Eating My Way Through Arab Cuisine in America

October 11, 2019

I recently visited Detroit, USA. Detroit, the center of the automobile industry, declined along with the industry's sunset and is said to have the worst public safety in the United States. Music fans might think of the Motown record label, named after the "Motor City." I am a fan myself, but that wasn't my primary purpose.

In fact, the Detroit metropolitan area has the largest Arab-American population in the United States, and in nearby Dearborn, over 30% of the residents are of Arab descent. The largest mosque in the country is located in this town, and the Arab American National Museum, which conveys Arab-American history, is situated right near the Ford headquarters. Knowing that my friend Jackie Salloum was staying there at the museum's invitation, I toured the town under her guidance.

The reason I first learned about Dearborn was that she, a New York-based artist, is a second-generation Arab-American from this town. Born and raised here to parents from Syria and Palestine, she said she sometimes felt ashamed of her Arab heritage as a child. However, when the popular uprising (Intifada) broke out in Palestine in 2000 and she saw citizens being oppressed by the Israeli military on television, she began searching for ways to communicate what was happening on the ground to American society. That was when she discovered Palestinian rap.

Fascinated by the rappers expressing their raw emotions in Arabic, she completed a documentary following them closely. My desire to introduce this film to Japan was how I first met her. The film was later released in Japanese theaters under the title "Slingshot Hip Hop," and a Japan tour by the featured rap group DAM was also realized.

While the extensive exhibits at the Arab American National Museum were impressive, it was the Arab restaurants scattered throughout the town that seemed to offer a glimpse into the living history of the Arab people. In a supermarket I happened to enter, ingredients from various Arab countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq were lined up. In Detroit, where the population continues to decline, the number of Arab immigrants is steadily increasing. This reflects the political instability in the Middle East, partly due to US policies. Nevertheless, wishing for the happiness of the people who nurture new bonds in this land with their hometown food as emotional support, I left Detroit feeling the heavy weight of the large box of Arab sweets my friend had given me on my lap.