Chapters and Cast
Prologue: September 15, 1963
EVENT: The Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
CHARACTER: Ed, a football player for the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide who has to navigate Dixie’s stringent racial mores.
Home: June 5, 1967
EVENT: The June Middle East War
CHARACTER: Luba, a teacher from Ramallah who now lives in Baltimore and watches upheavals in her homeland from afar while trying to raise her two young daughters in a new country.
Dissent: October 17, 1973
EVENT: The Arab Oil Embargo
CHARACTER: Alan, an outspoken Dearborn auto worker and community organizer who comes of age during the Detroit riots and the Vietnam War and then suffers on different levels the effects of the Arab Oil Embargo: as an auto worker; as a citizen of Motor City; and as a member of the racial group blamed for the energy crisis.
Driven: November 4, 1979
EVENT: The Hostage Crisis in Iran
CHARACTER: Muhammad, a refugee putting himself through school working full time as a hotel bellhop in Chicago, where he falls in love with the city and a golden-haired girl, at a time when hateful sentiments are on the rise after Americans are taken hostage in Iran.
Silenced: October 11, 1985
EVENT: The Bombing of the West Coast Offices of the ADC
CHARACTER: Norma, the mother of three young girls and the wife of a political advocate active in dialogue efforts between the Arab and American worlds who must bear the cost of her husband’s work.
Bound: December 8, 1985
EVENT: The First Intifada
CHARACTER: Omar, an awkward teenager in suburban Texas who cares more about meeting girls and hanging out than his Arab roots or politics, until he finds himself paying attention to the rising up of kids his age in the Occupied Territories.
Under Suspicion: January 16, 1991
EVENT: The First Gulf War
CHARACTER: The Nabulsi Family, who each in their own way discover during the First Gulf War that not so far beneath the veneer of warm civility in their small Midwestern town can lurk spiteful ignorance.
Coming Out: April 19, 1995
EVENT: The Oklahoma City Bombing
CHARACTER: Rabih, a man afraid to be gay in the Arab world and afraid to be Arab in America, who confronts both fears while living not far from the attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Courted: November 7, 2000
EVENT: The U.S. Presidential Election of 2000
CHARACTER: Maya and Randa, the two formidable women who find themselves working on opposite sides as both the Democrat and Republican candidates for U.S. President court Arab-American voters.
Beginnings: September 11, 2001
EVENT: The Al-Qaeda Attacks on the U.S.
CHARACTER: Ignace, a priest in Brooklyn who – while watching the Twin Towers collapse – prays in Arabic for the dying and who learns he has lost eight members of his own parish. Months later, a startling discovery is made.
Native Foreigner, Foreign Native: March 20, 2003
EVENT: The Second Gulf War
CHARACTER: Abraham, the U.S. Marine who enlisted after the attacks on 9/11 to go fight in Afghanistan and found himself instead in Iraq.
