Inside Bay Area
from The San Mateo County Times
By Emily Fancher, STAFF WRITER
NABILA MANGO KNOWS that most Americans aren’t acquainted with the qanun, a 75-stringed zither used in Near Eastern music. Nor with the riqq, a small tambourine, nor the kaman, an Arabic violin. Most probably haven’t heard of Nimah Nawwab, the Saudi woman who writes poetry in English, or Rasheed Munji, a local Tunisian mime. That’s why Mango is so driven to bring the diversity of Arab arts and artists to the public through Zawaya, a nonprofit organization she co-founded two years ago.
“Zawaya” means “corners” in Arabic, Mango said, and its goal is to cover every niche of Arab art and culture abroad and in the Bay Area. The group grew out of Mango’s Arabic community choir, Aswat, and was founded after 9/11, partially to help ease tensions and dispel stereotypes through cultural exchange.
“One way to reach Americans is through cultural activities,” Mango, 61, said over a cup of mint-and-sage tea and a plate of dates in her living room. In San Mateo County, there are roughly 8,400 people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent, with 4,200 of those foreign-born, according to the 2000 census.
Matthew Shenoda, a lecturer at San Francisco State University who is familiar with Zawaya, said a surge in American interest in Arab culture after 9/11 has been positive but that, despite greater curiosity, greater understanding of Arab culture hasn’t always followed. Shenoda said art is perhaps the most important vehicle for Arabs wanting to reveal their humanity in a world that often discriminates against them.
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Zawaya celebrates art through annual events, such as bringing one writer from the Arab world to the United States for a speaking tour atlocal colleges, and the yearly Ramadan “Iftar” dinner for immigrants in San Francisco. It also hosts a monthly book club in a member’s home and sponsors occasional concerts of Aswat’s music and other traditional musicians, as well as a one-time photography class for children and mime performances in schools. The group is working on creating a play based on real-life experiences of local young people.
Board members range from a Lebanese calligrapher to a Palestinian fine artist to an Egyptian filmmaker. Mango, the group’s president, was born in Jaffa, Israel, but moved with her family to Jordan in 1948 with other Palestinian refugees. She came to the United States to study library science on a scholarship in 1955.
A former librarian of Arabic manuscripts at Harvard and other universities, she received a master’s degree in Islamic studies and did her doctoral work on paleography. After a stint selling computer parts with her then-husband, she returned to school in 1997 to get her master’s degree in counseling and now works with Arab and Muslim families, mostly recent immigrants, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.
“Most Americans don’t know the influence of Arab culture on Western culture,” Mango said. She said didn’t want her daughter, Bisan Shehadeh, 23, to be one of those Americans. So every year, they visit one Arab country together, and this year’s pick is Morocco.
“She gets to see the diversity of the Arab world, and this stereotyping is gone,” said Mango. “She says, ‘Wow, Egypt is so different from Jordan.'”