WORLD VIEWS
Crossing Cultural Divides
Word & Pictures by Kees DeMooy '01
As mistrust of the United States among Muslim countries
grows, the State Department has launched new educational programs
to foster better understanding between nations. During its inaugural
American Studies Institute at Washington College, 21 young Muslim
students learned about American history and culture, its founding
principles, and the distinction between American foreign policy
and the American people who, they discovered, are not so different
from themselves.
Mudassar Kazi and Omar Farook with the author.
Yasmin Sayed copies the inscription from one of the monuments
comprising the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.
Robert Duemling, who teaches American architecture at Washington
College, led the ASI students to a series of Washington's famed
monuments.
I'm leafing through my Dutch passport from more than twenty
years ago. Wellworn and full of entry stamps from distant places,
it reminds me of my youthful misadventures. On one of its last
pages is an indigo-colored tourist visa for India, issued long
ago in Stockholm during a bitterly cold, snowy day in January.
At the time, India  beckoned
me with promises of mystery and adventure, so with spending
money derived from the sale of my record collection, a few books
and my 1974 Scout, I prepared for an exciting trek through the
land of Gandhi, Tagore and Krishnamurti. It didn't happen. My
travel agency went belly-up on the day I was to depart, and
instead I ended up in San Francisco, a far cry from Delhi. In
the intervening years, I occasionally reminisced about my missed
opportunity, but believed that the likelihood of visiting the
subcontinent had died with that Swedish travel bureau back in
'82.
The chance to renew my lost connection with South Asia emerged
in December 2002, when, as part of my job as program manager
at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience,
director Ted Widmer, members of the Washington College administration
and I were approached by the U.S. Department of State with an
exciting proposition. Would we like to host 21 Muslim college
students from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India for a five week
pilot program on American democracy, history and culture? We
had to decide quickly: American embassies had already been notified
of the institute, and the selection process was under way. Without
much hesitation, we agreed to embark on what became the American
Studies Institute (ASI). The timeline was ridiculously short.
Funding was assured by the State Department, but we had no classrooms,
curriculum or teachers, and the institute was scheduled to start
within six months.
During the planning stages, many hurdles had to be overcome.
While Ted worked on the curriculum and readings, I zeroed in
on the mountain of logistical details. Each day of classes had
to be planned out in minute detail. Most of the students, I
was told, wanted vegetarian meals (definitely no pork), separate
prayer space, and segregated male and female dorms. The realities
of living in a post 9/11 world raised other concerns, such as
how to ease Muslim students through heightened airport security.
Fortunately, Washington College's able staff took care of food,
housing and security, while State Department and American embassy
officials in South Asia addressed the complicated travel and
visa arrangements. Three of  Washington
College's top students—Colleen Costello, Florin Ivan and
Brenna Schneider—were godsends, helping me in every way they
could, from sending out welcome packets to endless copying requests.
In meetings leading up to the institute, Ted and I discussed
other, more nebulous dilemmas. What could we hope to teach these
young adults in such a short period of a few weeks, and what
would we be forced to leave out? How do you teach democracy
to students from countries with varying success in democratic
government, countries with long histories of ethnic, religious
and political conflict? And how to portray America's own struggle
with democracy, especially in the areas of civil rights, globalism
and foreign policy? An honest approach made the most sense.
A blatantly one-sided view of American history would, at the
very least, be dishonest. After all, the courage to acknowledge
the past—both good and bad—is a challenging but essential feature
of an enduring democracy.
Many long hours and sleepless nights later, Ted and I, together
with a core group of faculty, designed a program with—we hoped—a
stimulating mix of academics and educational field trips designed
to enlighten our visitors about the United States, and provide
insight into those "truths we hold self-evident." A group of
talented Washington College professors was hired to lecture
on their areas of expertise: Melissa Deckman on the structure
of government and women's rights; Robert Fallaw on the Civil
War and slavery; Donald McColl on early American art; Andrew
Oros on American foreign policy; Dan Premo on terrorism; Tahir
Shad on U.S.-South Asian relations; and John Taylor on the criminal
justice system. An impressive array of outside speakers rounded
out the institute: Imam Bashar Arafat, Director of the Civilizations
Exchange and Cooperation Foundation, would lecture about Islam
in America; Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prizewinning biographer
of Martin Luther King, on the connections between King and Gandhi;
Robert Duemling, former diplomat and museum director, on American
architecture; Badi Foster, Executive Director and Lincoln Filene
Professor of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Tufts University,
on the issue of race in America; Townsend Hoopes, C.V. Starr
Senior Fellow and an expert on American foreign policy, on  U.S.-Middle
East relations; and Cynthia Schneider, former ambassador to
the Netherlands, on American cultural diplomacy. Assisting to
pull the entire program together was Charlotte Staelin, an historian
who specializes in South Asia.
As the arrival date for the students approached, I worked with
the ASI staff on small details that we hoped would make the
students feel at home. A classroom in Goldstein Hall was converted
into prayer space. Oriental rugs were borrowed from elsewhere
on campus, and the empty walls were decorated with Arabic gold-lettered
Qur'anic verses embroidered on black velvet. A poster of Mecca,
holy site of the annual pilgrimage for millions of Muslims,
completed the decor. The dorms were filled with colorful posters
and fabric, and Florin posted a picture of Chef from South Park
over the men's kitchen sink with the admonition, "Please clean
up after yourself."
With all of the preparations complete, the first flight of students
arrived at Baltimore/ Washington International Airport on June
29. Despite detailed questionnaires provided by the American
embassies in Dhaka, Karachi and Mumbai, and photos of some of
the students, there remained unanswered questions. How orthodox
were these Muslim students? How well would they get along with
each other? News stories heightened my concerns. The nuclear
arms race between India and Pakistan, a reported link between
Pakistani-backed insurgents and Al Qaeda, and the upsurge of
fundamentalism in all three nations were unsettling. Additionally,
American occupation troops in Afghanistan and Iraq angered Muslims
around the globe. How would we be perceived by our visitors?
With flight information provided by the State Department and
confirmed by each of the participants, we drove to BWI with
two College vans. Upon entering the arrivals area, I scanned
the monitors, but the anticipated flight was not listed anywhere!
I started to panic. Had the flight been cancelled? Or rerouted?
My questions at several airline counters yielded no solution
to the mystery of the vanished flight. Nevertheless, we stayed
at the gate and, precisely at the time listed in the itinerary,
a group of seven bleary-eyed young men and women walked towards
us from customs. Awkwardly waving our ASI placards, we smiled
and tentatively greeted them.
PHOTOS:
Nazia Izuddin and Ali Khan recite from the Qur'an at the ASI
farewell dinner, where the cultures of the students' home countries—
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan—were celebrated. Art history
professor Donald McColl discusses John Singleton Copley's "Watson
and the Shark" with ASI students at the National Gallery of
Art.
My vague, somewhat irrational preconceptions and nervousness
began to dissolve immediately. I was surprised by the Western
appearance of our foreign guests. Though two of the women were
dressed in colorful shalwar kameez, the rest of the group looked
like they had just walked off a typical American campus. Sumi,
a striking woman from Chittagong, sported bell-bottom jeans
and a faux-fur lined jean jacket. Despite warnings we'd heard
that Muslim women did not shake hands with men, the whole group
reached out to us without any hesitation. Their genuine smiles
and laughter disarmed me completely. Fluent English speakers,
they were delightfully helpful, bright and inquisitive.
Weary from their arduous journey across eleven time zones but
excited by their arrival in the U.S., the group piled into the
vans for the trip to Chestertown. Sazid Islam, a wiry, brash-talking
business major from Dhaka, settled into the passenger seat beside
me. Curious to see how much of my information about them was
accurate, I leaned over my seat to ask my passengers how many
of them were vegetarians. A few of the women nodded affirmatively,
but Sazid with a disgusted tone blurted out, "Vegetables? I
hate vegetables! I only eat meat!"
The following day we drove three vans to Dulles Airport for
the Pakistani and Indian delegates. The arrivals area was jammed
with several hundred people, and we eagerly scanned the security
doors each time they opened, waving our ASI signs at every lost-looking
young soul. After several hours, we accounted for all of our
very tired charges and headed home across the Chesapeake Bay.
I was excited and chattered on about the Bay Bridge, Kent Island
and its history, and a host of (what I thought were) significant
details that all foreign visitors ought to know, but was interrupted
when Akbar Ansari, a large, garrulous young man from Mumbai,
began to snore very loudly. He had put up a good show of  listening
attentively, but I saw his eyes rolling into the back of his
head several times and he finally succumbed. I glanced in the
rear view mirror and discovered that everyone else was similarly
asleep.
An impromptu game of cricket and several boisterous, late night
Taboo matches helped our South Asian visitors relax into their
new surroundings. Most of them made the transition to a strange
culture without a hitch, albeit with many phone calls and e-mails
to their friends and family. I received one e-mail from a concerned
father whose daughter was feeling homesick. "She likes Burger
King and Kentucky Fried Chicken," he instructed, and sure enough,
one visit to a local fast food joint cured her of her sadness.
For the rest, there were occasional grumbles about unfamiliar
foods in the dining hall, except when fried chicken was served.
Omer Chaudhary, an intense, fast-talking economics major from
Karachi, approached me to ask in a very serious tone, "Kees,
do you think we could have chicken every night?"
The first week of class began with a lecture on the founding
period by Ted Widmer aboard the Sultana, a reproduction 18th-century
schooner that yearly instructs thousands of schoolchildren about
history and the environment. During that leisurely voyage on
the Chester River, with all hands assisting with the raising
of sails and steering the vessel, some of the central questions
posed by the institute were touched upon: who were the people
that settled the American colonies, what ideas did they bring
with them, and how does their legacy endure and manifest itself
today?
In this and subsequent classes, it became apparent that this
was a highly intelligent and engaging group of young men and
women. They were shy at first, not being accustomed to Western-style
teaching with its emphasis on classroom interaction. But as
time went on, their initial hesitance dissolved and feisty,
freewheeling discussions erupted, not always on subject. Whether
they were studying the Bill of Rights or women's rights, the
war in Iraq and America's foreign policy frequently worked their
way into the discussion. Conversations between teachers, staff
and students frequently spilled into Goldstein's hallways after
class. The students' energy and excitement was an infectious
and stimulating feature for everyone associated with the institute.
Field trips highlighted each week's lessons, facilitated by
bus driver Larry Clark, a retired R&B disc jockey who became
a favorite of the group. The brand new National Constitution
Center in Philadelphia wowed the ASI participants with a Spielberg-worthy
presentation on the American Revolution and a fascinating array
of interactive museum displays. Favorite among these was the
opportunity, via computer and video technology, to be sworn
in as President of the United States. Zainab Ijaz, a Pakistani
economics student, thus became the first female president, her
digitized, color image projected with that of Chief Justice
Rehnquist on a large overhead video screen.
PHOTOS:
ASI participants in ethnic costume dance for guests at the farewell
dinner.
After our tour at the Constitution Center ended, I took the
group on a walking tour through Chinatown and decided that a
dim sum restaurant was a good choice for lunch. Forgetting that
pork is an ingredient in many Chinese dishes, I cheerily encouraged
everyone to sample whatever struck their fancy from the dishes
being offered. Big mistake. When one of the Indian men took
a bite out of a pork dumpling, he erupted in shock and anger.
Fortunately, the situation was quickly defused by the rest of
the students sitting at the victim's table by pointing out that
pork eaten by mistake is not considered a breach of Qur'anic
law. It is to the students' credit that later on, whenever there
was a question about where to eat, they laughingly said, "How
about Chinese?"
If pressed to describe their favorite field trip, most would
choose New York, the site of a highly memorable visit. Ted Widmer,
a former speechwriter in the Clinton White House, organized
a visit to Clinton's Harlem office. It was difficult to keep
a straight face as Ted told the students that the goal that
morning was to visit a "typical New York office building," especially
once Secret Service agents started to position themselves around
us while we waited outside. We were whisked through his office,
but all had the opportunity to shake the hand of the man who
had been hailed as a hero in South Asia during his second term
in office. The students were deeply impressed by the most striking
feature of his office, a framed, autographed photo of Gandhi
taken in 1953 that Clinton purchased on a visit to Australia.
One student summed up her experience by saying that "it was
undoubtedly the greatest surprise in my life."
Perhaps spurred by the Clinton visit, the State Department began
working behind the scenes to get our group admitted to a special
Fulbright award reception with Secretary of State Colin Powell.
During the last segment of the institute, a four-day whirlwind
tour of Washington's museums, monuments and government buildings,
we traveled to the main Department of State complex and, after
clearing security, walked through a maze of hallways to the
opulent Benjamin Franklin reception room, a grandly appointed
space with one of the finest collections of American furniture
and fine arts in the country. We mingled with an array of Pentagon
officials, foreign dignitaries and Fulbright recipients from
around the globe, sampled finger food from multi-tiered tables
of hors  d'oeuvres
and, during the awards ceremony, stood within several feet of
Powell while he delivered his remarks.
Less opulent, but certainly no less memorable for the students,
were the family dinner nights at homes in and around Chestertown.
In groups of three or four, students observed firsthand how
Americans live. A few in the local community went out of their
way and hosted the entire group. Helen Fritz, mother of the
Cultural Affairs Attaché who selected the participants from
Bangladesh, hosted a splendid reception featuring mint-laced
lemonade that garnered rave reviews, and later in the program,
invited us all to a buffet dinner complete with entertainment
by musician and storyteller Tom McHugh, a former Washington
College professor of education who mesmerized the group with
a humorous condensed history of early American music on guitar,
banjo and harmonica. Madhu Sidhu and her family, who produced
a smorgasbord of Indian dishes on two occasions, allowed their
hungry guests to take food home to savor the next day. For my
part, I invited all of the male participants, staff and a few
faculty to my tiny one-bedroom apartment for (what else?) chicken,
fried shrimp, rice and paratha, a Pakistani form of flat bread.
The preparation and cooking time far exceeded my expectations,
but thankfully I got a lot of help from two Indian students
who taught me the proper way to fry the paratha, while the rest
of the group learned how to throw a Frisbee within the confines
of a small town street.
The five weeks of seminars, field trips and cultural events
came to a close at a Dupont Square hotel in Washington. I was,
like everyone else, exhausted but elated with the outcome of
the institute. I had never worked harder, or been so deeply
rewarded. After just one month together, I felt like each of
these young men and women were now part of my family. Lasting
cross-border friendships were formed. One participant remarked
that "knowing the cultures of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India
at one time was the most astonishing and lovely experience."
As each group of students left the hotel for their flights home,
those remaining bid them a fond farewell with hugs, tears and
laughter. After her return to Pakistan, Lubna Sunawar summed
up her ASI experience to her father: "Baba, it was a dream in
which, like Alice, I found myself in a beautiful wonderland,
and the name of the wonderland was Washington College, Chestertown."
Now when I look at my passport, I'm not sad about my missed
opportunity from two decades ago. I'm excited with the knowledge
that one day soon I will be reunited with my South Asian friends.
Whether it is in Dhaka, Mumbai or Karachi, I can't wait to see
them, to shake their hands, and finally travel the lands I dreamed
of years ago.
Kees de Mooy '01, nicknamed "Daddy" by the ASI participants,
remains in e-mail contact with the students he shepherded through
their first American experience. For more information about
the American Studies Institute, including photos and media links,
visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu/asi/.
PHOTO:
ASI participants pause on the steps of the College's Custom
House, home of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American
Experience, for a snapshot during their whirlwind tour of American
cities. |
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