News > April 24, 2008

By Liza Greenspun | Senior writer

Greene 162 was converted into an authentic Arabic festival with food, music and dancing April 21 thanks to Aly Daowd, a Fulbright Scholar from Egypt who has been a part of the university as a student and an Arabic teaching assistant since the fall 2007 semester.

click to enlarge

Aly Daowd – university senior, Fulbright Scholar and Egyptian native – coordinated an authentic Arab festival April 21. (Photo courtesy of users.wfu.edu/daowdam)

As his time at the university comes to a close, Daowd said he wanted students, faculty and friends to experience a part of his culture.

“I intended to make it here on campus just to make it for other students so they can meet, they can talk, they can make friends,” Daowd said.

He invited all of the Arabic students and his own professors and friends, as well as other Arab families he has met at the university and in Winston-Salem.

In an effort to have his students understand both the Arab culture and the language, Daowd found an authentic Arabic restaurant in Greensboro and hired the chef to prepare authentic lamb, chicken, cucumber and tomato salad, hummus and rice for the festival.

In order to cover the cost, each participant gave a donation of $10-$15, but Daowd said, “I told the students I guarantee your money,” because he was certain they would enjoy the food.

And while they were enjoying the food, a room full of about 35-40 international undergraduate and graduate students and faculty members shared conversation and watched popular Arab music videos.

Sophomore Mustafa Abdullah, half-Egyptian himself, said that the event was a good experience for Daowd’s students.

“I saw it as an opportunity to share with others a culture that I take pride in,” he said. “In immersing the students in the Arab atmosphere, I think they got a little taste of the cultural life of the Middle East through interacting with Arabs, eating Middle Eastern foods and watching Middle Eastern music videos.”

Daowd said he decided to have an Arabic festival because “to learn the language you have to know something about the culture because they are integrated.”

He said that he taught a culture class during his first semester at the university, but when he tried to take the students to an Arabic restaurant in Winston-Salem, but the food was not authentic.

Thus, he decided to bring the restaurant to campus in hopes that it will become an annual event so that other students will learn about the university’s Arabic program and how it has grown each year since it first began. The program has seen great expansion over the past years.

“I want the Arabic language to become one of the common languages spoken in the United States,” Daowd said, adding that it is quickly becoming more commonly spoken.

Abdullah agreed that the event helped promote the Middle Eastern identity to the Westerners in attendance.

“It strips away preconceived notions of the Middle East and the picture many Westerners paint it to be,” he said. “The event, to some extent, gives a taste of what the Middle East really is.”

To close out the evening, the chef’s young daughter performed an Arabic dance to popular Arabic music, receiving applause from the audience.

However, Daowd did express disappointment because most had already left the event before the dancing began.

He said that he had hoped that the Middle Eastern students in attendance would perform the debka, a Lebanese dance, and that maybe others would join in and learn the dance.

Daowd was excited for his students and friends to attend the event. “I just want them to share me, my culture,” he said.

Overall, Daowd said he was happy to see his friends and students enjoying themselves. “They were very happy and they were smiling,” he said.

Daowd expressed joy at being able to see and thank people who have helped him throughout his time at the university.

“I think that this is an Arabic festival and it’s a farewell for me too,” he said. “I don’t want to leave Wake Forest. I like Wake Forest so much.”