{"id":4411,"date":"2021-08-17T12:47:22","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T09:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ummforat.com\/?p=4411"},"modified":"2024-10-21T10:18:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T10:18:00","slug":"learning-about-mixed-love-from-the-loving-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ummforat.com\/en\/learning-about-mixed-love-from-the-loving-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning About Mixed Love from the Loving Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
Forat asked to watch a movie about a couple arrested for violating a ban on interracial marriage. I wondered what she understood about our family.<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
Falafel in the South<\/strong><\/p>\n
\u201cHada humus!\u201d Adam insisted. \u201cThat\u2019s humus!\u201d I was surprised to hear him speak Arabic, a language he abandoned in favor of English six weeks after our arrival in North Carolina for a sabbatical year. Only in bed sometimes, early in the morning, he speaks Arabic with his father, Osama, before he fully awakes and remembers where he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, habibi, I\u2019m making falafel,\u201d Osama said, pointing to the chickpeas in the food processor. At home, in the Ramallah area, I would buy falafel on weekends on my way back from a morning run, delighting the children with the brown paper bag filled with hot falafel balls. We hadn\u2019t eaten falafel since arriving in Raleigh, and Adam seemed to have forgotten what it is.<\/p>\n
His seven-year old sister Forat decided to explain: \u201cAdam!\u201d she screamed at him, her face close to his, \u201cFalafel!\u201d Adam stared at her, insulted, took a step backward, declared, \u201cHumus!\u201d and escaped to the children\u2019s room to build a lego tower.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least he didn\u2019t slam the door,\u201d Osama said, comparing Adam\u2019s three-year old anger with that of Forat. Lately, Forat has taken on behaviors characteristic of adolescents: teenage-level rage that explodes if we make a mistake in preparing her sandwich, proclamations that no one loves her and expressions of a deep wish to exchange her family members with improved versions. That child is growing up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIma, can we watch the movie about the people who weren\u2019t allowed to get married?\u201d Forat asked. She must have remembered the conversation we had driving through Virginia, about Mildred and Richard Loving, a Black woman and white man who fell in love in the 1950\u2019s in Caroline County, Virginia. Policemen broke into their bedroom and arrested them for violating a law in force at that time in all states in the Southern United States, outlawing marriage between Blacks and whites. The couple launched a legal battle that ultimately invalidated those laws.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not a movie for children,\u201d Osama said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the smell of falafel had filled the apartment. Adam came out of his room, searching for its source, and stared at the balls frying in the pan.<\/p>\n
\u201cFalafel!\u201d he yelled, smiling in recognition, and Osama, Forat and I burst into laughter.<\/p>\n
The Loving Family\u2019s Love<\/strong><\/p>\n
In the evening, we sat on the couch and watched the movie Forat had requested, \u201cLoving.\u201d The couple fled to Washington, D.C. to escape prison, but they snuck back into Virginia toward the end of Mildred\u2019s pregnancy so that Mildred could give birth close to her family, aided by her mother-in-law, who was a midwife. The white mother midwifed her Black daughter-in-law gently and expertly. But in response to her son\u2019s expression of thanks, she told him, \u201cYou should never have married her.\u201d<\/p>\n
The son was confused: \u201cI thought you liked her,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The mother didn\u2019t blink: \u201cI like a lot of people. You should have known better.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Forat was also confused. She asked me to pause the film. \u201cI thought the mother liked Mildred,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople aren\u2019t usually entirely racist or entirely not racist,\u201d I told Forat. \u201cThe mother liked Mildred but also thought that whites should marry whites.\u201d I searched Forat\u2019s face, trying to understand what she understood. One of the few things I conceal from her is the opposition that some members of my family members have to my relationship with Osama, a Palestinian refugee from a Muslim family that was forced out of Majdal, now part of the Israeli city of Ashkelon, in 1948. I was also confused to see that genuine affection for Osama did not change the racist views that some family members maintained about Arabs. The issue was even more confusing, because one relative \u2013 the one who told me that Arabs suckle hatred of Jews in their mother\u2019s milk \u2013 was himself an Arab who had fled his native Iraq together with the rest of the Iraqi Jewish community. Over the years, he learned to accept Osama and our children, who, as far as I know, suckled protein, fat and antibodies from my breasts, not hatred. Although that relative treats Osama with kindness and respect, he continues to make racist statements about Arabs. I worried about the day when Forat would understand that and ask me questions.<\/p>\nNature trail in Raleigh. Credit: Umm Forat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
I hoped our stay in the United States would open a window for Forat to realize that people evolve and are capable of change, also for the better. In North Carolina and throughout the Southern United States, there are attempts to grapple with the history of slavery and the present of racism. We see Black Lives Matter flags on our neighbors\u2019 lawns, read about the civil rights movement in Forat\u2019s textbooks and witness a lively public debate over school curricula that emphasize persistent structural racism in the United States.<\/p>\n
Toward the end of the movie, the camera zoomed in on the white mother, now a grandmother, playing with her mixed grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes she love the children?\u201d Forat asked me.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone loves the children,\u201d I told her, and that was true in our family as well.<\/p>\n
This post was also published on haaretz.com on August 18, 2021:<\/em><\/p>\n
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