Divided Lives : An Arab Journalist Living in America Reflects on Terrorism.(Brief Article)

Estrangement. Incomprehension. Schizophrenia. As an Arab journalist in America, I have lived a deeply divided life since terror struck down the Twin Towers. And I fear the consequences, for me and my two peoples, Arabs and Americans.

I was born in Beirut but New York is my home by choice. For 25 years, as a reporter and student of American-Arab relations, I've played the role of cultural interpreter, attempting to explain each side to the other. There has always been a profound disconnect, a deep mutual suspicion and lack of trust. Now the rift is almost incalculably large.

Reason, moderation and sobriety are never more needed than in crisis. Yet seldom have such qualities been so absent, nowhere more so than in the media. Following the news in both my worlds since Sept. 11, I find troubling common denominators- -a tenor of coverage that seems destructive in intent as well as effect, coupled with a partisanship that is as irresponsible as it is harmful. Whether it's the sound-bite quality of American television or the "pontificator monologues" of Arab commentators, the result is similar: the erosion of the media's role in learning and, then, educating. Its place has been usurped by a collective "us" versus "them."

Blame for that is evenly shared. In some Arab media, venom has poured forth, alternately defensive and aggressive. A very few gloated at what happened to America, considering it a natural consequence of arrogant and cocky behavior. But even those who utterly condemned the terrorist attacks failed to take the debate over American policies in the Middle East to a new threshold. American coverage has been only superficially moderate, even after the first bellicose few days when journalists hastened to teach Americans all about countries, peoples and Islamic groups that they hitherto knew little or nothing about. I use the word "superficial" deliberately, because to me the lessons learned strike me as having less to do with real understanding than the (I hope unconscious) agenda of "know thine enemy."

How disheartening that is. Confronted daily with the opposite mind-sets of opposing camps, I try to reconcile, defuse, explain. Maybe living in New York, this truly magnificent, multiethnic, multilingual, international city, has made me an idealist. Faced with "them" and "us," I ask, "Where's the 'we'?" It's as if I live two lives, torn between them. But I am a realist, too--enough to be impressed by the taxi driver who stared intimidation down by hanging from his front mirror ...