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“The Return” is a meditation on human condition, an exploration of the bonds of family.
In his poignant and deeply affecting memoir, “The Return,” Hisham Matar invites readers on a journey into the heart of his native Libya, a journey marked by love, loss, and the relentless pursuit of truth.
As the acclaimed author of “In the Country of Men,” Matar brings his exquisite storytelling prowess to bear on the exploration of his own family’s harrowing ordeal amid the turbulent political landscape of their homeland.
The narrative begins with a pivotal moment in Matar’s life, when at the tender age of nineteen, his world was shattered by the abduction of his father, a courageous man. The elder Matar’s disappearance cast a long shadow over the family, leaving them grappling with uncertainty and anguish.
Yet, amid the darkness, Matar clung to a flicker of hope, a stubborn belief that his father may yet be found. It is this unwavering hope that propels him forward, driving him to embark on a decades-long quest for answers.
Against the backdrop of upheaval and societal transformation, Matar chronicles his return to Libya, a homeland he once fled as a child. With his mother and wife by his side, he confronts the ghosts of his past and navigates the complexities of a country in flux.
Through evocative prose and piercing insight, Matar captures the essence of a nation on the cusp of profound change, grappling with the weight of its history and the promise of its future.
“The Return” transcends the confines of a mere memoir; it is a meditation on the human condition, an exploration of the enduring bonds of family and the resilience of the human spirit.
Nature of love and loss
Matar’s storytelling takes the readers to the heart of Libya, immersing them in its sights, sounds, and emotions. With each turn of the page, we are drawn deeper into the labyrinth of Matar’s inner world, as he grapples with questions of identity, belonging, and the nature of love and loss.
At its core, “The Return” is a testament to the power of storytelling to illuminate the darkest corners of our collective experience, offering solace, catharsis, and ultimately, redemption.
Matar paints a poignant portrait of the human spirit’s capacity to endure and find solace in the face of uncertainty. Beyond mere memoir, “The Return” stands as a testament to the strength of hope, offering inspiration to all who confront life’s tribulations.
source/content: gulfnews.com /ahmad nazir (headline edited)
Arab American filmmaker Ruby Malek is shining a spotlight on Saudi talent in the 10-episode docuseries “Herstory” which follows the journeys of Saudi’s modern-day female music stars.
“We were just fascinated by the amount of talent because a lot of these artists are self-taught. And, you know, there were no music schools that they went to. There wasn’t like a piano teacher that would teach these women,” said Malek to Arab News.
“A lot of these artists actually didn’t show their identity, didn’t show their faces, and weren’t really out there… We’re still talking about 2020 now, so it wasn’t like now in 2023.”
Chronicling these artists’ struggles, triumphs and their place in the cultural history of the Kingdom, the series blends the passion for music-infused storytelling Ruby honed making music videos and her skills as a documentarian.
“I’m the generation that grew up watching MTV, VH1, so I was very into the various reality shows, and that’s what I kind of fell into. I fell into creating reality shows and formats, and so went from music videos to reality shows, documentaries. And then one thing led to another,” said Malek.
Motivated by the positive changes of Saudi Vision 2030, Malek sought to showcase a side of Saudi Arabia that she had not seen in the West. With the series having opened doors for the creator, she’s excited to continue working in the Kingdom.
“I actually have been back to Saudi. I shot a show for Vice, and yes, I would definitely (work there again). I mean, as a producer, there’s so much potential and there’s so many stories to be told that I think I will be going there more often and very soon,” she said.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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Arab American filmmaker Ruby Malek is shining a spotlight on Saudi talent in the 10-episode docuseries “Herstory” which follows the journeys of Saudi’s modern-day female music stars.
Achieving success is no easy feat especially if you are working from the ground up. With passion and skill, a lot of people achieve self-made success. Today we are celebrating one such individual, Sudanese-American physician Iman Abuzeid who is the co-founder and CEO of a digital nurse hiring platform. She just nabbed a spot on Forbes’ ninth annual list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women and for good reason, with an impressive net worth of 350 million US dollars.
Being only one of two Arab women on the Forbes list, Abuzeid’s ranking is placing the Arab identity and voice at the forefront. Beyond that, the 38-year-old doctor is the only self-made millionaire on the list who earns money through the field of medicine on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women. She achieved her impressive ranking almost a year after her nurse-hiring start-up called Incredible Health was able to raise 80 million US dollars and that helped hike her company’s valuation to 1.65 billion US dollars.
Along with Abuzeid, many other prominent self-made women made it to the Forbes list including TV creator Shonda Rhimes and Insitro founder and CEO Daphne Koller. Also for the sixth consecutive year, the top spot went to building supply distributor Diane Hendricks. With all that being said, knowing the incredible work each of these women achieved acts as a beacon of inspiration for younger girls to follow in their footsteps.
Egyptian-American founder of Affectiva is on a mission to revolutionise the way we connect with our digital devices, and each other, by building in emotional intelligence.
The earliest memory that Rana El Kaliouby can conjure is of standing on a tiny blue plastic chair in a romper suit confidently declaring whatever was on her toddler mind at the time.
She is about three years old, revelling in her father’s attention as he dispenses tips – “look at the audience, enunciate your words” – and records the ramblings for posterity with the first commercially available home video camera.
These regular living room sessions led to El Kaliouby going on to give many accomplished public-speaking performances around the world as an artificial intelligence scientist and entrepreneur, most recently this month at the CogX Festival Deep Tech Summit in London.
Her big message after decades working in technology is that the final frontier lies at the point where AI can be immersed in emotional intelligence , or EI, to revolutionise the human-to-computer experience.
But it’s obvious that the first seeds of that life-fulfilling mission were sown more than 40 years ago in her childhood home in Kuwait where she was first encouraged to get to grips with ideas and machines.
“Our family is really big on education, the thing my parents invested in me and my sisters,” El Kaliouby, 45, tells The National.
“And because they were both in tech, we were always exposed to the latest and greatest gadgets. I was a big Atari game player,” she adds, laughing.
El Kaliouby looks back fondly on those clunky old VHS cassettes and hours the family spent playing Pac-Man as examples of the positive way in which electronic devices can bring loved ones together.
Less happy interactions with latter-day technology, however, brought about the realisation that something was missing – all the rich communication signals provided by non-verbal cues were being lost.
An enterprising mission
Her focus ever since has been on developing artificial intelligence that recognises facial expressions so that people can have better connections with their laptops, and, crucially, with each other.
Born in Egypt after her tech guru father, Ayman, met his future wife, Randa Sabry, on a university campus, it seems almost inevitable that El Kaliouby grew up to be a proud geek pursuing a career in computer science.
“It’s a cute story,” she says. “My dad was teaching COBOL programming, this obsolete language that nobody uses any more but was the programming language in the 70s.
“My mum, who was a business major, decided to explore this thing called computer science, and he was kind of interested in going out with her. She said, ‘I don’t do that. No dating allowed.’ And he was like: ‘Ok, then I’ll propose.’”
Soon after, the newlyweds moved to Kuwait, and her mother became one of the first female computer programmers in the Middle East, until having to flee when Saddam Hussein invaded.
Aiming for the stars
Next stop was Abu Dhabi, where El Kaliouby’s Muslim-Arab upbringing was conventional in many ways, bounded by “lots and lots” of rules that included not making any boy friends while at school.
“I always imagined walking around with a gold star on my forehead. I was a very nice, rule-abiding daughter. I stuck to the strict curfews. I never dated through high school or college and I think, by and large, I was always an A student.
“But, at the same time, it was very empowering. I have two younger sisters and the message was always: ‘You can do anything you want in the world.’”
She continued to meet these expectations into her early 20s, earning undergraduate and master’s degrees in Computer Science at the American University in Cairo, and marrying the founder of a start-up, Wael Amin.
Within a year, though, El Kaliouby was undertaking a PhD 5,000km away at Cambridge University despite both sets of parents saying: “Wait a second, you’re married now and you can’t leave.”
Amin, she says, deserves the credit for supporting her daring dream and agreeing to a long-distance relationship.
“It was really unheard of. I did break rules more as an adult as I explored my passions and my quest for being a researcher and an entrepreneur.
“That’s how I think I pushed the boundaries and definitely made my parents uncomfortable.”
And then? “I like the wording that my life went off the rails. I think that kind of encapsulates it.
“Cambridge opened my horizons. It’s like I discovered the world and it was hard to unlearn that.”
The enthusiasm for her life’s work comes across even through the medium of our Zoom interview, but it’s also clear that this was not an easy time.
El Kaliouby arrived in England a few days after the September 11, 2001 attack in America, a young Arab woman then wearing a hijab.
“I was visibly Muslim. My parents were very concerned about my safety.”
The perpetual smile she adopted by way of a peace offering was also something of a mask, hiding the loneliness and separation from those she loved.
Back then, the technological means for staying in contact across the distance was largely restricted to the kind of messaging that proved a barrier to expressing true feelings, making El Kaliouby all the more determined to humanise technology.
“My PhD was centred around building a machine with emotional artificial intelligence, and I recognised at the time that a lot of the ways I was communicating with my family back home, and especially my husband, was through chat.
“We didn’t have video communication and it was certainly very expensive to make phone calls so we would use texting.
“I often felt I could hide my emotions behind the machine. There were many days where I would be homesick or even in tears, but I’d never communicate that. The best I could do was send a sad face emoji.”
The personal hardships became a driving force for her work. In a career paved with “what if” moments, El Kaliouby began to ask: “What if we could teach technology to understand us in the same way that we understand each other?”
“It’s not even in the choice of words we use. It’s our vocal intonations, our facial expressions, our body posture – and all of that was just getting lost via digitally mediated communications.”
Life was about to take another decisive twist as she received an email that the scientist, inventor and entrepreneur Professor Rosalind Picard was coming to give a talk on campus.
El Kaliouby had long been an admirer of this trailblazing woman in an almost overwhelmingly male-led field, whose book on designing computers to recognise human emotions she read while still in Cairo.
Life-changing encounter
“I often say this is the moment that changed the trajectory of my life,” she says of Picard’s request to meet some of the students.
So impressed was Picard by this intense young woman that she offered El Kaliouby a post-doctorate place on the Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab before their first 20-minute conversation had ended.
“I remember thinking, ‘But I need to go back to Egypt. I have this husband waiting for me.’ And she basically said, ‘Just commute from Cairo. Show up whenever you want to.’’’
By then, El Kaliouby had a daughter, Jana, born in the UK, and a son, Adam, arrived in that other Cambridge in the US, but the constant round trips were becoming unsustainable.
“I was just doing that crazy back and forth. I would say it was OK until it went insanely chaotic when I started the company.”
The company was Affectiva, founded with Picard in 2009 with the goal of creating a commercial applications of emotion-sensing AI.
Growth was fast and it was an exciting time but there was another, darker side. “I was travelling so much, there was very little presence in anything I did,” El Kaliouby says.
Big lesson learnt
“I feel like I was out of balance. I didn’t make any time to sleep well. I would wake up at three in the morning almost every day and fire all these emails to my team. And so these poor people would wake up at six or seven in the morning with a whole slew of notes from me.
“I would go on vacation with my husband and my two young kids, and I’d just be on call all the time. There were zero boundaries, zero balance, and that was a big lesson learnt. There’s always time for self-care. There should always be time to spend with family and loved ones and friends. And, I didn’t do that, you know?”
By 2016, she was a divorced mother of two young children living full-time in America, and decided to bare that vulnerability in her role as chief executive of Affectiva.
Staff could see on El Kaliouby’s calendar that 3.30pm was demarcated to collect her son from school, and she explained to them that a Zumba class each Friday ensured a happier, healthier leader.
“I think it made for a much more authentic environment,” she says.
The family now lives in what El Kaliouby describes as a charming New England home filled with distinctive Middle Eastern touches and often by the aroma of molokhia soup made to her mother’s recipe.
Love for Egypt
“It’s very modern but with a lot of Egyptian things, Arab and Islamic inscriptions. I think of myself as Egyptian American, and very Egyptian in a lot of ways. I love Egypt. A lot of qualities – the Arab warmth, generosity and even intimacy – that’s very much who I am and I would say it’s the same for my kids.
“But I also have embraced what people would call American values. I’m very ambitious, very driven, very globally minded.”
That ambition and drive has taken her far. Affectiva is employed by brands in about 90 countries for market research, but also helps children with developmental difficulties, such as autism , to better interact with those around them.
More recently, the company has developed technology to make driving safer by enabling cars to detect if a motorist is becoming drowsy or distracted.
It was acquired in 2021 by the Swedish AI giant SmartEye for what was said to be about $73 million, with El Kaliouby becoming deputy chief executive.
She has long predicted that the day will come when all devices have an emotion chip and we won’t remember what it was like before screens could comprehend the meaning of us frowning at them.
“When we first started doing this work, we always said this will become ubiquitous and ingrained in every technology. Now, I think it’s more true than ever because AI is becoming a lot more conversational and perceptual.
“You can imagine that the final frontier is this emotional and social intelligence. Initially, my work was very much around human-to-computer interaction, making machines more intelligent, and how they communicate with humans.
“Now it’s back to the human connection. How are AI assistants and AI technologies going to make us better humans, especially better at connecting with each other?”
Along the way, she has learnt that daily affirmations are as integral to life as algorithms, and celebrating the small achievements, such as growing her own tulips, is as important as publishing a best-selling memoir, Girl Decoded.
Among the accolades amassed, El Kaliouby can cite becoming a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, being listed on the Forbes Top 50 Women in Tech, and receiving the Smithsonian Magazine’s American Ingenuity Award in Technology. Earlier this year, she was invited to ring the opening bell on New York’s Nasdaq exchange as a female pioneer in AI, and was recently made a 2023 Eisenhower Fellow.
None of this seems to have gone to her head, however, perhaps because her family does a good job of keeping her grounded.
When El Kaliouby gave a TED Talk some years ago, she explained that in emotion science all facial muscle movements are measured as action units with specific numbers for each.
Words from the wise
In a throwback to those early guided sessions in the family living room in Kuwait, the night before she walked on stage, her daughter Jana, 12 at the time, helpfully texted: “Good luck mummy!! I’m sure your gonna do awesome. Remember: don’t play with your hair, connect with audience, give them a present, gesture on words, gesture to emphasise.”
The response sent in live time was the old-school 🙂 emoticon but the algorithm that is El Kaliouby’s labour of love would have strongly detected action unit 12, the main component of, in this particular case, a very indulgent smile.
From her parting message to readers of The National, it is clear that she won’t rest until the technology responds just as accurately across the whole gamut of social and emotional states irrespective of people’s age, gender or ethnicity. Going forward, El Kaliouby insists, the watchword has to be inclusivity.
“I’m on this mission to diversify the face of AI. So it’s a call to action to get involved. It’s super exciting and we need a lot of diverse people being part of it.”
Three entrepreneurs share their stories as well as tips to succeed, regardless of background
Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell of iPod and Nest thermostat fame, and Taher Elgamal, the father of SSL technology, may be some of the most successful Arab Americans the global tech world has seen – but bit by bit, that picture is starting to change.
An emerging group of Arab-American women is increasingly taking up the tech mantle in a host of diverse fields.
A year spent in Kansas as a cultural exchange student at the age of 17 led to Morocco native Yasmine El Baggari feeling a profound need to help people connect.
“Most people [in Kansas] had never met someone from Morocco before. It felt like I was a cultural ambassador for Morocco at every opportunity,” she says.
The experience morphed into something more: a road trip to all 50 US states, during which she stayed with families and taught French and Arabic to get by, and later, a career that has seen her visit more than 45 countries – while securing a degree from Harvard University along the way.
All this led Ms El Baggari to found Voyaj, an online platform that fosters connections between people from diverse backgrounds in all corners of the globe.
“Once you build a human connection with someone, they’re more open to considering different perspectives … which is the basis of the work I continue to do: building and facilitating connections with people around the world,” she says.
Voyaj has collaborated with organisations to bring dozens of students from Africa to California for cultural exchange trips.
In March, Ms El Baggari raised more than $50,000 through a crowdfunding campaign involving more than 260 people from 40 countries to help fund the app.
Recently, Voyaj started working with non-profit Alight to help connect Afghan refugees recently arrived in Minnesota with local residents.
With the number of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa in the US doubling over the past 20 years to 1.2 million, Arab-American women are set to play an increasing role in the tech and entrepreneurial landscape.
But getting to the top is not easy – just ask serial achiever Sherien Youssef.
Born and raised in Cairo, she emigrated to the US aged 11.
“My parents gave up a lot in Egypt to come here. They were comfortable there, but wanted a better life for their children,” she says.
Now living in a suburb of Washington, Ms Youssef is a senior executive and vice president at CGI, a major IT and consulting multinational that employs more than 90,000 people in about 40 countries.
It has taken serious determination to get to where she is.
“Growing up, being Arab American and being a Muslim, it wasn’t easy to find a person that looked like me [in this industry],” she says.
“It wasn’t very prevalent in my field. When you come as an immigrant, you have a desire to be constantly working harder and proving yourself over and over again.”
Today, her professional life consists of speaking at conferences, working closely with chief executives at partner companies and mentoring staff.
Having raised a family, grown her career and secured an MBA, she says there is still room for change.
“This is still a male-dominated field. We don’t see as many women in the C suites in the IT field,” she says.
Health and wellness is another area Arab-American women are making inroads.
For 12 years, Megan Moslimani was a dedicated public servant, working as a lawyer for the city of Detroit and serving as a board member of the Detroit Bar Association.
But a trip to Los Angeles in 2016 made her realise health care and wellness were industries on the up, and that IV drip therapy could be a game-changer.
“We visited different medical spas for fun and to enjoy the luxury experience. I was impressed with the way you could feel instantly better and hydrated [from using the drips],” she says.
Last spring, Ms Moslimani, whose family arrived in the US from Lebanon in the early 19th century, and her colleague, Biane Bazzy, dove headfirst into their passion, opening the House of Drip & Wellness in Dearborn, Michigan.
American designer brings hijabs to the high street
Made popular by celebrities such as the Kardashians and Hailey Bieber, and appearing in popular TV shows such as Billions, restorative IV drip therapy is a way to get vitamins, electrolytes and other nutrients into the bloodstream quickly.
It is believed to help people recover more quickly from illnesses, jet lag, fatigue and other ailments.
“Clients feel results instantaneously as the drip directly enters the bloodstream, bypassing the digestive tract,” she says.
“People love instant gratification, and I knew all could benefit – athletes, tired mums, overworked professionals.”
Restorative IV drip therapy spas or “drip bars” are springing up in strip malls and neighbourhoods across the US. With the global wellness industry estimated to be worth about $1.5 trillion and expected to grow by 5 per cent to 10 per cent per year, IV drip therapy is set to become an important health recovery tool.
For Arab-American women thinking about starting out in the tech and entrepreneurial worlds, the trio have tips to share.
Ms Moslimani says it is important to be prepared to spend money on the right things to grow your business.
“Look for attorneys offering pro bono hours and get real business law advice,” she says.
Ms El Baggari says getting past the stigma of asking for help is essential to succeeding as an entrepreneur.
“Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need – if people say no, that’s OK,” she says. “You want a clear sense of mission. Understand your ‘why?’”
For Ms Youssef, investing in yourself is key, “whether it’s in degrees and certificates, or in networks”.
“Oftentimes it’s the relationships and connections that you make will be the reason that you get to the next step in your career,” she says.
Last spring, Megan Moslimani and a colleague launched the House of Drip & Wellness in Dearborn, Michigan. Photo: Megan Moslimani
Yasmine El Baggari is the founder of Voyaj, an online platform that fosters connections between people from diverse backgrounds. Photo: Yasmine El Baggari
For Sherien Youssef, investing in yourself is key, ‘whether it’s in degrees and certificates, or in networks’. Photo: Sherien Youssef
Syrian American Mayor Khairullah says Biden should end ‘racism’ against Muslims and Arabs
‘I don’t think it is fair to make a documentary to show that Cleopatra was Black. This is changing history,’ says Egyptologist Zahi Hawass
The Ray Hanania Radio Show, a weekly program sponsored by Arab News, kicked off its third season on Thursday with an explosive episode last night. It featured as its first guest Syrian American Mayor Mohamed T. Khairullah, who was controversially banned from the White House Eid celebration.
During his appearance on the show, Khairullah slammed President Joe Biden, saying it is his responsibility to end the “racism” and “discrimination” against Muslims and Arabs that is a part of the system.
The Ray Hanania Radio Show, which first aired in October 2020 ahead of the US elections at the time, hosts a wide array of guests tackling crucial topics in the Arab world.
One such topic tackled this season is the recent Netflix docuseries controversy surrounding the casting of Adele James, a Black actress, as Cleopatra, whom historians agree was of Greek origin.
The furor came from Egyptians and other Arabs accusing the producers of the film of appropriating their culture. The Ray Hanania Radio Show thus hosted world-renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass who set the facts straight.
“Cleopatra was a Macedonian…I really think that the reason this film is shown now (is) because some people want to say that the origins of Ancient Egypt were Black,” he said on the show, adding, “I don’t think it is fair to make a documentary to show that Cleopatra was Black. This is changing history.”
Continuing with the topic of Arab representation in Hollywood was Arab News’ very own Editor-in-Chief Faisal J. Abbas.
On the show, Abbas cited Arab American writer and academic Jack Shaheen and his book “Reel Bad Arabs,” which says that, out of 1,000 films, Arabs were only presented or portrayed positively in 12 percent of them.
“As Arabs, we should not wait for Hollywood, and we should not wait for people with Orientalist agendas to tell our story. We should be the masters of our own destiny, we should be the masters of our own storytelling,” Abbas said.
“I’ll tell you one more thing before we conclude. Actions speak louder than words.”
The Ray Hanania Radio Show is broadcast live on WNZK AM 690 Radio in Greater Detroit and on WDMV AM 700 in Washington D.C. every Wednesday at 5pm EST / 12am KSA, also available on all Arab News podcast channels.
The first in the ‘Arab News’ series focusing on contemporary Arab-American artists in honor of Arab-American Heritage Month .
Los Angeles-based artist Saj Issa was raised between two different worlds. As the child of Palestinian parents who fled the First Intifada in the Eighties, she grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent her summers in Palestine. “Each setting brought out a different part me,” she tells Arab News.
“At first, it took a minute for me to come to terms with that. I thought I wasn’t being authentic: The person that I was portraying myself as at school around my friends was different than the person I was portraying at home. But I realize that those are all parts of me. I don’t really see it as an issue so much now as I did when I was younger.”
Issa is an emerging visual artist, who obtained a Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of California and has had her work displayed in LA’s museums and art fairs. Her drive to create art began in childhood, marked by a tactile tendency to paint and make crafts.
“I grew up watching (creator of the US TV show “The Joy of Painting”) Bob Ross — America’s savior — and I was mimicking that action of holding a painting palette,” Issa recalls.
Her ceramic tile pieces juxtapose design elements that are omnipresent in both Eastern and Western cultures. She merges major Western company logos — such as Nike, Coca Cola, and Shell — with Middle Eastern geometrical and vegetal patterns.
“I’m interested in the consequences of globalization,” says Issa. “My choice of which brands make an appearance are based on which ones made a critical impact in the East. I utilize traditional tile work combined with corporate logos as a way to draw connections between the way that colonization seeps into the indigenous ways of life. Repetition is also a means to communicate habits of consumption, mass production and advertising.”
That geometrical ornamentation continues throughout her other series, such as “Convenience Store,” which was partly inspired by her immigrant father’s former job in a corner store. The series’ portraits of workers evoke a feeling of nostalgia and loss of identity in a quick-transaction environment; standing behind the counter, surrounded by daily items, the workers’ faces — or entire bodies — are obscured by receipts.
“I just want to build my own visual language through these mediums,” Issa says.
A longtime Wichita Falls physician has been honored with the International Surgical Volunteerism Award by the American College of Surgeons for his over 30 years of volunteer work with Physicians for Peace and others, according to the Wichita County Medical Society.
Dr. Eid B. Mustafa has been on at least 40 medical missions since 1988, including at least 25 with Physicians for Peace.
He has volunteered his surgical and medical expertise to help the people of the Palestinian West Bank, as well as other underserved areas of the Middle East, according to the ASC .
“Dr. Mustafa served as a leader, facilitator, and trusted advisor to Physicians for Peace for over 25 years since its founding in 1989,” according to the nonprofit organization providing education and training to health-care workers in under-resourced communities.
“He led numerous multi-specialty surgical training missions to the West Bank, and spearheaded a successful mission to Morocco in 2010,” according to an Oct. 10 statement from Physicians for Peace.
Mustafa, a plastic surgeon, received the International ACS/Pfizer Surgical Volunteerism Award at the ASC Clinical Congress Oct. 18 in San Diego.
The award recognizes surgeons who are committed to giving back to society by making significant contributions to surgical care through organized volunteer activities abroad.
Mustafa was born in the West Bank, received his medical education in Egypt and moved to the US to perform his residency and fellowship training in plastic and reconstructive surgery, according to the ACS.
After his training, he relocated to the medically underserved city of Wichita Falls where he was the only practicing plastic and reconstructive surgeon for many years, according to the ACS.
His international volunteerism began in earnest in 1987 when he met Dr. Charles Horton, founder of Physicians for Peace. Horton worked with Mustafa to initiate medical missions to the West Bank the following year.
For many years, Mustafa traveled to the West Bank for 10 to 21 days. His initial efforts focused on congenital defects, burn care and reconstruction from injury.
As his missionary work evolved, he recruited a multidisciplinary team aimed at the needs of each individual community, including specialists in urology, orthopedics, peripheral vascular surgery, off-pump cardiothoracic surgery, cardiology and physical therapy.
With the advent of minimally invasive surgery during this period, he arranged for equipment and education to be provided in the West Bank to accommodate the growing interest.
His trips provided preoperative care, interoperative teaching and postoperative care for the patients. The teams Mustafa developed have provided over 2,000 procedures.
Mustafa has been responsible for all logistics, including planning with the host country, setting up patient visits, acquiring visas, and making travel and lodging arrangements for his team and educational venues.
He has conscientiously provided for the safety of his volunteers in areas with significant personal security concerns.
Mustafa’s efforts have expanded beyond surgical services.
Recognizing the burgeoning need for care of the increasing diabetic population in the West Bank, Mustafa founded centers in Al-Bireh, Nablus and Hebron to deliver dietary information, preventative foot care, smoking cessation, neuropathy education and medication management.
These centers also offer education about the long-term effects of diabetes, including cardiovascular disease, kidney failure and ophthalmologic complications.
In addition, burn centers were established in Nablus and in Hebron due to the wartime thermal injuries seen in these areas.
These centers were not only equipped to take care of the burn injuries but provided education and training to the surgical staff, nurses and therapists.
In addition to educating U.S. medical students on the need for and realities of international surgical volunteerism, medical education is included in each of Mustafa’s mission trips, which are open and free to all who wish to attend.
These missionary conferences are coordinated with the Ministry of Health and often one of the local medical schools.
Subjects are chosen based on the needs of the medical communities and include topics such as trauma care, patient safety in the operating room, and complication assessment.
Mustafa also has been a diligent advocate and fundraiser for his medical services, gathering funds and resources from countries including the U.S., Germany, Kuwait and beyond.
He has been an international ambassador for the ACS, taking pride in his fellowship and advancing the ideals of the college.
Mustafa began teaching the principals of the Advanced Trauma Life Support® curriculum on the West Bank years ago at a time when political divisions prevented formal recognition and certification of the course.
According to Physicians for Peace, his deep commitment to trusted partnerships opened doors and ensured efficient delivery of services and materials in regions that were extremely difficult to access.
He carefully recruited team members based on experience and skill to ensure that a full cadre of medical professionals were ready to meet the needs on the ground.
“He would often include medical students in his programs, so the next generation of physicians would see firsthand the value of such service and gain a global perspective of healthcare and needs around the world,“ according to Physicians for Peace.
Mustafa, his wife Saba, and four children moved to Wichita Falls in 1982 and immediately became active in the Wichita County Medical Society and the local medical community.
He served on the WCMS Board for several years, then secretary/treasurer, president in 2000 and then past president.
He served on the editorial board of the Wichita Falls Medicine Magazine from 1985 to 1996 and the Medical Advisory Board of the Texas Rehabilitation Commission.
He served on the North Central Texas Medical Foundation Board that oversaw the Wichita Falls Family Practice Residency, the Family Health Center and Wilson Family Planning, for many years and as president for four years.
Mustafa has won numerous awards.
He was presented the 2009 Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor WCMS presents. Also, in 2009 he won the Texas Patients’ Choice Award for outstanding physicians.
Mustafa was honored with the Americanism Award by the Daughters of the American Revolution-Texas. It is given to naturalized citizens for outstanding contributions to the nation.
On the national level with Physicians for Peace, Eid Mustafa was presented the 2006 Presidents Award and, in 2013, the Medical Diplomat Award.
He has been very active in the National Arab American Medical Association, serving as president in 2007. In 2014, he received the NAAMA Outstanding Physician Award.
Mustafa has served on the board or as an officer on the Medical Advisory Board-American Near East Refugee Aid; Jerusalem Fund for Education & Community Development: Washington, DC; and the American Palestine Public Affairs Forum.
He also serves as a director for the International Women and Children Burn Foundation based in Virginia.
His medical missions have included the West Bank-Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem; Jerusalem; Amman, Jordan; and Beirut, Lebanon. He has been team leader for all the missions, traveling with teams of physicians and nurses.
Board Certified in Plastic Surgery, Mustafa practices medicine at 1201 Brook Ave at the Wichita Falls Plastic Surgery Center .
He also has added qualifications in surgery of the hand by the American Board of Plastic Surgery. He is a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, American College of Surgeons and the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Dr Eid B. Mustfa, center in this updated photo, was honored by the American College of Surgeons with the international Surgical Volunteerism Award. courtesy / Wichita County Medical Society.
In-person and virtual festival showcases films from Arab world and diaspora.
The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, will kick off the Arab Film Festival on Friday.
Home to one of the largest Arab-American communities in the country, some consider Dearborn to be the “Arab capital” of the US and the museum has been devoted to documenting, preserving and presenting the history, culture and contributions of the community since 2005.
The annual festival will run from August 12 to 21, with a line-up featuring comedy shorts and documentaries tackling America’s Israel bias.
“As a young Arab American myself, I never really saw my story, my family story reflected in the music I listened to or the films that I watched or the textbooks in my classroom,” said Dave Serio, curator of education at the museum.
“So our goal really is to kind of inspire Arab Americans to see their stories, their perspective, people that look like them, names that they might have, on the big screen.”
Beginning in 2005, it is one of the museum’s longest-running programmes and offers a range of windows into Arab cinematic creativity and storytelling.
One of the films in this year’s set is When Beirut Was Beirut from writer-director Alessandra El Chanti. The short is a “poetic hybrid documentary” that focuses on an imagined conversation between three famous buildings in the Lebanese capital and what they witnessed during the country’s civil war.
“I wonder what inanimate objects could say, because they also have stories, too,” Ms El Chanti, a Lebanese citizen who now lives in Doha, Qatar, told The National.
“I feel like we always go to Lebanon and we’re just passers-by — we recognise that there are war-torn buildings, you can see the bullet holes.
The film, which began production in 2020, was produced entirely over Zoom by an all-Lebanese team of six artists.
Many of the films at this year’s festival will be making their US or Michigan state debut, Mr Serio said.
Ms El Chanti hopes members of the Lebanese diaspora watching her film at the festival walk away feeling “there’s a lot that you should learn about your country that you don’t know about — it literally could be from the perspective of anything and everything”.
Yasmina Tawil, the director of film programming at the Arab Film and Media Institute — one of the festival’s sponsors — told The National that while Arab film festivals such as this are considered “niche” in the entertainment industry, they can build towards more inclusion in the mainstream.
“We’re not a Sundance, we’re not a Cannes.
“But when a distributor goes to pick up a film, [the festivals] will add to the credence and the hype of the film. And I would at least hope that distributors would look at that as a sign of one of their big audiences … already knows about and really likes the film enough to programme it in their festival.”
“They’ll get picked up for distribution in the Middle East, in Europe and then maybe not make it over here [to the US]. Or if a torrented copy does, it might not have English subtitles and things like that.”
She added that her institute’s mission is, in part, to serve as a “caretaker” for Arab films in America.
The museum has offered both virtual and in-person attendance options, opening its mission to viewers across state and national borders.
“The Arab-American community is ridiculously talented,” said Mr Serio. “And our film festival is just honoured to be able to showcase a fraction of the amazing work that the Arab-American community is working on.”
source/content: thenationalnews.com (edited)
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Poster for the 2022 Arab Film Festival at Dearborn, Michigan’s Arab American National Museum. All photos: Arab American National Museum
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris held a ceremony for the 18th edition of the Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture (SPAC), organised by the Sharjah Department of Culture in cooperation with UNESCO.
The Prize has been awarded to Dunya Mikhail, an American-Iraqi poet, and Helen Al Janabi, a Swedish actress of Syrian-Iraqi origin.
Sheikh Salem Khalid Abdullah Al Qasimi, Deputy Secretary of State for Heritage and Arts Sector, UAE’s Permanent Representative to the UNESCO, along with Professor Mohammed Ibrahim Al Qaseer, Director of Cultural Affairs at the Department, in addition to dignitaries, writers, intellectuals and members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the United Nations.
Ernesto Otuni Ramirez, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture, gave a speech in which he expressed his gratitude and appreciation to H.H. Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, and for his cultural and humanitarian renaissance role at the local, regional and global levels.
Afterwards, Abdullah bin Muhammad Al Owais, Chairman of the Sharjah Department of Culture, gave a speech in which he expressed his happiness at the continuation of the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture editions, appreciating the role of UNESCO in managing the prize and sponsoring many cultural programmes.
Al Owais and Ernesto Ramirez awarded the 18th Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture to Dunya Mikhail and Helen Al Janabi, in addition to honouring the winners of the 17th session.
