LOOKING FOR ANTONIO BISHELLANY

The official records show that Antonio Bishellany was the first Arab to have migrated to the United States. Antonio was influenced by Protestant missionary activities in his native Lebanon. He came to America to continue his education and put into practice his religious mission and zeal. Sadly, he died within two years of his arrival in 1856 at the age of 29 and was buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Greenwood Cemetery is located along the East River, offering stunning vistas of Manhattan’s skyline, including the financial district, Wall Street and the void where the Twin Towers stood before they were destroyed on 9/11. Not too far away was the now defunct quarter known as Little Syria. This is where the first Arab immigrants lived before moving to the Atlantic Avenue neighborhood in Brooklyn and beyond. Many of the first-generation Arab immigrants are buried in this predominantly Christian cemetery. Bishellany's gravestone is one of the oldest, considerably weathered by time and the elements. The English narration and accompanying Arabic voice in this videocast come from a pioneering book on Syrians in America published by the distinguished scholar Philip K. Hitti in 1919. The book recounts the author’s search and elated discovery of Antonio Bishellany’s grave erected more than 150 years ago. The photographs by Jonathan Friedlander, shot in the mid-1970s, preserve Antonio's memory and his mission of conscience.

   GRANDMA NAZERA

The setting of this reading by Gregory Orfalea from his memoir Angeleno Days is his mother's home in Tarzana, nestled in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley. The spacious house is decorated with photographs of the Orfalea family and includes the ancestral home in Lebanon along with family photos taken in Los Angeles where the second and third generations settled in the late 1940's. Not seen in the documentary are Greg's mother Rose, his maternal uncle Joe Awad with wife Carmen, all seated around a table with Greg. The videocast consists of two parts. The first is a reading from the chapter in his book dedicated to Greg's grandmother Nazera. At the age of seven in 1893, Nazera Jabaly was transplanted from her hometown of Zahlé to New York City, where she spent her adolescence. Around 1900, she took to the road as a peddler merchant, one of the primary occupations of early Syrians in the United States. Her circuit extended from New York City to Philadelphia to Washington to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, over to Buffalo and then down through Boston before returning to Little Syria to re-stock and begin the cycle anew.

Los Angeles was Nazera's final destination in life. Greg fondly remembers the trimmed hedge of her home. It was "the hedge of a king, and those tall palms on Mansfield swishing and swaying in the breeze were tall men...And they were not in Los Angeles. They were in Syria walking on the road to Zahlé where her husband should have met her. Tall shadows like the ones she followed across the Atlantic for a better life...a sweet brown fruit with a hard, thin nut."

In the second part of Grandma Nazera, Orfalea lovingly extemporizes on his grandmother’s daring, enterprising spirit, both on and off the road. “I still remember her songs…I told her before she died that I wanted her to teach me her songs, even if I didn’t understand them.” “Why, honey?” she had asked. “Because they will make me remember you,” Orfalea responded.

   The Last Harvest: Yemenis of the San Joaquin

The rare footage in this vignette provides eloquent testimony to the history of the immigration of villagers from the Ibb region in central Yemen to the United States. The largest numbers settled and worked in the automobile factories and plants in Detroit and southern Michigan. Smaller communities were formed in the Lackawanna district of Buffalo, New York, where Yemeni immigrants found employment in the steel mills and factories. Others headed westward in search of work in San Francisco and in the vineyards, fruit orchards, and asparagus fields of the San Joaquin Valley spanning central California.

Although they have dwindled in number, the epic narrative of Yemeni sojourners and those who chose permanent settlement is, in part, the story of the modern Middle East where countries like Yemen rely heavily on remittances sent from overseas. Conversely, labor-intensive agriculture and industry in the United States depend directly on contracted foreign nationals and prospective immigrants.

Mohammed Abdullah, one of the pioneering Yemeni immigrants to Delano and the San Joaquin, is featured in this videocast. Together with a dozen Yemeni men, he came to work in the fields and became a leading foreman for one of the large family-owned companies in the business of growing grapes. His wife, born Irma Ramirez, was by his side through thick and thin as he rose in rank and status, and both were key to the establishment of the local, predominantly Yemeni mosque named after the righteous Caliph Abu Bakr. In his soft-spoken manner, Mohammed recounts the reason he came to Delano and describes the varieties of grapes cultivated and sold. He also explains the migratory patterns and where Yemenis reside in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, establishing businesses and networks of family-owned grocery and convenience stores. In one sense the shift away from the fields signals the end of the farm labor phase of Yemeni immigration, paving the way for second-generation Yemeni Americans and new immigrants to attain economic success, social mobility, and a share of the American dream.