On this day, as always, the newspaper is folded and free at the entrance to the many Middle Eastern restaurants that line the avenues east and west of Detroit. The Arab American News. Catch it, sit on skai benches, order ogdat, a delicious Yemeni stew, or lentil soup when the cold sets in, flip through the local and distant news, under the all-too-white glow of neon lights, all part of the tastes and habits of the capital of Michigan and its surroundings.
The largest Arab and Muslim community in the United States lives here. Where American invasions and wars have taken place more or less directly in the Middle East over the past forty years, Lebanese, Palestinians, Yemenis, Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians have come to revive rust and abandonment where the once emblematic lands of Henry Ford went under.
At the beginning of November, a month has passed since the bloody attack and hostage-taking by Hamas in Israel. The intense Israeli bombing of Gaza is plunging many Palestinian-American families into fear and then, increasingly, grief.
A weapon of choice
Tens of thousands of people have been injured and died there, so much so that one day it will be their brother, daughter or cousin who will be affected. Killed by an army largely equipped and funded by the United States. The front page of Arab American News reads the slogan: “Abandon Biden.” A year before the presidential election, anger has become an electoral weapon.
Read also the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers Hundred days of war in Gaza: a terrible toll and no prospect of an end to the crisis
But if you read from right to left and in Arabic, you flip the newspaper in the other direction and come across another “headline”: a photo of the ruins of Gaza, under the headline simply “No respite.” Netanyahu rejects a ceasefire.” The Arab American News is ambiguous. Written in two alphabets. Talk to both those who vote and those who don't. To those who immerse themselves in American society and to those who remain closer to its traditions. For those who watch American channels and for those who listen to the stories of Arabic channels, Al-Jazeera or Al-Mayadeen.
Your readers don't necessarily understand the other side of the newspaper. In the middle, page 14, the two languages come together. “It is the only place where Arabic and English meet. Otherwise they never meet,” explains Osama Siblani with a smile.
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