午夜剧场

I recently visited Detroit in the United States. Known as the center of the automobile industry, Detroit declined alongside the industry's waning fortunes and is often cited as having some of the worst public safety in the country. Music fans likely associate the city with Motown, the famous record label named after the "Motor Town." I am a fan myself, but that was not my primary reason for visiting.

In fact, the Detroit metropolitan area has the largest Arab population in the United States. In particular, the nearby city of Dearborn is a town where more than 30% of the residents are of Arab descent. The largest mosque in the U.S. is located here, and the Arab American National Museum, which conveys the history of Arab Americans, is situated right near the Ford headquarters. Learning that my friend Jackie Salloum was staying there at the museum's invitation, I toured the town under her guidance.

I first learned about Dearborn because Jackie, a New York-based artist, is a second-generation Arab American from this town. Born and raised here to parents from Syria and Palestine, she says there were times during her childhood when she felt ashamed of her Arab heritage. However, when the Palestinian uprising (Intifada) broke out in 2000 and she saw television footage of civilians being suppressed by the Israeli military, she began searching for ways to communicate what was happening on the ground to American society. That was when she discovered Palestinian rap.

Fascinated by the way rappers poured out their feelings in Arabic, she completed a documentary following them. My desire to introduce this film to Japan was how I first met her. The film was later released in Japanese theaters under the title "Slingshot Hip Hop" (Jp: Jiyu to Kabe to Hip Hop), and a Japan tour by the featured rap group DAM was also realized.

While the Arab American National Museum's exhibits were extensive, it felt as though the living history of the Arab people could be glimpsed even more clearly in the Arab restaurants found all over town. In a supermarket I happened to enter, ingredients from various Arab countries such as Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq were lined up in rows. While Detroit's overall population continues to decline, the number of Arab immigrants is steadily increasing. This reflects the political instability in the Middle East, a situation partly caused by U.S. policy. Nevertheless, wishing for the happiness of these people who nurture new bonds in this land while holding onto the food of their homeland as emotional support, I left Detroit feeling the heavy weight of a large box of Arab sweets my friend had given me on my lap.