Turath Organizes Weeklong Cultural Celebration, Complete With Hookah

Surrounded by plates of traditional goodies and a hookah full of sweet-smelling tobacco, members of Turath—Columbia’s Arab students’ organization—spent Monday afternoon behind a table on Low Plaza to publicize activities planned later this week for Arab-American Heritage Week.

Aimed at celebrating and raising campus awareness of Arab culture, this week’s events will include a panel discussion of business, an evening of free hookah, and various other events.

“We want to bring out a different aspect of Arab culture that people aren’t used to hearing about,” said former Turath Vice President Ranya Saadawi, BC ’08. “There’s more to life in the Middle East than what you see in the news.”

The week’s keynote event will come on Friday with the annual “Educating the Gap,” an evening that will include musical and dance performances and an appearance by noted comedian Mohamed Masoud.

Another highlight will be Thursday night’s “Hookah Under the Stars,” which organizer and Turath Vice President of Communications Baya Yantren, CC ’11, said she hoped will help students understand the connections between Columbia’s culture and the Middle East.

“We’re trying to have fun and meet new people,” Yantren said.

Since its inception in 1993, Turath has fluctuated in both size and activity level—variations members say are due both to campus demographics and to larger political situations.

“After Sept. 11, it drastically went down,” former President Khadijah Abdul-Nabi, BC ’08, said of the group’s membership. “But after the whole MEALAC [Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures department] controversy in 2003 or 2004, it picked back up.”

The MEALAC controversy arose when a number of students alleged that there was bias against pro-Israeli students in the department.

“I think nowadays, people are really getting involved,” President Ali Shafei, CC ’10, said. “They want to learn more.”

While Monday’s tabling was intended to be celebratory—“We were planning to play music,” Secretary Sherif Farrag, CC ’09, said—the gathering was made somber by its proximity to the reading of the names of the Iraq War dead, which began Monday morning and will continue on the sundial throughout the week as part of a weeklong antiwar event, “5 Years of Occupation: 5 Days of Action."

But Turath members said they welcomed the antiwar presence.

“We’re one of the groups cosponsoring it [the antiwar week of action],” Farrag said.

Members stressed the importance of Arab-American Heritage Week in a year marked by what Saadawi termed “tensions” surrounding, among other things, the controversial September visit of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“We’re a relatively new organization,” Saadawi said of Turath, “And just given all of the events that have happened this year, we wanted to end on a positive note.”

mary.kohlmann@columbiaspectator.com