IDENTITIES UNDER SIEGE

Two summers ago, I was visiting Israel and Egypt with Paul, my best friend from high school. Our El-Al flight from London disembarked in Jerusalem at 4 a.m. local time, and most of the passengers filtered through the line for Israeli nationals. We entered the foreign passport line along with 50 others. When the immigration agent saw a visa stamp in my U.S. passport, she asked me dryly, "You were in Pakistan?"

"Visiting family," I replied.

"Your parents live there?"

My hand started shaking. "Just my grandparents and some cousins. There was a wedding."

She stamped my passport and handed it back to me. She must have also pressed a hidden "panic" button, because soon, a stern man from Airport Security approached me. "May I see your passport, please?"

Thoughts of screwball comedy mix-ups flashed through my head: my Harvard ID picture was whisked off the Eliot House Web facebook and somehow landed in the Mossad terrorist files. Those thoughts, however, didn't amuse me. So I gave it to him.

"Why are you here?"

"I won this trip as a prize on a game show. On MTV. In America."

He started at me. "How long will you be here? Where are you staying? Do you know anybody in the country? What do you do for a living?"

I'm a student. At Harvard. In America."

"Are you traveling alone?"

I was glad I could finally answer "No" and show him Paul, my half-Jewish, half-Italian, all-American friend. But Paul was nowhere to be found, scouring through the baggage claim. I just stood there, scared.

Eventually, I found Paul and everything was straightened out. But as an American, coming from our culture of individual rights, I was offended by the fact that I, one among dozens of passengers, was pulled aside simply because of my last name and the way I looked. And for the first time in my life, someone saw me first and foremost as a Muslim, and doubted my legitimacy as a person because of it.

This August, following U.S. missile strikes in retaliation for the bombings of our embassies in Africa, cement barriers were placed around the Washington Monument to thwart potential carbombers. The gesture was lamented by many as the first step towards a much more guarded society. In such a society, whose rights would suffer most?

SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY?

Currently in theaters, The Siege, written and directed by Ed Zwick (Glory, Courage Under Fire) and starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening and Bruce Willis, paints a picture of a New York City brought to its knees by an unstoppable terrorist campaign. FBI anti-terrorist agent Anthony "Hub" Hubbard (Washington) must track down the terrorist cells with the aid of the questionably motivated CIA operative Elise Kraft (Bening). But the FBI investigation is unable to prevent the escalation of violence, so the President invokes the War Powers Act and imposes martial law upon New York, under General William Devereaux (Willis).

In scenes reminiscent both of Japanese internment in California during World War II and of the Nazi's seizure of Jews during the Holocaust, Devereaux rounds up all Arab men in Brooklyn and turns Yankee Stadium into a concentration camp. Eventually, the conflict between the public's civil rights and the nation's security comes to a head, with Hubbard and Kraft working against Devereaux to find the terrorist threat.

During the tenth week of filming, representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) approached Zwick and his producers with their concerns about the portrayal of Muslims and Arabs in the film. "Very few" of those objections were incorporated, Zwick said in a phone interview. He did remove references of "the mosque as a site of [terrorist activity], because that [was] the kind of potentially inflammatory thing that I didn't want to do. But, some of their suggestions were preposterous, such as changing the antagonist to be a group of domestic militia. 'Thank you very much, but not only have we already shot the movie, but you can make that movie, that's not the movie I'm making.'"

Zwick had been inspired by the World Trade Center bombings and he wanted to explore "the way that societies have been affected in dealing with terrorism, both in terms of civil liberties and law enforcement." But how unlikely would it be for our government to turn its armed forces against its own citizens? "It would take either war or an emergency so great that it's like war [for civil liberties to be revoked]," explains Assistant Professor of Government Keith J. Bybee. "Maybe, maybe, a campaign of terrorism like the one that's depicted in the movie, where it's unstoppable. Maybe."

At the climax, Hubbard arrests Devereaux for the torture and murder of Tariq Husseni, an American citizen, and reads the general his Miranda rights. "There's a swelling of music and you feel like that's what America stands for, the rights that he's reading, that apply even to this American Caesar, [played by] Bruce Willis," Bybee suggests. "[These rights] have become soaked into our culture, part of what we think of as the guarantees of American freedom and what we stand for."

PILGRIM'S PRIDE?

But if Zwick intended his movie to explore the contradictions of an American culture "whose central founding myths involve liberty and tolerance," many Muslim- and Arab-Americans across the country feel it also perpetuates Hollywood's malignant portrayal of their religious and ethnic culture.

As a Muslim, a lover of film and television, and a sucker for military intrigue movies, I decided to see the movie for myself. To get a more objective perspective, I invited Ramy M. Adeeb '00 and Mustafa M. Siddiqui '00 to join me. Adeeb, a Christian, is from Egypt, and Siddiqui, a Muslim, lives in Houston; his family is originally from Pakistan.

As we watched the movie in the Sony Fresh Pond Cinema, my companions chuckled with annoyance at the parts they found offensive. In one scene, a Palestinian character makes much of a purported promise of 70 virgins awaiting a martyr in Heaven. Adeeb comments, "As a Christian Arab, I can observe potentially negative aspects of Muslims from a similar perspective as an American; [for example,] the '70 virgins' reference was unnecessary." Siddiqui agrees, "Judging by points where people laughed and `oohed,' it would have a largely negative impact."

Compared to past movies like True Lies and Executive Decision, Adeeb noted that this was "much less stereotypical," and for the first time, portrayed the existence of an everyday, unassuming, innocent Arab-American community.All the same, he cringed when Kraft had lineslike, "[Palestinians] seduce you with theirsuffering."

Mohamad M. Al-Ississ '99, president of theHarvard-Radcliffe Society of Arab Students, is aPalestinian refugee whose family has lived inJordan since the 40s, initially in a refugee camp."The movie should have paid more attention to why[the terrorists] are doing this," he says, and"should have focused more attention on thesubhuman living conditions in the camps, the feelof injustice and disappointment...You have to godown to the roots of the problem."

But most objections to the film come fromMuslims who feel that The Siege reinforcesthe public's association between Islamic practicesand terrorist activity. "The movie tried to getcloser to the substance of Islam, but in the end,"Siddiqui says, "it was quite flawed, unbalanced."Only terrorists speak of religious matters, andtwo imprisoned characters recite the seminalprayer from the Qur'an (the Muslim scripture)."The practicing Muslims were terrorists, anddespite the portrayal of families praying [duringmontage sequences of community life], the familiesweren't developed," he explains. "There was enoughsuspicion raised in the movie to make even thesefamilies suspect; there's nothing to say thatthese are good people."

But that's debatable: Frank Haddad (played byTony Shalhoub), Hubbard's FBI Lebanese-AmericanMuslim sidekick, is a very positive, humorous andhuman portrayal of the first major non-terroristMuslim character in a Hollywood movie. The mostpowerful moment in the film shows Haddad searchingthe internment center frantically for his 13year-old son, a natural-born American citizen,whom the Army seized from his own home duringtheir round-up. I put myself in his son's placeand imagined my father as Frank--both came to thiscountry 20 years ago, both became naturalizedcitizens and both made their careers in theservice of others. My eyes began to tear as Iimagined the anguish my own father would feelknowing that his son was locked behind achain-link fence simply because he wasn't born inAmerica.

But unlike my father, Frank Haddad was fullyassimilated into the mainstream. Scenes with himat a bar and playing football with his son makeclear that "the `good guy' has an Americanlifestyle," Al-Ississ says. "It's good to see thatindeed, Arabs can integrate into American society,but it also has the counter-effect of saying, tobe a good guy, you have to be fully integrated."Siddiqui argues that although Frank "did give [anAmerican audience] some sense of `Look how thereare good ones among them,' he wasn't developed asone of them [Muslims], only one of `us.'" Zwickadmits that despite the presence of this scene,"There may have been some unconscious attempt todescribe assimilation, acculturation."

THE AFTERMATH

In its first weekend, The Siegepremiered with box office receipts second only toAdam Sandler's The Waterboy. In its second,the film had dropped to fourth. Industry reviewshave been mixed, while many in the Muslim and Arabcommunity remain disappointed and vociferouslycritical. "I don't think you ever work expectingthe reaction, I think you just do the work thatyou do," Zwick says. "I think if you work with oneeye cast in anticipation of a particular response,it'll never get there. I think you just try to beas involved in the material and as honest as youcan be."

And what do I think? I enjoyed the movie. Thetense images of unpredictable terror scared me,the injustices angered me, Frank's plight movedme. I didn't sit through The Siege--I feltvery much a part of it. Zwick explains, "Movieshave taken on this role of being entirely toocomfortable and predictable...it's a verytranquil, almost soporific exercise. I don't thinkmovies have to be that way, I think they can beprovocative, and unsettling, and galvanizing, andupsetting. I don't necessarily think that bytalking about the possibilities of internment, orby talking about repression, that one galvanizesrepression, I think one galvanizes thought aboutrepression."

And thought about repression may help win the"battle for cultural perceptions," as Bybee callsit. "That's the message of the movie: that thereare some bad guys out there, but they're a fringe.We ought to be judged as individuals, and that asindividual Americans, every one of us--includingBruce Willis at the end--has rights."

When it comes to my identity, my life is onelong shopping period. Depending on when it'sconvenient, I'll play either into the mainstreamor the role of the outsider. My name isn't toohard to pronounce and my skin tone is merely"swarthy," so it's easy to pass as notparticularly "ethnic." Alternately, whendiscussion group announcements accusingly ask me"Why do all the black kids sit together in thecafeteria?" I answer to myself, "Well, at least myroommates have a 'colored man' like me eating withthem.'"

But I'm certain that I'm an American, and toquote Lee Greenwood, "At least I know I'm free."

For now.Press Release PhotosDirector Zwick with Washington