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No, I mean where are you really from?

Jisr Al-Shughur Narrow Street

I suppose I used to resent that all too common a question. When asked about my origin I used to say truthfully that I was born in a small town in Northwestern Wisconsin called Barron. The questioner would act surprised or frustrated as if thinking how could such a foreign name come from the United States. “No, I mean where are you really from?” came the inevitable follow-on question.

The query was almost never as friendly as it sounded on the surface. The type of person asking it had no interest in me as a person, and just wanted to characterize my “otherness”.

“Oh, you mean where my ancestors from; like your ancestors are from England or Germany or France right?” I generally let them squirm for a bit in silence and then told them matter-of-factly that my parents had immigrated from Syria in the 1950s.

The kind of person who asked such questions did not even know where Syria was on a map, but it sounded sufficiently foreign to fit their internal narrative. Nowadays I don’t bristle quite as much as I used to. I am and always will be proud of being a native-born American citizen despite her current flaws and weaknesses. But, I am now equally proud of my Syrian heritage.

The nation of Syria that we know today is a set of lines on a post-colonial map and teeters on the brink of utter destruction in a civil war fomented by larger powers. My heritage is not that mess of foreign design but of the Syrian people themselves and is rooted deep in time and culture. Yes, I am American by birth but I am also a Syrian by blood. So feel free to ask me where I am from. Pull up a chair. After all, what’s in a name?