Salaam Alaikum!

The second that I knew I was going to France I knew what my feature story was going to be on. I had been working on a story during Fall semester 2010 about the lives of Muslims in America, focused mostly on how the recent “anti-muslim” issues (the Mosque in Manhattan, the firing of Juan Williams from NPR, Quran burnings etc.) in the U.S. affected their everyday lives. Lately a lot of my articles had been focused on the Middle East and the Muslim culture. Which I guess is a refection of what my interests had become, I had been slowing but surely learning basic Arabic (still am!) and reading every book about the Middle East I could get my hands on. (I highly recommend “Every Man in This Village is a Liar”) It also didn’t help (or I guess it did) that my boyfriend had just spent the whole summer in the Middle East. So these issues were constantly on my mind and I was well aware of the tensions that were rising between the French and Muslim immigrants, in fact that was one of the main reasons I was excited about going.

Now that I’ve got a chance to reflect I’m not sure that I was able to get exactly what I wanted from the trip, I guess I got wrapped up in the city of Paris and wasn’t able to capture exactly what I hoped. (My biggest regret is that I didn’t have time to visit the Great Mosque of Paris) But the trip did help me further my understanding of the heart and struggle of the Muslim people. With my broken Arabic mixed with my broken French and their broken English I met some great people. I met a woman at the market who said, “You come live here and I’ll teach you Arabic!” and a man who I spoke to near the Eiffel Tower who told me all about his family and where they came from in Pakistan. I guess I was lucky though, because I realized early on that the confusion of the French was actually a benefit to me. See, the French, they thought I was Middle Eastern, I suppose it’s rare for them to see a Mexican there. I decided to use that to my full advantage and I believe that’s what really helped the immigrants open up to me. (Although I may have had some sort of identity crisis myself!)

This trip has really made me even giddier to explore the Middle East and take the steps to actually become an international reporter there and I am very thankful.