the us immigration & naturalization service, where they were in some cases reportedly handcuffed during interviews. according to mary lou greenberg, the co-founder of the anti-war and pro-civil rights ngo “not in our name,” over 13,000 people of arab origin resident in the us are currently scheduled for deportation.

the costs to business
in an inverse reflection of what happened in egypt, 9/11 fallout also included an informal economic boycott of arab business. moussa mentions one local supermarket whose profits fell by 40 percent after the attacks and an arab friend who was forced to sell his restaurant due to a sudden drop in sales. “arab businesses were sometimes boycotted,” he says, but “that didn’t last for a long time.” he went on to explain that “grocery stores generally weren’t affected because most customers were arabs. the businesses that were affected were mostly food stands, coffee stands and taxis. passengers would take different cabs.”

according to antoine faisal, the publisher of the bilingual arabic/english local community newsletter aramica, the notion of a formal boycott of arab-american businesses never reached anything like the organizational sophistication of the boycott of american products seen in egypt since the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000. “if there was a boycott, it was an unspoken decision,” faisal said. “there was no open invitation that we heard of.” he notes, however, that an anonymous flyer was circulated, warning people not to frequent certain local arab-american businesses.

some egyptian-americans with new york-based businesses point out that, business-wise, the real impact of 9/11 wasn’t felt until 2002. it was then, according to rami joudah, the owner of trans mid-east, an importer of middle eastern food, that “bank accounts were seized, assets were frozen and stores were closed down.” as a result, he said, “people left the community. [there would be cases where] the brother of someone was detained, and they would have to close the store.”

while conceding that this year “is noticeably better,” joudah added that new anti-terrorism regulations still have the effect of slowing down business in some cases. for example, while the normal rate of inspection for imported goods is one container in 10, “every single container from the middle east is inspected, either with x-rays or manually. that sets back shipments by at least three weeks.”

tolerance in the face of diversity

the windows of mr. ibrahim’s jewelry store on fifth avenue, pyramid jewelry international, shows off its gold jewelry under a purple awning. inside, a clutch of egyptian women are huddled over a glass counter displaying rings and bracelets.

according to ibrahim, who has had his store for five years, “business is slow, but still good.” he attributes his profits – in an otherwise sluggish economy – to the friendly, mom-and-pop nature of the store, as well as to the fact that many customers are of mediterranean origin. “we treat our customers – who are italians, greeks and albanians – like family,” he said.

although ongoing political events in the middle east – as well as slanted depictions of arabs and muslims in american mass media – have certainly played a part, lingering tensions can also be attributed to traditional strains between new york’s myriad ethnic communities. “this is a large and ethnically diverse neighborhood,” says lynn vittorio, aramica’s editor. “those groups that have lived here longer tend to feel this is their neighborhood.”

there is still a faint but palpable hostility from some – after all, recent statistics indicate that a sizeable minority of americans still believe that saddam hussein had a hand in the events of september 11. but there are also many signs of the tolerance – one of the many things that makes new york great – born of a city where almost everyone is, in the grand scheme of things, an immigrant.

after a nasty attack on brooklyn’s arab population appeared on a local website, bayridge.com, one irish-american resident responded in defense of the arab community. “as for arabs opening shops and hanging out in tea shops and making it look like their own countries, didn’t us irish do the same thing when we came to this country and opened all the bars in bay ridge?” the writer asked. “some of them are here to make a better life for themselves and their families, just like my parents did when they left ireland...”

the economic downturn that savagely gripped the us economy in the wake of the attacks is long over. nevertheless, brooklyn’s arab community, many suggest, would do well not to forget the lessons learned from the challenges of the post-9/11 world – namely, the need to organize politically in order to have a stronger voice on issues that can profoundly affect them.

for brooklyn’s islamic society, the main issue now is to “get out the vote,” according to moussa. “we push our community to register, to vote. this is our goal now. with our background, you know, we didn’t care about this. but after 9/11, a lot of our people changed their minds. they know now their vote is very important.”

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