Episode: 45 · Guest: Ibrahim Al-Khamsi · Full Episode #45
Ibrahim Al-Khamsi, a Libyan veterinarian living in Chicago, described a conscious decision to avoid speaking Arabic in public spaces in the United States. The practice was not born from embarrassment but from experience: speaking Arabic in certain American environments attracted hostility, suspicion, or unwanted attention. He adapted by silencing himself.
The decision is a form of self-censorship so common among Arab and Muslim Americans that it has become banal — a background adjustment, barely worth mentioning, folded into the daily logistics of being visibly or audibly foreign in post-9/11 America. Ibrahim did not present it as a dramatic act. He described it as practical — the kind of calculation a person makes to reduce friction and avoid confrontation.
The cost, however, is cumulative. A person who stops speaking his language in public is editing himself in real time. The Arabic he carries — the Libyan dialect, the family expressions, the words that have no English equivalent — is pushed into private spaces: the home, the phone call, the group chat. In public, he performs a version of himself from which a central marker of identity has been removed.
Ibrahim's food content exists partly in this context. Food is a safer vehicle for Arab identity in America than language. An Arabic word spoken on a bus can provoke. A Libyan dish posted on Instagram is received as interesting, exotic, shareable. The asymmetry is instructive: American culture is willing to consume Arab culture as cuisine while remaining hostile to its sound.