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When one thinks of the rich melting pot of South Philly, certain ethnicities immediately spring to mind: Italian, Irish, Asian, Mexican and African-American. It might be surprising to know another group has been thriving here since at least the 1960s if not longer and they are Arab- Christians, predominantly Lebanese and Palestinian.
Growing up on the 900 block of Mountain Street in the St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish, Susan Muaddi Darraj, an accomplished author and professor, is the daughter of two Palestinian immigrants.
Her latest book, "The Inheritance of Exile: Stories from South Philly," was named Best Short Fiction of 2007 by ForeWord Magazine, which spotlights independently published works. In "Exile," Darraj tells the stories of four Palestinian-American friends — Nadia, Aliyah, Hanan and Reema — in their mid-20s to late 30s and their immigrant mothers.
"It’s really a book about two generations of women. Each story focuses on a different woman, but they are all linked together," the 33-year-old writer said. "It reads like a novel. If you think of Amy Tan and ‘The Joy Luck Club,’ it’s a similar structure."
All except Hanan have positive connections with their parents and Darraj said creating that character was difficult.
"Hanan’s story was very hard for me to write because I have a very good relationship with my parents and always have," she said of father Bassam and mother Alice (pronounced "a-lease").
As the saga unfolds, the young woman’s mother is having a difficult time adjusting to life in the United States and cannot fathom her American daughter.
"They love each other, but they don’t understand each other," Darraj said.
As first generation Arab-American women, the four struggle to fit in and reconcile their Middle Eastern identity with their newly minted one, with the two cultures often at odds. Bon Jovi music, crushes on ’80s heartthrob Rob Lowe and cheesesteaks intermingle with Middle Eastern dance, cabbage and rice dish Malfoof, and fortunes told through coffee cups.
"There is an old Arabic tradition where you flip the cup over, let the grounds trickle down to the rim and when you flip it back over there is a pattern that you see sometimes," Darraj said, adding the coffee cup struck publisher University of Notre Dame Press, who used a beautiful demitasse one for the book jacket when it was released in 2007. "Sometimes in the shape of a cross or bird, the pattern is used to divine a fortune."
For Darraj and brothers Albert, 32, Jawad, 27, and Samy, 24, growing up was not a tug of war between two worlds, largely due to a strong Arabic social network. For a time, the Muaddis attended St. Maron Catholic Church, a Lebanese parish at 1010 Ellsworth St., where the author was baptized. The family shopped at many Middle Eastern stores in the area like Bitar’s, 10th and Federal streets. In addition to her own family — husband Elias, 2-year-old daughter Mariam, 1-year-old son George and another baby boy due Feb. 1 — Darraj’s ties here are very strong, including cousins, some established and others newly emigrated from Palestine.
"Since at least the ’60s and ’70s there has been an Arab-Christian population here. It was just one more culture within the South Philly spectrum," the author, who graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s and summa cum laude with a master’s, both in English literature, from Rutgers University, where she also began teaching before relocating to Maryland in ’01, said.
The author insists her latest book is not based on her life or anyone she knew growing up.
"Every fiction writer has a big imagination. When you develop characters, they naturally have traits from people you know, but I would say that 95 percent of my characters are total fiction," she said.
Though no specific section is named as the setting, while writing, the author had her own in mind, where her family attended St. Tolentine, Ninth and Watkins streets, and she went to its school.
"I really enjoyed the feeling of the neighborhood that I grew up in. It was a very tightly knit neighborhood. Parents used to block off the street so kids could play and in summer people would sit on their stoop and drink coffee. It just was a nice place. Everybody was friendly. It was just a wonderful place to grow up," Darraj, who is fluent in French and Arabic, said.
Bassam came to South Philly in ’67, following in the footsteps of an older brother, and worked as a mechanic and auto upholsterer. He met Alice in New York and the two married in ’72. Darraj’s love of reading and writing was cultivated and encouraged early on by her parents and published poet and paternal uncle, Issa Maaddi.
"I grew up in a house where my father was always reciting poetry and reading books. My mother is a big reader as well. She taught me and my brothers how to read before I started school and was always reading to us as little kids. I grew up in a family that really appreciated literature and that’s what formed my interest in reading and writing," she said.
As a child, Darraj would write short stories and bind them in homemade books. At 11, the family moved to Cherry Hill, N.J., to be closer to Bassam’s business, Moorestown Auto Upholstery, which is still there. A bookkeeper who formerly worked at Tartan Foods, Seventh Street and Packer Avenue, Alice keeps her husband’s accounts.
Writing may be a passion, but it was something instilled in Darraj at a young age and she is passing it on to others though classes in English literature at Harford Community College and in fiction at Johns Hopkins University. Her teaching stints are mixed with freelance writing for Chelsea House, penning books for young adults and serving as editor of "Scheherazade’s Legacy: Arab and Arab-American Women on Writing," a collection of essays by women of Arab descent.
It took more than a year to write "Exile," six stories of which were published in different magazines prior to becoming a book.
