Najla Said - Looking for Palestine

Adam Waterman: My name is Adam Waterman. I'm an assistant professor in the Department of English here at AUB. I'm a member of the executive committee of the Center for American Studies and Research. And on behalf of CASAR and the English Department, I'd like to welcome you this evening and thank you for joining us for our celebration of Nézla Said and her new memoir, Looking for Palestine.

Najla Said: Excuse me.

Adam Waterman: It's hot in here, right?

Najla Said: Yeah.

Adam Waterman: OK. OK. We'll try to take care of that in a second.

Vijay Prashad: All right.

Adam Waterman: But before we begin tonight, I'd like to draw your attention to 2 other CASAR events that are taking place this week. Tomorrow at 6:00 PM in Building 37, Pratap Chatterjee will be speaking about contractor profiteering in the US war on terror. On Friday, our friend, the great Lisa Hazar, will be delivering a talk called Classified Memories: Trying to Try Terror Suspects Who Were Tortured by the CIA. I've been practicing that all afternoon. That talk will be co-sponsored by CASAR and the Issam Fares Institute and will be held in College Hall B1 from 1:00 to 3:00. In addition, 2 weeks from now, Osama Mokhdessi will be here in this room delivering 2 different lectures. Thank you.

Najla Said: It's my cousin.

Adam Waterman: It's a big week— or a big month. One on the historical emergence of sectarianism in the modern Middle East. And one on sectarianism and the post-Ottoman reconstruction of the region. Both of those talks start at 5:00 PM. The first will be on November 27th, the second on November 29th. They are co-sponsored, among others, by FAS, the Office of the Provost, the Anis Mokhtassi Program in Literature, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of English, the Department of History and Archaeology, and the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies. Thank you.

Vijay Prashad: All right.

Adam Waterman: Tonight, of course, I have the enormous privilege of introducing Najla Said. Najla is, I know, no stranger to many of us in the room. In addition to having just published her first book, she is a celebrated playwright and actress whose Off-Broadway production Palestine ran for 8 sold-out weeks in the spring of 2010.

Najla Said: Woo!

Adam Waterman: In addition to continuing to perform Palestine at schools and universities Throughout the United States, she has worked onstage in other plays regionally, internationally, and all over New York, as well as in film and television. A graduate of Princeton University, in 2010, Najla was named one of the top feminists under 40 by the Feminist Press. Tonight, she will be reading from her achingly beautiful new memoir, a witty, warm, at times revealing chronicle of what it meant to grow up out of place, confused, and heir to what we all might agree is a rather intimidating intellectual and political legacy. Today, she will be joined in conversation by Vijay Prashad. Vijay is the present incarnation of the Edward Said Chair in American Studies here at AUB. Thank you. He is the author of 16 books, including The Karma of Brown Folk, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting, Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses, Fat Cats and Running Dogs, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, and most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. He is the editor of many more academic collections, again most recently, Dispatches from the Arab Spring, which he co-edited with Paul Amar. In addition, Vijay is a journalist who writes regularly for Frontline and The Hindu, as well as CounterPunch and Jadaliyya. He is a contributing editor for Himal and Bull and a part of the team for Newsclick.com. So the format this evening is as such. Nejla will read and they will discuss. Nejla will read and they will discuss. She will read 2 excerpts from the novel bracketed by conversation, which will hopefully eventually lead into a conversation with all of you as well.

Najla Said: Thank you.

Adam Waterman: So we're hoping to wrap up a little bit early, so by 7:45, so everybody who wants to has an opportunity to buy the book and have it autographed. by the lovely Ms. Said. With that, please help me in welcoming Najla Said.

Najla Said: So you just want me to read? All right. So thank you for being here. And I'm going to read a couple of excerpts that we decided upon together this afternoon that we thought would be fitting for the audience. And the environment. So, when your name is called in this story, please stand. Just kidding. So, I'm going to read you the story of my parents' wedding. On December 15th, 1970, my father woke up in his apartment in New York, assessed the weather— an enormous blizzard was ascending— descending on the city— and said to my mother, Who was living with him, I suppose. Maryam, let's go to City Hall and get married. They had, of course, discussed this plan before, but had not set a date or negotiated the specifics. Regardless, upon taking in the heavy swirls of snow, my father knew at once that today was the right day for their nuptials. He theorized that if they left early enough to avoid getting stuck in it, they would actually be able to take advantage of the inclement weather and get the whole wedding procedure done quickly and painlessly, without waiting in long lines or making too big a deal They arrived downtown with a witness by 9:00 a.m. They noticed a large sign over the man in charge's head, emblazoned with the phrase, no smoking. This same man in charge was smoking an enormous cigar as he leisurely read the newspaper. Next to the no smoking one was— sorry, next to the no smoking sign was another equally menacing one that said, Women who want to get married have to be wearing a dress. Surely phrased more concisely, I tell the story the way I heard it from my mother. My parents walked in and told the cigarette-smoking clerk their intention, and he, without lifting his eyes from the paper he was reading, casually extended the pointer finger of his free hand up toward the second of the 2 signs, the one about the dresses. My mother, you see, was wearing pants. Because it was freezing. My father became impatient, my mother's words. You could actually— you could practically see the steam coming out of his ears and the rage boiling in his stomach, my words. I wasn't there, but I have a pretty good idea that this is what happened. He took a deep breath, laughed condescendingly, and then pointed out to the clerk that he was, in fact, smoking under a no-smoking sign, and that detail in itself did not give much value to the rule he was attempting to enforce. Unfortunately, my father's tactic did not work. The clerk kept reading and smoking. His tone growing more anxious by the second, my father persisted in his argument, asserting that they had come all the way down to City Hall from Columbia University on the subway in a blizzard. The least this man could do was marry them. The clerk did not respond. My father then began to quote a famous literary text. Let's say John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, because my mother can't remember which, and it works. Lecturing the clerk on how man makes rules and they come not from God but from society and therefore can be broken. My mother nudged my father and said to him urgently, but not too forcefully, as is her way, Edward, hold on, hold on. I am going to the bathroom. He looked at her as if she were crazy for announcing her attention in the middle of his speech, but nodded quickly and then resumed his impassioned sermon on liberty. My mother disappeared into the bathroom, only to emerge 5 minutes later with her pants removed. Her turtleneck sweater was long enough to cover the upper part of her thighs, and so was the crocheted vest she wore, which her favorite aunt, Najla, had made for her. Since it was freezing, she had worn thick tights underneath her pants.

Adam Waterman: I'm sorry.

Najla Said: She actually looked completely respectable without her trousers. When my mother tells this story, she gets very excited at this point, as she explains how she knew that her plan would work, despite the seemingly obvious fact that she was not really wearing a dress. You see, these were the days of the mini! Pleased with her grace and still chic practicality, my mother smiled at my father. Nimbly, elegantly, she had solved what just moments before seemed an enormous problem. My mother then politely faced the clerk. Okay, I am wearing a dress. My father stared at her, dumbfounded. The clerk finally looked up from his paper. He cast his glance slowly from my mother's head down to her feet, which were housed in stylish beige suede snow boots. My mother loves shoes and takes great care to describe the shoes she was wearing in any story. He put out his cigar and stood up. My father's mouth remained opened. He was confused. He thought he was a genius. But the thing is, so is my mom. I'm clapping for my mother. You did a great job, Maryam.

Vijay Prashad: Uh, good evening. So welcome home.

Najla Said: Thank you.

Vijay Prashad: Why don't you tell us, just to orient us into the book a little—

Najla Said: Yes.

Vijay Prashad: About— you know, it's an amazing thing that there are lots of families in the world, but every family doesn't have 6 memoirs.

Najla Said: That's true.

Vijay Prashad: I mean, here you have a family, your father wrote a memoir, your aunt Your mother has written a wonderful memoir, Mother, Tata and Me. Your grandparents have memoirs. You have a memoir. Where does this memoir-writing thing come from?

Najla Said: I don't know. I— well, I just know that I have permission to narrate. I've got that from my father. I'm Palestinian. I'm narrating my own story. So that's all I know. We're all writing our stories because my father believed that we should all be writing. Isn't that what he said? I don't know.

Vijay Prashad: That's fair. I mean, if a people is silent, something is wrong.

Najla Said: I'm just exercising my permission to narrate. I have no idea why. I have no idea why. Probably because we all talk a lot.

Vijay Prashad: Well, I mean, you know, it's a fair thing what you say is that, you know, you say— you just said— what did you say? You said that We're Palestinians, so we have, you know, whatever. We have stories to tell.

Najla Said: Well, yes. And also, I think, and I'm speaking on both sides of my family, both sides of my family have women who were pretty remarkable people. And for me, at least, living in America, and I don't know if my Aunt Jean would say the same, but I know that we released my grandmother's memoir in part because of that, and I felt I found it important to write a book because there's no perception that Arab women exist even at all in America. So, you know, you can constantly watch movies and television or look for representations of people that you know, and they'll constantly bring up Hanaan Ashrawi as if she's the only— I mean, she's lovely, but she's not the only Arab woman who's educated and can speak English and/or is doing amazing things. I know I can point out like 10 people in this room who are Arab women who are doing amazing things who are not actually related to me even. So for me, there's a lot— that's a lot of it as well. It's frustrating to constantly see your culture represented in that very one-dimensional way. And of course, in the house I grew up in, that's what you're gonna do.

Vijay Prashad: But the other thing that's— I mean, there's a permission to narrate, that's true. But then there's also A very limited permission, because you're supposed to write a political book.

Najla Said: Right.

Vijay Prashad: You're supposed to write a book about your anger at a certain political situation. But this is a complicated book, because this is also a book about sickness and life and coming of age.

Najla Said: Yeah.

Vijay Prashad: Talk about that a little bit. I mean, the central theme in the book isn't really Palestine. Or is it? I mean, the title is Looking for Palestine.

Najla Said: Right.

Vijay Prashad: But what were you looking for?

Najla Said: Well, I think for me so much of the— when my father wrote his memoir, which came out when I was about 24, I was a little bit surprised because I had been raised in New York City, and I had been raised to, in many ways, believe that my father was Palestinian, and that's what he represented was Palestine. And everyone was always calling him the Palestinian and Palestine and Palestine. So I didn't realize that he had had his own identity struggles or this idea that he felt out of place. So when I read his book, I was sort of shocked and taken aback at his seeming discomfort in himself for most of his life and how similar. I was like, why did you send me to a school that was almost exactly like yours? That's not very nice of you. And we had so many things in common that I thought that that was—

Vijay Prashad: That's amazing.

Najla Said: It was very strange, but it was also, in a way, it endeared me to him in a way that it hadn't before, because it, for me, it humanized him. I mean, I know the book isn't like mine. Mine is a little bit different in that it's more emotional. But I'm also an artist. So, you know, and I have to say, and I said this yesterday in an interview, I've never been the kind of actress who is a fan of solo performance.

Vijay Prashad: Right.

Najla Said: It seems very self-indulgent and strange. And so I also didn't feel like I necessarily wanted to do a solo play about my life, but I was encouraged because of the subject matter and all the overlaps in the identity stuff. It's very similar to my dad's— the themes in his work, but because of what I do and the medium that I work in and the way that I tell my story, it had a different effect and it reached a different type of audience. And one of the things that I had realized after all these years of trying to kind of hide who I was or be ashamed of who I was or embarrassed or uncomfortable is that I realized that people always listened to me when I told them about where my family was from and You know, I was fearful of something that I didn't really know what it was. And then when I realized that being honest had this incredible effect on people— because, you know, you know, my parents are nice people. I don't have to tell you that my parents are not terrorists. I don't have to defend that. Because that's— you know, in New York at a book reading, I was asked, isn't your father an anti-Semite? And I said, you've clearly never read anything my father wrote. He's not an anti-Semite.

Adam Waterman: Thank you.

Najla Said: That's the end of that. And so when you get to a point where you realize that just being honest about who the people that you grew up around are, just being honest about that can actually— people will actually listen to you, it becomes empowering. And so, I don't know, it's a different— it's definitely more of a female perspective too, because I don't know, my dad also had a reputation as this this scholar, when he wrote his memoir, and it was more the memoir of someone who's writing at the end of his life, whereas I was writing a book about a little girl, and it could be any little girl, I think. I mean, obviously, my upbringing was peculiar, but it was more my—

Vijay Prashad: That's an interesting word, peculiar upbringing. What do you mean by peculiar upbringing?

Najla Said: Well, it was— I grew up in New York City. And I went to an all-girls private school that was filled with blonde girls, rich blonde girls. And then I went to another school for high school that was mostly Jewish kids. And I was always on the wrong side. So I— this is my big discovery that I realized like 2 weeks ago. I said this earlier.

Vijay Prashad: Please share this with us.

Najla Said: When I was little, I— we lived on the Upper West Side. I lived on the west side of Manhattan, and my parents sent me to school on the east side. So I was— lived in the west, but I was supposed to be in the east. My mother's family is from West Beirut, but they were Christian. So everyone kept saying, oh, no, you must be from East Beirut. I'm like, no, no, no, we're from West Beirut. No, but you're Christian. That's how Americans see the war in Lebanon. It's very simple. Then my dad was from West Jerusalem. And everyone, they still to this day, Jewish people especially, say, no, you mean you're from East Jerusalem. And I say, no, no, we're from West Jerusalem. And they're like, no, no, you have it backwards. I'm like, no, I'm from East— I'm from West Jerusalem. So as I've been doing these talks, I realized my parents were constantly putting me in the West. I was supposed to be in the East.

Vijay Prashad: Here's the secret to the book, audience.

Najla Said: And here's Orientalism. Dun dun dun! So that's my new magical theory of my life. It's your fault.

Vijay Prashad: No, not just your life. This is the magical key to your father's book. So there we have it. The whole thing is revealed.

Najla Said: It's like they sort of set me up. It's kind of unfair.

Vijay Prashad: Can you talk a little bit about what you said earlier, which is the differences in tone or differences in style? I mean, not to compare the two, but talk about this book a little bit, because You know, it comes out of a stage play.

Najla Said: Right.

Vijay Prashad: That's exactly right. It comes out of a blog post, right?

Najla Said: Right.

Vijay Prashad: A blog post, a stage play, a book. Talk a little bit about finding that voice, you know, to narrate what I hope, you know, you'll read later on, things that are difficult to write about.

Najla Said: I think one of the things that— and I'm sure a lot of people in the room can relate to this— when you're— but especially being born in America or in the West anywhere, really, If you are Arab or Lebanese or Palestinian, you become defined as a political person, as a political object almost. So your entire existence is politicized just by saying where you're from. So you have no time to decide that, oh, I like theater, or, oh, I like art, or, oh, I like dance. So right away, if you say, I'm Palestinian, all of a sudden you become a political thing. So I found that very frightening and very limiting, because I, as a little girl and still, I don't pay attention very well. I don't listen. I listen to, like, parts of stories and then I make up the rest. If you ever ask me to sort of— that doesn't mean that my book is lies. It's all true. But I listen to sort of— I listen to things and I sort of, I don't know, I just don't— and I was never interested in politics. I was never interested in history. I was not— I just couldn't keep the facts straight. And you're a historian. And my brother was. And that was another thing. My brother was very good at keeping track of history, and he would tell me things, what I was supposed to know when I needed to know it. So I sort of got a little lazy about that. And I wanted to just— you know, a lot of people have asked, why, how could you be so unaware of your identity if your father was this person? But I was a little girl, and I don't think that's fair to a little girl.

Adam Waterman: Right.

Najla Said: To ask why she doesn't know about hegemony or whatever the stuff might be.

Vijay Prashad: What is hegemony?

Najla Said: I don't know!

Adam Waterman: Come on!

Najla Said: So I actually asked that in class in college when we were studying Edward Said, and the teacher was like, okay, okay. I think everyone else wanted to know too. But anyway, so I was a little girl. That's really it. And I was also sheltered. I mean, I was here a lot during the Civil War, but I was I was a little kid, so obviously there were moments where I was sheltered from what was going on, and I didn't really know— how are you supposed to explain to a 4-year-old, how are you supposed to explain to anyone the Lebanese Civil War, let alone a 4-year-old girl who lives in America? So there was also that. And then, so, I— and my father, which— this was important to me, too. My father was—

Vijay Prashad: Yes.

Najla Said: An English professor. And that's often forgotten. And so when people say, how could you not be interested in this stuff if your father was Edward Said? I'm like, you don't— my father would sit around and read Moby Dick over and over and over and over again. And we talked about Jane Austen. And we talked— that was my connection to my father. My brother and he may have connected on history and politics. But he had a whole—

Vijay Prashad: Mm-hmm.

Najla Said: Professional career and life that was based On English literature. And so to say that I wasn't quite like my father's daughter because I wasn't interested in Palestinian politics is actually— makes the other person seem like they don't know what they're talking about, because my dad was an English professor. And so we would talk about that, and we talked about books, and we talked about stories. And yes, when I read Jane Eyre, I had to be aware of the madwoman in the attic and why she was this Jamaican woman and—

Adam Waterman: Right.

Najla Said: Why was she in the attic? And what— you know, and when I read Othello, I had to make sure I knew that Othello was really an Arab. And, you know, like, there were definitely Edward Said ways that I was forced to look at things, which was wonderful. But at the same time, like, we talked about art and literature, and he took me to the theater all the time. And I loved to go to plays. My parents used to take me to a lot of plays that were in other languages.

Vijay Prashad: Mm.

Najla Said: And I loved that, because for some reason I felt like I understood things that were happening, even though I didn't understand Mm-hmm. And those were the places where I felt most, like, safe and most like I had an understanding of things. And it was more of a visceral, overwhelming— I couldn't articulate it at the time. So that when I came to start coming of age and discussing these topics, for me it was much, you know, I write a lot about my bout with anorexia, which of course at the time when I was anorexic, I didn't realize that there was A connect— I mean, clearly that came out of years of therapy when you're talking about this, that, and the other thing, and then you realize, oh, well, maybe seeing Palestinian refugees who didn't have any food made me uncomfortable eating, or maybe I felt guilt. You know, that stuff starts coming up, but then you start thinking about it in a larger sense and how you can sort of connect with other people on that level, because I think that these are things that we all, as human beings, can relate to. And I just decided that, you know, and partly listening to my dad, like, tell your story, don't forget to tell your story, I think it made a difference that I realized that there was a communication that could be had, whether on stage or through writing or just sitting down and looking a person in the eye. Because my whole life I grew up around many Zionists and I was the Palestinian girl. So imagine, you know, my brother was friends with Can you imagine?

Adam Waterman: No money.

Najla Said: Yeah, exactly. Like, our lives were so strange. And we kind of didn't get that. We didn't understand what was going on. But then again, we were these people who sat— I sat in these people's homes, and they fed me, and they talked to me, and they hugged me when I cried. So it was like, I don't know, I had this thing where I thought, well, they are nice to me and they like me, so if they don't like me after I tell them that my daddy lost his house, then That's not fair. You know, it was a very simple thing. And then I— this is why I approached this that way. Like, I'm just going to tell you the story and you can react the way you want, but this is the story.

Vijay Prashad: There's a lot of stories you tell in there about the self-silencing. And I mean, children do that all the time, you know, whether they have your particular history or not. Children also look to please their parents. And that's another thing that I think is is a general situation. But it's not the case that there is no politics there.

Najla Said: No.

Vijay Prashad: It's just that the politics come in a different way.

Najla Said: Right.

Vijay Prashad: So, I mean, I know you're going to read a second bit in a minute or so, but before you read what you're going to read, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what politics or what the world began to mean for you, you know, by the time you were in high school or thereabouts. So the narrative in your early years is slow, and then it picks up suddenly to get to college.

Adam Waterman: Yes.

Vijay Prashad: You know, there's a sort of acceleration.

Najla Said: Well, I think what happened was I— what was interesting was, and this is kind of the most interesting thing to me, I— when you're— and also, for me, up until a certain point in my late 20s and early 30s, the most sort of Besides, you know, being— having— being the daughter of this person and being in Lebanon during the war, but for me personally, the most profoundly traumatic experience for me was the battle with anorexia, which was very long. And it's one of those things that's dismissed very easily as a thing that's for superficial young women. And I had found so much more in that struggle that it had— you know, it's one of those things that I was in pain and I didn't know how to express it.

Adam Waterman: Right.

Najla Said: I was— nobody believes me, but I think there are people in this room who can attest to the fact that when I was a child, I never spoke, ever. So I was shy, and I didn't know how to express— and I'm very empathetic, and I don't know how to express— like, I get very hurt by seeing other people in pain, which is something my father actually had as well. He just didn't express it the way I did. He expressed it in fancy words.

Adam Waterman: But—

Najla Said: So I think that so much of the pain I was carrying around, I began to take it out on myself. And so, for me, when I started working on the play, my director, who was a man, was like, I don't know how important— why is this so important? And I was like, it is important, because this is a very female story. And I think that that's something else, and that's political in and of itself. And then I got this feminist award.

Adam Waterman: Yeah.

Najla Said: And I was happy because I think that there was a lot more going on inside of me and my body and my head and my mind. And that was— I mean, yeah, everyone, a lot of people point out like, oh, it was difficult for you to be in the Middle East because you didn't eat and everyone in the Middle East eats. And I'm like, yes, that's part of it. And it made me seem more— not in Lebanon, I know, but it made you seem more American and foreign. But at the same time, it was actually—

Vijay Prashad: What?

Najla Said: I was trying to sort of say, I'm not feeling nourished. I'm not feeling like I— I don't belong here in another deeper way. And it was— the illness was associated with me losing myself in a way. And then, you know, and then my father began to get sicker and sicker and thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker. And it became a very difficult thing. And I also wanted to suffer for him.

Vijay Prashad: Right.

Najla Said: To share that with him and for Palestinians. And I said this in the class today, I always, when people talk about someone like Angelina Jolie being really thin, I'm like, how do you know that she doesn't just not eat because she's around refugees all the time? And that sounds really strange, but it's entirely possible. There are things that people who are extremely sensitive, they react to things in a different way. And And we judge people on these things that we think are— but there's often a lot going on inside people, and people don't talk about it. And I thought I wanted to talk about it, because I thought as soon as you start saying these things, people start coming out of the woodwork and saying, thank you for saying that. I feel this way too. I feel the same. I feel this. And then you suddenly have all these stories. And I don't know. I just felt like it makes the world seem a little less—

Adam Waterman: Sad.

Najla Said: Divided. I mean, I think that— I don't know.

Vijay Prashad: I mean, I want to have us come back very briefly after you read a little bit about bodies and pain and the world acting on them. Why don't you read a little bit about a famous trip to South Lebanon?

Najla Said: Okay. Hang on one second. Fawaz, do you want to read it?

Vijay Prashad: Where are you?

Najla Said: Do you want to read? No, I was kidding.

Vijay Prashad: This is about you as well.

Najla Said: I'm kidding. Okay. In the summer— it's from there. Sorry.

Adam Waterman: Okay.

Najla Said: In the summer of 2000, just after my dad had undergone another round of chemotherapy, we were in Beirut for my cousin Kareem's wedding. And my best friend, or gay boyfriend, as I prefer to call him, Francesco, came along as my date. Since he is Sicilian by way of Brooklyn, he had very quickly become close with my immediate family. What he had heard about Lebanon reminded him a lot of where he comes from in the Mediterranean. He met my cousins, aunts and uncles and friends, who all wondered if I knew that my boyfriend was a homosexual, but never asked, because apparently that would be rude. And they all fell in love with him. We spent most of our time at the beach, but one day, Francesco Weddia, his fiancée Jennifer, Mommy, Daddy and I traveled to the south to visit the border between Palestine and Lebanon. The Israelis had just relinquished their occupation of that area, and a tour of the area had been arranged for my father. On the drive down the coast, the fancy beach clubs gave way to makeshift seaside camps, where portions of the population settled after losing their homes during the war. The temperature rose. It got hotter, hotter and hotter as we drove. Billboards advertising suntan oil and fast food restaurants were gradually replaced by posters of bearded, turban-wearing men. I shuddered. My comfort in the Middle East was still very new, and I realize now that at that time it was a comfort that I had only felt in and around the urban cosmopolitan areas of Beirut. My heart pounded loudly in my chest. I was suddenly scared, and I felt the same constricted, I don't belong here feeling that I had felt when I had gone to Palestine 8 years earlier. We got to the actual Lebanon-Israel border. My brother and I stood there and posed for pictures at the crossroads of our identity, or whatever you want to call it. Just across the wire was Israel. Palestine. I hadn't been there since 1992. There it was, so close, but, oh, yes, so far away. A truck drove up the mountain straight in front of us. It was close enough that we could read the Hebrew writing. I felt my heart jump into my throat and my insides turn. Before we headed back to Beirut, one of our friends and tour guides insisted we visit one more important place, an abandoned Israeli checkpoint tower, which become— which had become a place of pilgrimage for visitors to the area. In a gesture of solidarity with those who until a month before had lived under military occupation, people now came here and, one by one, threw rocks toward the abandoned tower in a symbolic gesture of joy at the liberation of the land. I'm from Israel. The tower was on the Lebanese side, and the Israelis had left the country, so there was nothing on either side for miles and miles, except a bunch of scraggly rocks here and there. My brother said, look how badly they throw around here. The rocks land nowhere near the tower. It's because they don't know how to play baseball. Then he picked up— that was a very bad impression of my brother. Then he picked up a rock and threw it pretty far into the empty, dry land.

Adam Waterman: Oh, my God.

Najla Said: My father, never one to be outdone, suddenly wanted to show that he could throw just as far as, if not farther than, my brother. I cowered in a corner, waiting for some ridiculously disproportionate military response to their stupidity, which thankfully did not come. What did come, however, was even more ridiculous. One of the photographers that we were with had decided that this would make a great shot. Edward Said—

Vijay Prashad: Edward Said.

Najla Said: Throwing a rock in solidarity with the people of southern Lebanon. And so, by the time we got back to Beirut, 2 hours later, the photo was all over the internet. And there was outrage at home, as the New York Post had featured the picture with a story about my dad's terrorist activities, and people were coming out of the woodwork to demand he be fired from Columbia.

Adam Waterman: Wait, what?

Najla Said: Apparently, although a revered professor at Columbia, Edward Said was also a terrorist who had viciously attacked an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon. Francesco's reaction to the event— incident reminded me I wasn't crazy. I had grown used to these kinds of press distortions and was sick of being called a conspiracy theorist by my American friends every time I pointed them out. So I had learned to keep them to myself. But Francesco was outraged, and he wasn't Arab or even remotely interested in politics. I don't understand what is going on. These people are crazy. That's not what happened at all. I have pictures. I have anyone— I can show anyone who asks that that is not what happened. I am so confused by America right now. I looked at him, relieved. I needed to hear his reaction to make sure mine was legitimate. When my dad heard that Francesco had photos showing the abandoned checkpoint tower and the vast area of nothing around it, he called him immediately. I must have them! These people are after me! I must clear my name! I look back on this event as the beginning of the end of my father's spirit. Between the backlash at Columbia The second intifada beginning in Palestine that fall, and the crowning event, 9/11, Daddy stopped speaking to the American media. He wrote for the Arab press more and agreed to do interviews only for the BBC or other European media outlets that would give him more than a 2-minute soundbite to explain why they hate us. Thank you.

Vijay Prashad: I mean, one of the main themes which we'll talk about, I think, for a few more minutes before we open it up for questions— you alluded to it earlier, that there's a parallel in the story.

Adam Waterman: Mm-hmm.

Vijay Prashad: There is your sickness, fight with anorexia, and then there's your father's sickness.

Adam Waterman: Mm-hmm.

Vijay Prashad: It's a very big parallel in the book. And part of the parallel seems driven by The— you know, how the body is impacted by events around.

Najla Said: Yeah.

Vijay Prashad: And, you know, here in this little bit you say that, and then the spirit was affected by this pressure.

Najla Said: Yes.

Vijay Prashad: I mean, can you talk a little bit about this parallel that you have running in the book between the kinds of pressures that, you know, you would face, how the body is not just a bunch of chemicals?

Najla Said: Interestingly, a lot of my What was that like? A lot of my healing or my getting better from anorexia had less to do with doctors and therapists and more to do with my training as an actress, which I should probably explain, because if you haven't been to theater school, it might not make sense to you. But when you're in acting school, I'm sure you maybe have come across this, they sort of have to break you down to build you up. And so, interestingly enough, my whole childhood I had felt like I didn't belong and I I wanted to— I wasn't skinny. I wanted to be skinny. I didn't have the body that these skinny white girls had. So I wanted to disappear. Obviously, this wasn't conscious. But part of my wanting to not eat was to fit in, but also kind of make yourself go away. But at the same time, you want to be noticed because you want to show that you're there and, hello, notice me, I'm in pain. You know, so there's a lot of that. And in my acting, Training, um, and this was true for a lot of the women in my acting school, they would say, um, you need to not be afraid to take up space.

Vijay Prashad: Hmm.

Najla Said: Um, you know, there's this idea, because in Hollywood the women are very thin and, and, and they just look pretty, but on stage, being on stage is like being an athlete. If you don't have the stamina to get through a performance, you can't be an actor. If you can't control your breathing and your voice and you can't be fully present, you can't act. So all of this came together for me because I had written my college thesis on Genet and Beckett and all this role-playing. And all of a sudden in acting school I realized they were telling me, don't be afraid to take up space. Be who you are. And meanwhile I was anorexic, my dad was sick, and it suddenly became this very overwhelming thing about not only being a woman but being a Palestinian. And I think that that was when I realized that They would say to me, if you want to be an actor, you have to be a human being. You have to be alive. And you're dying. And you have to not just eat, but you have to come to terms with who you are. I mean, of course they didn't say that. They didn't say, you have to come to terms with your Palestinian ambivalence. But I think that part of it was this intense desire, I want to be an actress, so I have to be a full human being. So I started doing all this physical work. I became a Pilates instructor. I became very focused. And then, as I was doing all of that, my father was getting more and more ill. And so, on that trip to South Lebanon, it was 3 years before he died, but he had had a very particularly difficult round of chemo. And it was probably the only one— I mean, he had many, many rounds of treatment, but that summer was the one summer where he almost lost all his hair. It was very thin. He had— he'd gotten very thin, but he had tumors in his stomach. So he had this stomach that was not— he wasn't fat. It wasn't like a— it was just tumors. And he was very thin, and he had thinning hair. And at that point, I was better. But I think that for me was when I started to put all these things together of— and I had become stronger and more comfortable and more comfortable speaking out. And then I guess in many ways, the culmination of it was when I did my play. Because you were able to— 'Cause I stood on stage, I called the play Palestine, I stood on stage and I was alone and I said all this stuff that people thought would never come out of me.

Vijay Prashad: Can I, let me interrupt you for a second because you made a jump. There's something that happens in your book between this and Palestine, which is that you meet a group of other actors.

Najla Said: Yes.

Vijay Prashad: So just can you talk a little bit about that?

Najla Said: Yes, thank you for bringing that up. And my whole life, we had, you know, my parents were proud of being Arab, and we knew lots of Arabs, and we came to Lebanon, and I had cousins and stuff, but I never had Arab friends or Arab-American friends. And part of that was because you have to meet people who you have things in common with. And I never really did. I just, for whatever reason, I had my friends at school. I was pretty much isolated from Lebanon for my entire adolescence. And you were in the United States? So I didn't really know— we had family friends who had kids, and I knew them a little, but we weren't close, and most of us didn't live in the same place anyway. And so, and then the other bit of this that goes along with this story is that, ironically, my father had been using this word solidarity my whole life, and I never knew what it meant, but then I suddenly felt it.

Adam Waterman: Mm.

Najla Said: So it was before 9/11, and there was this group of Arab Americans who had— we had all been on a listserv on Yahoo, 'cause we had all started acting. And when you start acting, especially in America, you have to be typed. That's how you get a job. There's only so many people. So if you go to an audition and there's 200 brown-haired 20-somethings, and then they want— and then there's like— but they want the girl to speak Arabic, then you have a better chance of getting the So they try to get you— you try to get ahead by exploiting the things that are different about you. But unfortunately, in the acting and Hollywood world, that becomes one-dimensional stereotypes. So here I was confronting everything my dad had ever written about. And so they constantly— I was constantly being asked to audition for Arabs and Arabs and Arabs. And so were these other actors who were like me. Some were raised—

Adam Waterman: Arab.

Najla Said: In the Middle East, but went to American school or international school or were raised in London or raised in New York or raised in California. And so we all were kind of reticent because we just wanted to be actors. And so we had this listserv, and one day one girl had said, does anyone want to get together and actually meet in real life? Anyone in New York? And so we did. And we started working on this play. And so you were the first person to come to the theater? play about Arab identity in America. And then, 2 months into it, 9/11 happened. So, we were like, okay, we really have to do this. But that was when I think you— when you go into a space like that and you can make jokes and they get them, you know, oh, you look like a little teita today, you know, like something silly like that where you say an Arabic word and the other person gets it, when you've grown up completely with Yeah. Without that, it's overwhelming. And then you feel like you're not alone, literally. And that, for me, was also an enormous part of it. So we did that play. And basically, in doing that play, what we did was stand on stage and say— we called the play— my father picked the title for us, because I'm really bad at picking titles. We called it Sajjal, after the Mahmoud Darwish poem that, you know, I am an Arab. And so that for us was the coming out of like, record, write it down. And so that was almost the culmination of that first bit of being like, I'm not alone. And it's— Adam and I were talking about this yesterday. I still get that way, you know, when Gaza's being attacked and I'm in New York City and my Pilates clients are like, those Arabs, you know, they—

Vijay Prashad: Yeah.

Najla Said: I just want to crawl into a hole and die, because even though I'm comfortable, I'm not. I feel really alone. And then, you know, you just go on Facebook and you see that you have all these friends all over the world who have the same beliefs that you do, and they're standing behind you. It's unreal, and it's so helpful. And so I realized a lot of it had been being alone and isolated and really just wanting to shrink and disappear in that regard and nonexist, because no one wants you to exist.

Adam Waterman: Thank you.

Najla Said: And I think in America when you're Palestinian and you're growing up in the most Zionist neighborhood in America, it's very hard to want to exist. So.

Vijay Prashad: So on that note, Facebook friends, who wants to engage—

Najla Said: He's great on Facebook.

Vijay Prashad: Who wants to engage Najla with questions that are smarter than mine? So do we have a mic, Adam?

Najla Said: Or my mom. My mom's here. You can ask my mom.

Vijay Prashad: Oh, there's a mic. This one? We lose this? No, no, no.

Adam Waterman: Uh—

Najla Said: It's hot.

Vijay Prashad: Should we keep this up and then keep this loose?

Najla Said: Okay.

Vijay Prashad: Thanks.

Najla Said: Thank you.

Adam Waterman: Please.

Najla Said: One of my favorite passages in your book was when you talk about Lebanese culture and how everything about it was to nurture you. And, you know, you don't have voicemail, you have missed calls, and how this is reflected in the language. And I was wondering if you could I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about that, and also if you speak Arabic at home. So, that's— thank you for bringing that up. That's my favorite— that was my favorite part of both the play and the book as well, in terms of the part that I wanted most to convey. And what it started from was— I'm sure— I know most people here have spent plenty of time outside of Lebanon. But just to— in case you haven't, when you're watching CNN or NBC News or any sort of American news outlet and they're putting a video of Osama bin Laden on, they will translate and give you a caption of every single word he says except the word Allah. And so you're sort of forced— you're sort of encouraged to think that Allah is this other person, this God, this special evil God that only Arabs believe in, and he's evil.

Vijay Prashad: Right.

Najla Said: And it used to bother me because I would say, doesn't that just mean God? Like, my mother says that. She's Christian. And I'm sure if you were Jewish and you were speaking Arabic, you would say, Allah, it's the word for God. So that's how that passage began. But I started realizing on each little trip, and also when I was with my theater company, that if you listen to— I mean, sometimes it's funny because, like, your parents or your—

Vijay Prashad: Parents.

Najla Said: Relatives will translate things straight from Arabic, and you're like, what? And sometimes people send us plays that were written in Arabic, and they're translated, and Americans are like, what? Who talks like that? But Arabic is poetry. And there is a sense— and my best friend is Palestinian-American, and she and I talk about this a lot. When I was little, I used to say to my dad, I would cry and be like, my friends aren't nice to me. They're not the way— and he'd be like, you have a very romanticized idea of friendship. That's not how Americans And so, part of it is also this idea, in America especially, where you're the— it's the individual. And actually, my grandmother also wrote about this in her memoir. Like, you feel like you gotta look out for yourself, and that's it. Whereas the world that I grew up in, where it's like my cousins were my siblings, my friends— I know all my family. I talk to them. They're people in my life. And the way that the language— and I started noticing the way that the language works, because when you start translating it for people, you're kind of like—

Vijay Prashad: Yeah.

Najla Said: I have this part where I say— this was the first one— where you never say— we have a word for thank you in Arabic, but you don't say that. You say something like, God bless your hands. That's how it's translated. And so when you explain that to Americans, they're like, that's really pretty. And I'm like, think about— I mean, I don't know if people who speak Arabic all the time necessarily notice that. And those are the kinds of things that get missed. interpreted as we're all a bunch of Muslim religious fanatics, but it's a really nice thing to say to a person. Or, God give you well-being. Or, God— these are beautiful things that people say to each other. Or when I call my mom and she answers the phone and says, I knew it was you. And I say, how'd you know? And she'd say— I mean, obviously she knows because of the caller ID, but she always says, my heart tells me. I mean, that's a direct translation of Arabic. If you say that in English, It sounds very strange, but it's beautiful. And these are the things that I thought, you know, I'm being constantly told that I'm from this violent, angry, horrid place, and the language that we speak to each other, it's almost 2 things. One, it's untranslatable without sounding a bit— it doesn't necessarily— like, even a word like khalas, you can't really translate that. You can, but it doesn't— like, the whole meaning of it, it doesn't. So, I think that's one of the things that I think is really important. So, that was important to me, to explain how the language works, because I think that the Arabic language is really beautiful, really poetic. I mean, I know every time I talk about this stuff, I know I sound Orientalist, just so you know. So, I'm sorry. I'm aware. But there are these things about the Arabic language that it's the lang— it's my mother tongue. It's the language my mother spoke to me. So, how is it an evil, horrible— and then you start thinking about what the phrases actually mean, and it's It's quite incredible. And so I wanted to share that with people. And I think people are really taken aback, because what they hear is— I mean, that's what they think they hear, but I don't— it really bothers me when they do that. But so, yes. And in terms of Arabic, well, I understand absolutely every word that my mother says.

Adam Waterman: That's good.

Najla Said: I have a Lebanese accent slash American accent. I'm shy, really, really shy. Palestinians think I'm weird because I have no idea what they're saying half the time. It's very specific. Like, I have— I can speak like Ras Beirut in my head, but that's about it. So. Thank you, Najda, for being so genuine, both in your reading and your writing. I'm just wondering which part, which theme in your book felt the most untranslatable, but you actually wrote it anyway. And also, what do you think your next book will be about? I think, in general, the part that's most untranslatable is writing about Palestine. I mean, I think that there's no way to do it. Some people pointed this out when I did my play, because They would say things like, you did it— so in America, when you do a play about Palestine or anything about Palestine, they'll always say, well, why don't we have an Israeli come or a Jew and we'll balance it? That's the big thing. And it's really annoying. So in my play, I— and in the book as well, I write about seeing Palestinian children and realizing that they were just born. And they're like me, but in a different way, because they actually live in Palestine. They were born, and now they have to carry this huge burden and be these people, and this is their— their life is defined by where they were born. And as I am, they're defined politically. And so I'm writing this whole thing, and then what I did was, in the same moment, I say, And the Israeli kids, they're carrying the burden of their parents and the Holocaust and all of that stuff. So a lot of people were like, I like how you did that to balance it out. And I'm like, you know what, I didn't do that to balance it out, because I didn't say anything that I don't think is truth. But I did put it in. It's more like artistic license, because I was anticipating the other argument, and I wanted people to keep reading or keep listening.

Vijay Prashad: Right.

Najla Said: That, I don't think I should have to say that. Like, I don't think I should have to constantly say that I know the Holocaust happened and that this is horrible and that I know you had a rough time and my Jewish friends this and that, but that's something I had to do. And that was the most— it's the most frustrating thing because you have to tell this story in a specific way no matter what.

Adam Waterman: Right.

Najla Said: And some of my friends were like, you were too nice, you weren't political enough. And I'm like, no, I was trying to tell a story. You know, storytelling is also a certain— it's an art. And I felt like I want people to hear what I have to say. And if you're just gonna stand there and barrage them with, Palestine is my homeland and it's ours and all of it, from the river to the sea, blah, blah, blah, like, no one's gonna read my book. They're gonna say all this stuff about me without it. So I went out of my way, and I also learned this from my father. Exactly.

Vijay Prashad: Can you elaborate a little on that? Because then the question is, who do you want as the reader of your book? So can you tell us?

Najla Said: Well, that was interesting. I think that originally it was for Americans. That's why I was so pleased and overwhelmed by how it was received here and everywhere. I've had people write to me from all over the world who I didn't think— I mean, first of all, it's relatable to anyone who— someone said, you wrote a book for insecure people. Which I thought was lovely. And that's true.

Vijay Prashad: It's a new genre.

Najla Said: The insecure. But also, people— let's say you were Lebanese, but you grew up in Kuwait, or you grew up in Lebanon and you felt weird, or your mother's Muslim and your father's Christian, or whatever it is. There are these things that everyone has struggled with in And I always thought, personally, I thought that my cousins who actually grew up here would be like, what the hell do you know about Lebanon, or whatever, because you grew up in America. And yes, but then I didn't realize that they had their own struggles with, you know, they may have been here longer, but then they had to go to college in America, and then they had— so there's all these levels of relating in that.

Adam Waterman: Yeah.

Najla Said: In that way. So, I actually wrote this book, they wanted me to write literally like, 'cause in America everyone reads the Diary of Anne Frank. And so, my editor is, she tends to work on a specific type of book, like Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner, is her author. So, the type, she like grabbed that one right as we invaded Afghanistan, because like—

Adam Waterman: Yeah.

Najla Said: We have to now teach American kids about Afghanistan. So, The Kite Runner. So, what my book is meant to be, because for a kid in— an Arab-American kid, you can read like Toni Morrison, who writes about African-American experience, which is what I read. I read The Bluest Eye about this little black girl who wanted blue eyes. I read it over and over and over again because I really wanted blue eyes. But I'm not a little black girl from the South. So, there's a level of—

Adam Waterman: Right.

Najla Said: of relating that I didn't get. And my editor said, I want you to write a book so that the little Arab-American girl doesn't feel alone. And I was like, I wanna do that, 'cause, I mean, obviously, if you've read it, you realize how alone I felt. So that's who I wrote it for. However, it's taken on a whole other level of, you know, I'm amazed that people who are— I thought only women would like it.

Adam Waterman: Mm-hmm.

Najla Said: But men seem to have enjoyed it as much. A lot of people were surprised that I didn't write, as you said today, like, I thought there's— Alice Walker's daughter wrote a memoir, and it's kind of like, my mom was a really bad mom. So I think people thought I was gonna write that book, and I didn't. I actually wrote I Had Great Parents book. So it wasn't like I was so troubled and tortured because my dad was this loudmouth intellectual that everyone worshipped, and I didn't get any attention. I didn't write that book.

Vijay Prashad: Right.

Najla Said: So I wrote it for young people who feel, as to use my dad's phrase, out of place. And I really thought I wrote it for Americans. I don't think I thought— but when I did my— and I'm sort of like, I was scared. To be honest, I get scared and nervous to talk about it in front of people who are actually Lebanese or who are actually from the Middle East, because I feel like they're like, why are you telling us stuff that we already know? But at the same time— I'm telling you what it's like to grow up in America. And also that having often felt that I was dismissed as the American, because I always felt like I didn't fit in here because I was too American, I just want you to know that I did take in everything you taught me, and thank you for it. It was almost like that.

Adam Waterman: Mm.

Najla Said: So I almost think it's— I'm sort of shy about it here, and I was overwhelmed and really I was really moved and crying when people left me these beautiful voicemail messages about how it affected them, my family and friends here. So, I wrote it for Americans. I mean, I did. And so, I'm very grateful that it's traveled and worked elsewhere.

Vijay Prashad: Frequently, by the way, people who think that they know who they are are the ones who should go and see the shrink.

Najla Said: Yeah, that's true.

Vijay Prashad: Because— let's have some more questions, please. Yes, sorry, Adam.

Najla Said: Thank you. First, I wanted to thank you for writing this because I completely identify with everything that you've said.

Vijay Prashad: Thank you.

Najla Said: Because I'm also from the States and the whole thing. But I understand how theater helped you with your body issues, but how were you able to overcome and heal from the discrimination, specifically after 9/11? That's a great question. I don't think I necessarily have. I think that it's very difficult for me. You know, if you read my dad's memoir, you may notice that maybe the self-esteem problems are just genetic, and they came out of our brains, and they have nothing to do with the discrimination and all of that, and just feeling uncomfortable was just It's not just some sort of bizarre psychological problem that I inherited and that he had. You know, I don't— but it's very hard. There's nothing— there's a couple of things. One is that you— my brother, for example, has darker skin than I do and is a boy and was teased and bullied a lot more than I do. And we only found out when we were grown-ups that when my brother was a little boy at his Yeah. And then in high school, all the Jewish kids decided that they shouldn't be friends with him because his dad wrote this book that was horrible and hated Jews. And he lost all his friends. And we didn't know that. And I didn't know that. And I was a girl, and I was able to sort of— and you know, I write about this in the book. In high school, I decided, okay, I'll be Arab, but I'll be the pretty exotic girl. Because suddenly boys thought I was pretty, and they kept saying I was exotic. So I was like, okay, I'll be exotic. And that was like, okay, I'll be Arab, but only if I can be the really pretty Arab, and that's all we have to talk about, is my bangling, jingling, beautiful long hair.

Vijay Prashad: Jasmine.

Najla Said: Yeah. And that was stupid. So, I think that there's a lot of discrimination that I haven't faced, because And part of it— and this is another thing that I talk a lot about in the book, which is class. And that comes across a lot in America, especially with Arabs, because the, oh, you're not one of them. You know, I'm not Muslim, so that excuses me from something. I don't know. And then I have white skin. And I went to private school, and I went to Princeton, and my father was a famous literary scholar. So there's a lot of, you're not one of them, and that's annoying, because then you kind of want to identify. I mean, after 9/11, I was like, go ahead, racially profile me. And they're like, go ahead, you're cute, go ahead. And I'd be like, no, I'm Arab, don't you want to racially profile me? And, you know, it's like this ridiculous nonsense where you're like trying so hard to identify. You want people to know that that's who you are.

Vijay Prashad: Right.

Najla Said: That you almost get mad that you're not discriminated against. And it's difficult for me, and it happens all the time. I constantly, especially now that I've written this book and become more outspoken, I mean, I wanted to sort of just be me, but I'm my father's daughter, so no matter what I did, there was gonna be— people were gonna politicize me.

Adam Waterman: Right.

Najla Said: I just was like, all right, well, this is what I think, and this is what I believe, and this is who I am. And I think that things happen a lot where I lose out on opportunities because they know I'm not going to just go along with— like, in theater, you're not just going to put on the hijab and be like, I'm going to be the girl in the play with the hijab who prays 5 times in the play for no reason, because that's what Muslims do, and that's how we indicate Muslim. So, they know I'm not going to do that sort of thing. And so I think that sometimes that happens. And, but for me, in terms of like, I just constantly, as I said, check in with my friends. You have to surround yourself with people. A lot of the people I went to high school with are really, although at the time when I was in high school, I felt relieved because they were Jewish and I could talk to them about where I was from. There's a lot of them I don't even really have anything in common with because they're so Zionist.

Adam Waterman: Yeah.

Najla Said: And they just won't. So you have to surround yourself with people who are interested in the same things and who— and then when you feel really uncomfortable, you get on a plane. It's like a booster shot. You come here and you're sort of loved back to health, and then you go back to America. It's true, right?

Vijay Prashad: 1, 2, 3. It's a triangle.

Najla Said: So do you get any hate mail? Yeah. But it's not from Israelis. Israelis write me marriage proposals, which bothers me even more. I have been proposed to like 300 times by Israeli men on Facebook. And of course, I think they're Mossad, so I don't answer them. But that's really annoying. But I do. I mean, I get not hate mail. I get a lot of— you know, I have to say, I'm more surprised at how positive people have been for the most part. And I think that just comes with being genuine and honest. But there— I mean, I don't know how much experience you have of the Israeli lobby in America. They show up at my readings, and there are people who were there when this woman attacked me and said my dad was anti-Semitic, and then this Israeli woman said, Palestine never existed! And they're like— but they're few and far between. And I have to say, it's almost— it's a testament to my father's actual work and how it's affected the world that people are not as— I mean, they were— he had a lot of— I mean, he was more political than I was in a certain sense, but the world has changed in a certain regard, and that's kind of amazing. I go to colleges and the kids are really— What do they say? When I was in school, if you were not pro-Israel, you didn't go to school. You shut your face and went somewhere else. And now they're all wearing keffiyehs, and the kids are asking me, my grandmother really loves Israel, and I don't. So I'm really uncomfortable. What should I do? And so that's the one thing that sort of makes me hopeful about the future. Sometimes Pieces of this or my play are taken out of context, and the irony doesn't come across, so they think I'm like a spoiled rich girl who's like complaining about my fancy shoes in Gaza. And I'm like, well, if you take it out of context, I'm gonna sound awful. But if you actually read it or experience the play or experience that I'm saying what I'm saying and I'm constantly aware of certain things, Then you won't— I mean, I have to say I'm a little disappointed. But that's the funny thing, too. Like, they wrote an article about me for the Princeton alumni magazine, and the guy who did it was so nervous. He's like, I think they gave me this assignment because the last one I had didn't get any mail, and I complained about it, so they gave me this because it's going to be so controversial. He kept saying it was going to be controversial.

Vijay Prashad: Hmm.

Najla Said: Not one letter was written.

Vijay Prashad: Not one.

Najla Said: And I kept being like, why do you think I'm controversial? Well, because your father. I'm like, because my father what? And, you know, because he was Palestinian? And I mean, people— I think, and this is something that actually I learned from watching him, people, even my friends and their parents would say, I don't agree with anything he says, but I respect him. And I've kind of gotten that too. And again, that goes back to I think that there's something about the way you present yourself and how you— I don't know. There's so many other layers. But in terms of what I'm going to write, I don't know. I can't even believe I wrote one book. I really just want to be an actress. But I don't know.

Vijay Prashad: There's always a sequel. 1, 2— why don't we take both the questions and start to come towards the book signing I'd like to digress a bit. I'd like to digress a bit. Your late father had a pet peeve. There is a dearth of institutes or centers in the Middle East among Arab countries for the study of Jewish studies or Israel. Reading Kassar brings to mind the fact that AUB doesn't have one. Could you put in a plug with the powers that be for that?

Najla Said: Sure.

Vijay Prashad: I think your father was— your late father was good, was right in that.

Najla Said: I agree with that. I think that that's an interesting point. I'll leave it at that.

Vijay Prashad: He studied everything, but he didn't study us inside out.

Najla Said: I know, but I'm—

Vijay Prashad: He's the boss that needs to be back there.

Adam Waterman: I know.

Najla Said: I know.

Vijay Prashad: Going, me? I'm the boss that needs to be back there.

Najla Said: Kareem, get on it. Kareem's like, what?

Vijay Prashad: There's one more back there.

Najla Said: I'm sorry. No, I think also, but he said that one of my father's pet peeves and things that he was upset about was the lack of Jewish studies programs in the Middle East and Arab countries. And he said that I should put in a word with the powers that be here at CAESAR about that. But I did want to just say one thing about that, was growing up the way I did, I knew nothing about Christianity from school. I knew only— because they were working so hard at my schools to not offend the Jews, that I know the entire Old Testament backwards and forwards. I can explain to you what the apples and honey signify in Rosh Hashanah, the cookies, the—

Vijay Prashad: Yeah.

Najla Said: I'm like, you know, I know when it was the Persians who were persecuting us, when it was the Egyptians, when— I know the whole everything Jewish. I know the whole story. But in terms of my own or any other story, I never learned it in school. But I think that that's also why I was able to— that my father was and I am able to engage with people and have them listen is because we I'm very well educated on their body of—

Vijay Prashad: And season's greetings.

Najla Said: Season's— oh, my dad used to be so mad.

Vijay Prashad: Season's greetings.

Najla Said: He would go, ah, Merry Christmas!

Vijay Prashad: Season's greetings to you all.

Najla Said: Yes, please. He gets so mad. Okay, I'm interested— hi. Hi. —in learning more, actually, about how you lived Palestinian-ness on the one hand and Arab-American-ness on the other, or together. Were they competing identities for you in terms of the context that you had to face, or is there any other framework that you could use? The thing about it is— thank you. What was difficult for me was I grew up in the '80s in America, and my mother was Lebanese. I didn't even— we didn't even go there with Palestinian. I didn't have time for that. My mom was from Beirut, and I really had to deal with the fact that that was bad. 'Cause it was 1980-whatever, and I was 6. So that was the first thing. And then when the war ended here, Lebanese suddenly became, oh, you're Lebanese. The Lebanese are— they're wonderful. They're bankers. They dress well. They speak French. They're not Arabs. And then I became more like, okay, I better talk— then it became— Palestinian became, oh, those are the terrorists, because the Intifada by that point had started.

Vijay Prashad: And like—

Najla Said: So, for me, there was that dichotomy as well. And also, my father is part Lebanese, which a lot of people don't feel comfortable— they're like, nobody ever say he's Palestinian. And I'm like, yeah, but his mom was half Lebanese. I'm just saying, it's not like I— but so then there's this whole thing with that in America, with the Arab-American identity between the— a lot of— I know a lot of Palestinian Americans have thought that I say I'm Lebanese because I They don't actually know that my mother is Lebanese. And when I say that my mother, you know, I've spent more time in Lebanon, they think that I'm just saying, I'm Palestinian, but my family is from Lebanon, and I— because I'm trying not to be Palestinian. And part of the reason I say that I'm Lebanese is because my mother is Lebanese, and I don't think that that's something that should be. So there's that layer of it. And then there's the layer of the The hyphenation, which I think is the biggest mess ever. Because in America, it's just the constant— what is an Arab-American? I was never an Arab-American until September 11th, and now I'm an Arab-American. And I don't identify as an Arab-American. I mean, I have Arab roots, and I have Arab family, and my mother is an Arab, and I am an Arab, and my family speaks Arabic, and I'm here in Lebanon. But I— I'm not Arab-American. And Palestinian, yes, but the hyphenate thing, the mush thing that they try to do, that's not something I identify with. So that's for me, and it's something I think I will always struggle with. But I think that that's a huge issue in America itself, this assimilation thing where you're supposed to make up, you're supposed to become something else. Like, an Italian-American is not the same as an Italian American. Right.

Vijay Prashad: But why should you struggle with that? I mean, that's not even your issue.

Adam Waterman: I actually—

Vijay Prashad: Like, why should you let somebody set the terms of something, a dilemma?

Najla Said: Well, I think that that's what I've discovered in this process, is I think I set out to find out what the answer was, and I don't think there is an answer. I mean, if a friend of mine who has basically had the same upbringing I had, more or less, wants to identify as Native American, that's fine, but that doesn't I mean, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna be comfortable saying that I'm Arab American if that's not what I feel as though I am. I mean, you know, I'm a human— I don't know. I always say I'm a human being. I don't— I mean, the one— the strongest identity I have is being a New Yorker.

Vijay Prashad: But you said earlier something interesting just now. You said that, I became an Arab American after 9/11.

Najla Said: Oh, that I became labeled. Yes.

Vijay Prashad: But also, I mean, that becomes— you know, it's There's an Arab-American family there.

Najla Said: Yes.

Vijay Prashad: But it's also a political idea after 9/11 to say, you know, we are Arabs in America, something like that.

Najla Said: Yes. Well, it's like you want to identify. I brought this up today in the class. We used to talk about this a lot when we were working on our play about being Arab in America, this Amin Maalouf book that's called— I don't know what it's called in French, but it's called in English In the Name of Identity, Violence, and the Need to Belong, and I'm sure many of you read it, but if you haven't, he talks a lot about this identity question and how when the part of your identity— the part of your identity that's being attacked or that you feel is threatened is the one you cling to more. So, okay, they hate Muslims. Well, I'm Muslim, even though you've never been observant in your life. And I was saying how my sister-in-law, who's half Irish, half Palestinian, she always says she's Palestinian. I'm like, how come you never say you're Irish? She's like, It's like, 'cause the Irish are okay now, I need to defend the Palestinians. And so, you know, that's also— you do want to not deny it, because people are saying, those people, those bad people. And you're like, I'm one of those bad people. So it's this weird thing where you have to cling to it, but then you're like, but wait a minute, I don't really want you to see me as that. I want you to see me as a human being.

Vijay Prashad: Hmm.

Najla Said: And I think that what my parents actually raised me to do was be a I think that's a pretty good— Finish?

Vijay Prashad: No, no, also it's a pretty good thing for parents to want a child to become.

Adam Waterman: Yeah.

Vijay Prashad: A human being. Do we have one or two last, or should we— I think we may be ready to shake her hand, give her a hug, buy her book, let her sign it. So thank you so much for joining us this evening.

Najla Said: Thank you.

Vijay Prashad: Najwa Said. Well done. Well done.