VOICES
One War, Two Channels
A
YOUNG ARAB-AMERICAN KEEPS
ONE FINGER ON THE REMOTE
BY
RHONDA ROUMANI
Watching
the news at my parents’ house, in their Arab-styled living
room in Pasadena, California, isn’t easy these days. We have
two mammoth remote controls that we just can’t figure out.
Our mission: to switch between the satellite television that airs
al-Jazeera and American broadcast outlets like CNN and ABC. Switching
channels shouldn’t be so hard.
My parents installed satellite TV a few years ago so they could
tune into a popular Syrian soap. During the war in Iraq, however,
they found it hard to revel in nostalgia. By virtue of similar
experience, language, and culture, the Iraqi people are their
brethren, under a dictatorship similar to what they faced growing
up in Syria. Every night, with two remotes in hand, they flipped
between al-Jazeera and CNN, sometimes successfully, hoping to
get a sense of what was really happening on the ground.
When al-Jazeera first aired in the U.S., my father was ecstatic
that an independent Arab news outlet existed, one not overtly
run by a state. Al-Jazeera criticized the untouchables —
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. It brought on guests who debated
controversial topics and criticized government leaders. It challenged
both Arab governments and U.S. policies, something that my parents
and other Arab-Americans believe U.S.-based channels fail to do.
But Arab-American opinion about al-Jazeera has become more complex
and polarized in wartime. Detroit residents attacked an al-Jazeera
correspondent because they believed the network’s coverage
to be too anti-American. Meanwhile, other Arab-Americans believe
that the al-Jazeera offices in both Iraq and Afghanistan were
deliberately targeted by the U.S. military. Some even believe
al-Jazeera is in cahoots with the American and Israeli governments,
airing Osama bin Laden videos at moments beneficial to U.S. interests.
Still, even those who are critical of it continue to watch. It’s
one of the few news channels that show images of wounded Palestinians
and Iraqis. On al-Jazeera, at least, Arab life seems to matter.
I now live in New York, and al-Jazeera is no longer a daily staple
for me. I have to go to smoky shee-sha or hookah bars or to friends’
houses to watch the popular and controversial al-Jazeera.
The Egyptian Café in Astoria, Queens, is one such place.
Arab men — Egyptians, Palestinians, Yemenis, Syrians —
and occasionally women, visit the café after a long day
at work to sip mint tea, play backgammon, and smoke fruit-flavored
shee-shas. Lime-green and pink walls adorned with gold-framed
mirrors remind the visitor of Cairo. In the corner, a large, flat-screen
television blares al-Jazeera.
I visited the café on the day that the Iraqi regime seemed
to have fallen — when the statue of Saddam Hussein in al-Fardus
Square was toppled. On U.S. channels the statue’s fall was
shown all day long. On al-Jazeera, it was only a small part of
a big picture. The Arab channel conveyed the chaos of the streets,
broadcasting images of people both celebrating and looting. Al-Jazeera
even made sure to show a picture of an Iraqi man celebrating by
waving a picture of Dick Cheney. But it also showed the anguish
of Iraqi civilians: images from Basra of a wounded boy, his face
partially burned off.
In the café, a Somali woman with a red velvet hat and burgundy
wrap elegantly smoked her shee-sha, glancing occasionally at the
screen. When the soldier draped an American flag on the face of
the statue, she sighed. “I stopped watching this — it’s
so depressing,” she said, though she kept watching.
Nabil Mohamad, an architect who has been in the U.S. for twenty-five
years, announced that al-Jazeera is the only channel not influenced
by the supporters of Israel. “It tells you the truth and
it’s not controlled by the Jews, like the media here,”
he asserted. He watches the satellite channel at home every night.
“You can’t believe any station,” said another man,
an Egyptian archeologist named Hassan who works in a thrift shop
in Flushing and who said he watches all news outlets. “When
you watch al-Jazeera, you see what they do to the people, not
what the army is doing. Al-Jazeera shows the bad side of America.
CNN shows you the bad side of the Iraqi government. I watch CNN
— nobody gets killed. I watch al-Jazeera — it’s
like a tragedy.”
When I visit my parents back in Pasadena, I still struggle with
the two remotes, as I am struggling with the two worlds of al-Jazeera
and CNN. Hassan just might be right when he concludes that “something
is missing” from both of them.
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Rhonda Roumani
is a free-lance journalist in New York who has been working with
the Committee to Protect Journalists to track press freedom in Iraq.
