Growing up in America, I came to understand — through my school curriculum and by contrasting where I lived with news coverage of the Middle East (a regular feature of most Arab American homes) — that I was living in the ‘best’ country.
My childhood was peppered with great memories of going to the beach, taking piano and dance classes, watching all the best movies and going to the best theme parks.
Before my father left Beirut at the age of 25, he experienced the beginnings of Lebanon’s long and gruelling 15-year civil war. When I was old enough, he would tell me stories of atrocities he witnessed, like people being lined up and executed in broad daylight.
A few years after the war ended, I visited Lebanon. Although I was only nine, I vividly remember the piles of rubble and trash where buildings once stood — the remaining ones were all riddled with bullet holes.
It was a rude awakening and shocking juxtaposition to the comfortable and safe life that I had in Florida.
After that, every few years we would visit. And although I always had fun, I nonetheless was eager to come back to the ‘best’ country in the world.
Columbine and the War on Terror
I was 16 years old when the Columbine High School massacre happened. Americans were shocked when they learned that two high school kids shot dead 12 students and one teacher in Colorado.
People hold a small prayer service next to crosses with the names of the victims of the Columbine High School shooting near the Columbine Memorial on April 20, 2021 in Littleton, Colorado.
I vividly remember how the tragedy profoundly shook America and kickstarted the gun control debate in the country. While crime was widespread in the country, it was the first time that ‘White America’ felt unsafe.
I vividly remember how the Columbine school shooting profoundly shook America and kickstarted the gun control debate in the country.
But this debate was quickly overshadowed when, two years later, 9/11 happened, which was followed by George W. Bush's War on Terror. All of a sudden, the spotlight shifted to 'my people' and, for the first time, I felt scrutinised being an Arab American.
Activists create a candlelight arrangement during a demonstration outside of the U.S. Capitol building to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War on March 15, 2023 in Washington, DC.
These major world events and wars went on to shape my formative years. In a bid to defend 'my people' against hate speech, disinformation and discrimination, I needed to be equipped with the facts. I was determined to learn about the place where I came from — the Middle East — and that is exactly what I did.
After obtaining my master's degree in Middle East studies, I was eager to spend time in the region to understand it better. In 2008, a fateful visit to Dubai ended up changing my life forever — I landed a journalism job covering Middle East politics.
Wars and mass shootings
A few years later, the Arab Spring unfolded and while the next decade would be filled with epic wars and tragic human loss and suffering, it was a priceless learning experience that no university degree could teach me.
Fast forward 15 years later, and I am still in Dubai, and still covering the same tragic events in our region — the most recent of which is the war erupting in Sudan.
The state of the Middle East has not changed very much from what I used to watch on the news from America when I was an undergrad. However, the state of America is practically unrecognisable to me.
In the time that I was living in the UAE and covering the wars of the region, Americans have increasingly become victims of another war — mass shootings, school shootings and unbridled gun violence.
There have been more mass shootings than days in 2023, database shows.
There have been 163 mass shootings this year till now.
A huge dangerous social problem that will make US reaching the level of being a very dangerous place to live in. https://t.co/XxaGxhOz8g
The numbers are staggering — more people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States so far this year than the number of days passed — which averages to two incidents a day. It has become so bad, that tragic shootings fade out of the news just as quickly as they appear.
In the latest incident, on Saturday 7 May, a gunman stepped out of a silver sedan and starting shooting people at a Dallas-area outlet mall, killing eight and wounding seven others — three critically — before being killed by a police officer who happened to be nearby, authorities said.
The shooting, the latest eruption of what has been an unprecedented pace of mass killings in the US, sent hundreds fleeing in panic. Barely a week before, authorities say, a man fatally shot five people in Cleveland, Texas, after a neighbour asked him to stop firing his weapon while a baby slept.
This is a stark indication that America has come a long way from Columbine.
People gather for a candle light vigil for the victims of the Oxford High School shooting in downtown in Oxford, Michigan on December 3, 2021.
When I watch parents sobbing on the news after losing a child in yet another US school shooting, I immediately recall my father's stories about the civil war in Lebanon where stepping outside to grab groceries was a gamble for your life because you never knew if you would be hit by a sniper.
When I watch parents sobbing on the news after losing a child in yet another US school shooting, I immediately recall my father's stories about the civil war in Lebanon where stepping outside to grab groceries was a gamble for your life.
In the US, sending your child to school has become a gamble. Watching safety drills at schools of what to do if a live shooter is on campus is mind boggling. Meanwhile, US politicians continue to turn a blind eye to a nation in deep pain, afraid of the wrath of the gun lobby.
Is this the same country that I grew up in? Is this the best that America can do? Is America really the 'best' country in the world?
As great as a childhood I had growing up in America, I just can't imagine myself moving back and sending my two small kids to school not knowing if they will come back.
The irony is not lost on me that my father fled the Middle East to America to ensure his kids had a safe upbringing and now I am determined to raise my kids in the UAE where I don't have to be afraid to send my kid to school.
As I sadly watch the tragic events unfolding in 'the best country in the world' from afar, I wonder if gun violence — much like the Middle East's proclivity for war — is America's unshakeable destiny.
