In 1856, Haji Ali, one of the first registered immigrants from the Middle East to the United States, was recruited by American soldiers and taken to Indianola, along the coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi, to lead a herd of camels along the unforgiving trails. West. He traveled with Navy Lieutenant Edward Beal across New Mexico to California on a project dubbed the United States Camel Corps, an effort that was eventually abandoned, but not before the duo made progress that became part of the iconic route. 66. Ali, often depicted in Western attire, spent the rest of his life in the United States.

Leith Majali, a Jordanian photographer based in Los Angeles, told me that he was drawn to this man who was pulled out of the Arabic-speaking world into the “deserts of America” ​​to help with the nation’s westward expansion. Majali, whose photo series “In the Footsteps of Welcome” chronicles this journey through the American Southwest, said Ali’s experience of traveling the unknown echoes his own immigration story. And this is the one in which I see my own reflections.

Like Ali, who is commonly referred to as “Hi Jolly” because it was easier for Americans to pronounce, my name also took on a blurry pronunciation; “Saliha” sounds closer to “Selena” than its original Arabic sound when it comes from the language of a native English speaker. I grew up in Massachusetts, where my Muslim and Turkish identity was not always well received; When I started wearing the hijab in middle school, I took on nicknames like “towelhead” without much resistance. When I moved to Texas last summer, I expected to have to hide parts of myself again; the myth of the state as a Wild West hostile to outsiders persists in the Northeast.

Part of that perception is justified: Gov. Greg Abbott has long opposed the resettlement of refugees in Texas, especially Syrian refugees following the 2015 Paris terror attacks, and announced in 2020 that the state would end its resettlement program. (Despite this, Texas still receives more refugees than any other US state.) Growing up, I knew Texas only from election maps, like a red sea with little blue spots. I expected to meet conservative small-town Texans unfamiliar with my culture; I was afraid that they would hate people like me. False narratives fueled by Orientalism have long been perpetuated about people of Middle Eastern origin: that we are backward, barbaric, and unable to fit into American society. But I also internalized erroneous stereotypes about Texans, and it wasn’t until I lived there that I discovered the long history of Middle Eastern influences in this vast—and extremely diverse—state.

Ali’s ethnicity is has been discussed, but he was most likely a Bedouin from the Ottoman Empire, although he was not the first person from the Middle East or the North African region to come to the Americas. This was Mustafa Zemmuri, or “Estewaniko”, a Moroccan Berber slave who was part of the ill-fated Spanish expedition that washed up on the shores of present-day Galveston Island in 1528. Centuries later, between 1870 and 1930, approximately 300,000 people emigrated. from the area of ​​”Greater Syria”, which includes modern Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, and about 1600 people eventually settled in Texas. By 1920, there were over 3,200 Arabic-speaking immigrants and their families living in Texas.

It was during this time that Fred Kadane, a Syrian immigrant, and his brother George arrived in Denison, along the present-day Oklahoma-Texas border, from his original point of arrival in New York, to invest in the oil industry. He wrote that he was appalled by the “small Texas town” scene with cowboys, saloons, gambling houses, Texas slang, and wild horses. Initially resilient to this new environment, Kadane fell in love with Texas, succeeding in several business ventures and putting down roots. Yet hostility persisted; early immigrants from Greater Syria were considered non-white and faced attacks and discrimination. In 1922, Kadane lost the grocery store he had opened in Wichita Falls to the Ku Klux Klan, who forced him to sell groceries for one-fourteenth of their value.

From the news of the time, it is clear that the Syrian community in the United States was firmly convinced that they could be proud of their heritage and leave their mark on the once unfamiliar American soil. “But we Syrians, and those of other races other than the so-called Nordics, want to prove that we are a valuable element in the American nation,” wrote Sallum A. Mokarzel, editor of the New York: based on Syrian worldin 1928, when Syrian clubs were born in Texas and across the country.

This early influence of immigrants from the Middle East to the American Southwest is still evident when you look closely. Samaan Ashrawi grew up in the nineties in Cypress, which at the time was a small suburb of Houston that included farmland, stables and pickup trucks. This is the city where a stray cow literally crashed the school party that Ashrawi attended in high school. It is therefore not surprising that Ashrawi, a proud Palestinian, poses as an “Arab cowboy”.

When I ask Ashrawi, the narrator (and Texas Monthly contributor) with a love for writing music, where he believes Palestinian and Arab cultures intersect with those of the American Southwest, he points to music. Many of the musical scales found in blues and jazz are influenced by Arabic music, a crossover deriving from folk music created by early enslaved Africans brought to America from Muslim nations. Ashrawi himself produced the blues classic “Baby, Please Don’t Go”, in which Cam Franklin’s vocals over Karim Samara’s oud instrumental create a solidarity track.

During my stay in the state capital, I frequented the Arab Cowboy hookah joint owned by a “Tunisian boy” and a “Kansas girl.”“. On my last day in Austin, I finally stopped by. The place was frequented by Ashrawi during his time at the University of Texas, sometimes for study and sometimes just for hookah smoking. During my visit, I passed through a cloud of smoke, a scene and a smell that unmistakably reminded me of Turkey. A young woman in a blue hijab worked at a laptop, while couples in casual clothes sat hunched over on sofas and talked.

In and around Austin, I saw the influence of the Middle Eastern diaspora everywhere. The Lebanese-American Antone family has made their mark in and around downtown with the Antone Nightclub, Antone Music Store and their grinders. Tacos al pastor, a mix of Lebanese shepherd influences in Mexico, is a dish I’ve seen everywhere. And across the state, restaurants serving classic Southern dishes, such as Ricky’s Hot Chicken in Dallas, have opted to use halal meat to make their meals more accessible to the Middle Eastern Muslim community.

I never felt out of place in Texas. The assumption I came with – that the South is hostile and the Northeast is tolerant – does not reflect my reality.

This idea was partly born out of a restrictive two-party political system that pits people with seemingly irreconcilable differences against each other. Dr. Husam Omar, who has been researching immigrant entrepreneurs in Laredo for many years as a visiting professor at Texas A&M International University, noted that regional and individual relationships in Texas vary greatly. He told me that the Arab Americans in Laredo, where many of these early Syrian immigrants settled, now play a respected role in society as business leaders, lawyers and politicians. But in some places, the outward manifestation of Middle Eastern culture is still met with hostility. To curb this, we must stop “politicians who profit from dissension,” Omar told me. “It’s like a storm that’s gathering strength.”

Despite this storm, there is a real sense of solidarity among the people of many parts of the state, even in some rural areas of Texas. Amarillo, for example, is home to the Tri-State Rodeo and the Big Texan Steak Ranch, and boasts the burgeoning Amarillo Islamic Center. The city of 200,000 mostly whites and Christians has taken in refugees from countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Myanmar and, most recently, Afghanistan. It now has the highest density of refugees per capita in the state, with 256 refugees for every 100,000 residents in 2014. Paul Harpol, who was mayor of the city from 2011 to 2017, expressed his support for the refugees as well as his concerns. that the tributary had overwhelmed the city, a view shared by many Amarillos. But Ginger Nelson, the current mayor of Amarillo, maintains a positive attitude towards the new arrivals, and many residents have welcomed them with open arms. Amarillo-based nonprofits such as Texas Panhandle Catholic Charities help relocate and house thousands of people in the small town.

Although some Texans continue to come to terms with this, we are not strangers in disagreement, but people with a shared history who have triumphed over strangers before. I returned to Massachusetts with a pair of old cowboy boots and a new understanding of Texas – the culture of the American Southwest is quite compatible with my Middle Eastern heritage and does not require compromise.