Last weekend I offered to drive my sister across the border to Buffalo, where she needed to catch a flight. They stopped us at the border. I knew it was because of me. I was born in Syria and anyone born in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and a handful of other countries must stop and register with the border officials. Registration involves a long long list of questions, some so ridiculous that I don’t even know the answers to by heart, fingerprinting and a mug shot. Sounds familiar? Ya, sounds like what they do to criminals at police stations.

I want to make it clear that I don’t have a problem with security, I only have a problem with “homeland security” and the racial profiling its policies shamelessly call for. Just because I was born in Syria, I have to sit in a crowded waiting room for almost an hour and register with border officers every single time I enter and leave the United the States. I asked if there was anything I could do to avoid having to suffer this process every time I crossed the border and the officer said “ya, you could write a letter to some high official to get special permission, but he probably won’t give it to ya anyways.”

I don’t think keeping close tabs on everyone born in certain countries will prove an effective security measure. The fact that America’s homeland security policies are not rational leads me to think that they may be there simply to aggravate. Like, they’re trying to send some sort of subtle message: we don’t want you in our country. Except it didn’t feel so subtle. And if they don’t want me there, I don’t want to be there. My only conundrum is that too many people I love live in “the land of the brave and the home of the free”.

Have you had any border crossing dramas?

It’s been five years since the American led occupation of Iraq. Before this war began, I held on to remnants of the naive notion of western idealism that surrounded me when I was growing up. These ideas about the superiority of the west began to enter my consciousness while I was a young child in Syria, but they followed me when I moved to American and then Canada. I grew up believing that the west held up noble ideals, ideals they would never compromise, ideals that ensured basic human rights for each individual. I cringed at the thought of the fate of a man who ends up in a prison in the Middle East. Only in the west were people ensured the right to know the evidence against them, the right to counsel when detained, the right not to be tortured.

As I grew older and widened my circle of resources beyond the mainstream, my notions of western idealism melted into a puddle of disappointment. I watched a documentary about Guantanamo Bay, where Americans use another nation’s soil to commit crimes they know they can’t get away with on American soil. Although something tells me if they really wanted to get a way with it, they would have found a way. But it’s always easier to bloody someone else’s home. It makes it easier to walk away and leave the mess behind. Somehow, Americans can still feel clean as long as the blood isn’t staining their carpets. But it doesn’t matter where the crimes take place. Everyone knows who’s running the show.

The unbelievable crimes that took place in Abu Ghraib prison felt like salt rubbed into a wound. Although some people would like to argue that these crimes were an exception to the rule, I know that for every crime that leaks to the public, dozens more get swept under the rug.

Because I spent five years translating a prison memoir and because I’ve read many other prison memoirs, the torture methods used in Abu Ghraib stuck me as unique. Who but Americans would cook up such torture methods as forcing prisoners to engage in sexual acts and take photographs of them? And not only take photographs of the sexual acts, but also pose with the prisoners! This is a reflection of America’s sex obsessed society. You don’t get sex based torture in Egyptian, Syrian or Chinese prisons. You may find stories of rape but nothing as creative as what the Americas cooked up in Abu Ghraib.

In Egyptian prisons they may whip you to near death. In Syrian prisons they may throw you into solitary confinement with nothing but cockroaches and rats for company until you lose your sanity, but they won’t ask you to perform homosexual sex acts and take pictures of you.

Every society has its ill. I’m not saying anyone is better or worse. I’m just saying I’ve outgrown my naive notions of western idealism.

I worked at an elementary school for two years. I taught my favorite subject, English, to grade 5-8 students. I wish I knew then what I know now… We find ourselves saying this many times in our lives, but there’s so sense in that is there? Well, here’s why I felt like this for a few moments, until I comforted myself with the conviction that I did my absolute best during those two years and of course age brings wisdom and it’s useless to wish we had that wisdom before it was meant to enter our lives.

I used to assign my students lots and lots of homework as I scrambled not to fall behind in my goal to cover and hopefully exceed government set curricula. Yes, this presented a great challenge to me for several reasons. The number of students in each class was huge, up to 35 students in some classes. Resources were scarce. I’d rather not get into dreary detail here, but the point is I wanted a lot for my students and whatever I couldn’t cover in class ended up on the chalkboard under ‘homework due tomorrow’.

Now, I wasn’t the only teacher doing this. All the teachers in the school succumbed to the same temptation. Each grade had five or six different teachers and this left students will loads of homework every day. Often the kids would complain and I’d try to accommodate them. I’m not so sure how much accommodating the other teachers did though. I had the ‘softie’ reputation and the students always chose me as first target for nagging.

Four years later (2008), I come across an article about the negative effects of homework. Apparently, a union of teachers is working to abolish homework for primary school students. They argue that homework is causing students anxiety, stress and unhappiness. Students from underprivileged families suffer the worst of these effects. They often receive little or no help and support with homework and this only adds to the stress and anxieties of homework. It was this point that felt like a slap in the face… four years too late, but nonetheless it stung. In the school I used to teach, and I suspect in most other schools, it was the same group of children who didn’t do their homework on a regular basis. Yes, these kids were the ones who came from poor families, often with uneducated parents, mothers who were too busy cooking and cleaning for six or seven kids and fathers who were busy working two or three job to feed and house six or seven kids.

But that’s not the part that really stings. What pained me was how it was this same group of kids that ended up in detention (yes that was a common practice) often every single day for not completing homework and for misbehaving. Can you see the vicious cycle forming?

Disadvantaged student gets no help or support for homework –> student doesn’t do homework –> student gets detention –> student doesn’t get a recess break and has pent up energy and aggression –> student misbehaves –> more punishment and possibly extra work for being “bad” –> student doesn’t do homework –> student falls behind…

Let’s not even get into the fact that the majority of these disadvantaged students come from certain racial groups. Of course, the vicious cycle only perpetuates the racial problem.

My reflex to critique says… “well that’s life. The kids have to learn early on that life won’t give them breaks because they are poor or black or handicapped. They have to learn to work hard, to earn, to deserve.” Another part of me says, “no, we must not expose children to adult standards, to the realities of adult life, the harshness of the corporate world, and so on. We must nurture them in the environment most supportive of their growth and development. I do see room for debate in the homework controversy, but what I’ve learned is that teachers should think twice before assigning homework and handing out punishments for incomplete homework.

It may be four years too late for me to make a difference in the lives of the students I used to teach, but maybe one day I will get a second chance. For now, I hope many parents and educators will read this and find ways to put an end to this vicious cycle.

It’s been almost a year since I published Iraq: The Untold Tales and I haven’t written a creative thing since. I’m afraid my writing muscles will wither into old, frail, infantile things before they ever have a chance to reach adulthood. And thus you witness the birth of this humble blog : )

I may still be in my twenties (although not for long, not very long at all) but I have come across some ideas that have changed the way I think, behave, respond… ideas that have made me more productive, happier, better. Every Wednesday when you’re motivation for the week starts to sink and the weekend is still quite out of reach, I will post something to help you and me along in our journeys in small, tiny ways that will hopefully add up to equal a sum greater than its parts.

I hope my posts will make you wonder, question, examine, comprehend, and maybe after my words get into better shape, inspire. The truth is, the person I want to inspire most is me. I feel the desire to begin another writing project, but I can not seem to settle on a single subject. So, if you deem any of what you read here ‘writing project’ worthy, do let me know. See you next Wednesday.