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Article Excerpt
Published in complete form in 1914, A Far Journey traces Reverend Abraham Mitrie Rihbany's crossing into American society after immigration to the United States at the age of twenty-two. In the summer of 1912, after listening to Rihbany's story, a family whom he was visiting deemed it worthy of publication, and they mentioned it to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. As a result, a number of sections were published in the magazine in 1913 and 1914 under the title "A Far Journey." Using these chapters and adding some new material, in 1914 Rihbany published the full version of his journey into Americanization; he wished to trace "the story, not of an individual, but of a type" and testify to the "unparalleled opportunities of America" (viii).
Rihbany was born in 1869 in the town of El-Shweir in Mount Lebanon, which was under Ottoman rule. He started his education at the school of his uncle, and then was sent to the Angleez (English) school. In 1875, his parents moved to Betater, another town in Mount Lebanon, where he attended an American mission school. At age nine, in the tradition of his family, he started his career as an apprentice stone-mason. However, at the age of seventeen, he decided to go back to school; he attended the American High School of Suk-al-Gharb and became a member of the Protestant Church. To pay for his education, he taught for three years in two different schools. (1)
When he was twenty-two, Rihbany decided to join friends immigrating to the USA. After obtaining the legal documents, he reached New York on October 6, 1891. He headed to Washington Street, where the Syrian colony was located. In New York, he worked as an assistant storekeeper before making the acquaintance of some educated Syrians with whom he founded the Syrian Scientific and Ethical Society. In 1892, he worked as literary editor in the first Arabic language newspaper published in the United States, Kowkab America (Star of America). However, due to political disagreements the paper folded, and Rihbany left New York to travel with a friend through different states and speak in churches and societies about the Holy Land. Through these tours he hoped to secure funding for college. He spoke in several cities in the Midwest before becoming the regular pastor of the Congregational Church in Morenci, Michigan.
After publishing A Far Journey, Rihbany contributed several articles to the Atlantic Monthly, which were collected under the title The Syrian Christ (1916). He followed this book with Militant America and Jesus Christ (1917) and America Save the Near East (1918). In 1919, Rihbany was elected by the American Syrian Association to be their representative at the peace conference in Versailles. He reflects on his experience in Wise Men from the East and from the West (1922). Other works he penned before his death in 1944 include The Hidden Treasure of Rasmola (1920), The Christ Story for Boys and Girls (1916), Seven Days with God (1926), and The Five Interpretations of Jesus (1940).
In A Far Journey, Rihbany maps the traditional quest of the immigrant and the different stages of his progression toward Americanization. Throughout this first-person narrative, he celebrates the nobler qualities that the real America inspires in the select few or the "small minority of eager, aggressive idealists" (245). Unlike some contemporary Arab American autobiographies which use the "transformative power" of narration and storytelling to "break the confining construction of Arabness" (Cherif 207), the text relies heavily on Orientalist projections of the "Orient" and on a "strategic" celebration of its Christian religious tradition. By referring to this tradition, Rihbany "stresse[s] [his] Christian identity, [his] geographical origin in the 'Holy Land,' and [his] 'spirituality,' employing biblical rhetoric and religious parallels." This technique shows Rihbany's attempt to "engage American readers and familiarize the 'exotic,' while at the same time seeking to distance [himself] from Islam" (Majaj, "Arab-Americans" 328). To this end, the narrative is permeated with processes of cultural translation which revolve around Syria, its political system, history, food, customs, traditions, and rural schools as well as other details pertaining to the author's childhood in El-Shweir and Betater.
By tracing the movement of the self made possible through the Orientalist framing of A Far Journey, I probe the role of Orientalism in Rihbany's negotiation of the dilemma of self-division. This self-division results from his "in-betweenness," his feeling of being neither fully Arab nor American. In the context of this essay, Orientalism is defined, following Edward Said in Orientalism, as "a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient' and ... 'the Occident'" (2). In A Far Journey, Orientalism as a style of thought shapes the narrative and provides Rihbany with the tools to rework his inscription in time and space. It also molds his approach to Americaness as a system of values and ideals and as a form of citizenship shaped through volitional allegiance. This essay first identifies manifestations of Rihbany's self-division, showing the gap existing between his self-identification and his positioning by "insiders" to Americaness. The second section probes the components and characteristics of Orientalist discourse and analyzes its function in A Far Journey. A final section examines the implications of this approach for Rihbany's depiction of America and the rules of individuation into Americaness.
An immigrant striving not only to understand and define Americaness but also to achieve as well as embody what he perceives as its ideals, Rihbany is located in a space characterized by in-betweenness. This space is shaped by the experience of belonging to two different worlds at the same time. The efforts of this striving subject to identify and name his location transpire in specific forms of ordering and self-inscription that the narrative affords him as an autobiography immersed in a western model of self narration, which relies on the celebration of the lonely individual. (2) Evelyn Shakir, whose article "Mother's...
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