Identities, Tangents and Trig

Ala Michael "Trig" Tarazi '89 is a person of contrasts: madcap humor and solemnity, nationalism and iconoclasm.

For Tarazi, seeming extremes combine in unexpected ways. Take the explanation of his nickname, for example. Why "Trig"?

"I failed it in eighth grade," he says. But after a laugh, he turns serious and explains why he chose to introduce himself by that name the following year, when he entered Phillips Andover Academy.

"It was largely out of a sense of embarrassment" over having an Arabic first name, he says. "Growing up Arab in America is not easy--much harder than growing up gay in America," says Tarazi, who has done both. He recalls seeing Arabs in movies and comic strips as cruel terrorists or wealthy sheiks--nothing he aspired to become.

The nickname has stuck, but the embarrassment has not. Tarazi now hopes to spend his life working for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), most likely as a publicist in this country.

He describes his choice as natural for a Palestinian--like going to Washington for an American. "It's like, you go and work for your government."

Tarazi says the organization needs more American-trained people like himself who can "speak for the PLO in an accent that Americans can understand." He says the organization's representatives have done little to improve their image with Americans. "They wear dark glasses; they wear kaffiyehs," he says, referring to the traditional checkered scarf that is a mark of Palestinian identity.

Clad in the Oxford cloth of Andover and Harvard, Tarazi speaks with the American accent he learned in Pennsylvania and Colorado schools. He is also a practiced debater, arguing forcefully on political subjects that most Americans approach cautiously for fear of giving offense.

Tarazi defends the PLO with well-honed technique. He says he opposes violence himself and notes that the nationalist organization has recently renounced terrorism. Comparing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the war in Afghanistan, he adds, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

On campus, Tarazi has served since early 1988 as president of the Society of Arab Students (SAS). Under his leadership, the group has shifted from predominantly cultural activities to increasingly political ones, such as last fall's successful campaign supporting a Cambridge ballot question on Palestinian rights.

After graduation, Tarazi will spend the next year on a Benjamin Trustman traveling fellowship studying Palestinians' efforts to preserve their culture as minorities within several Middle Eastern countries.

Tarazi's next step will be Harvard Law School, where he has deferred admission. He says he needs a law degree to act as an advocate for Arab-Americans as well as the Palestinian cause in the United States.

As an undergraduate, Tarazi is known as a passionate advocate of gay rights, as well as Palestinian statehood. By all accounts, he cheerfully broaches uncomfortable subjects in both areas.

But Tarazi does not like to mix his causes, nor does he give them equal importance in his life. "I don't want people to see me as a gay Palestinian," he says. Tarazi would rather be a Palestinian activist in public and a defender of gay rights in private conversation, he says.

"I was openly gay at a very early age...as a freshman--even in high school--and the fact that I was openly gay made people believe that I was an activist," Tarazi says.

Tarazi says he would not wear a pink triangle for gay rights to a Palestinian cultural event or a Palestinian kaffiyeh to a gay pride march. He seems to find it difficult enough to defend one controversial cause at a time, let alone to argue successfully for two very different causes with different constituencies.

Being subject to two forms of discrimination has made him more conscious of prejudice, he says. "I'm paranoid. I'm oversensitive about both of these issues," he says. But he adds that he is not quite as sensitive to homophobia because he thinks gay people in America are now less vulnerable than Arabs.

This separation of causes is more than a matter of convenience or taste, though. Tarazi notes that the Palestinian culture he admires in many ways also includes very traditional views of homosexuality.

A friend and fellow student of Arab culture, Sandra Williams '89-'90, says, "Trig is just never afraid of being himself and being outspoken and kind of wild." But she adds that he keeps down his references to gay culture among SAS members. "Some come from very traditional Arab families," she notes.

Tarazi says he sometimes worries that his two identities are headed for a collision. "There might come a day when I might help lead Palestinians to statehood and then realize that I might not be welcome in that state," he says. "That's always in the back of my mind."

"If I'm going to go into the PLO, I can't be openly gay," says Tarazi. He observes that no government in the world would accept an openly gay politician without prejudice.

Rather than give up a political career, Tarazi says he would underplay his homosexuality. "I don't want to lie about it, I don't want to hide it, but it's not something that defines me," he says.

The senior's eclectic set of opinions also includes "Republican leanings" on economic issues--though as for the Republicans themselves, he says, "when it comes down to specifics, they've been disappointing." He prefers the Rev. Jesse Jackson's views on gay rights and Israel. But Tarazi says he learned from his immigrant parents a belief in minimal government and a market society in which hard work pays off.

Roommate Eric Kaplan '89, a former Lampoon vice-president, thinks Tarazi uses his outrageous sense of humor to ease the tension of these conflicting loyalties. For example, he says the humor of wearing drag may appeal to Tarazi because it mocks and exaggerates conventional roles.

Without humor, Kaplan says Tarazi could become a dogmatic "Trotskyite intellectual" with no real personal life. "With a sense of humor, you can live with the contradiction and be optimistic that it won't turn into a tragedy," he says. "The best leaders are not going to be the people who are so totally one-sided and have no zest."

Kaplan says Tarazi is not religious, nor does he "get misty-eyed about the orange groves of Palestine." Perhaps because he challenges traditional mores personally, Tarazi takes a very secular view of the Palestinian cause, says Kaplan.

"Trig is motivated by a very strong and--to me--sometimes simplistic sense of fairness," says Kaplan. "He feels his people have been humiliated in the eyes of the world."

Tarazi was born in Kuwait, a month after the Six-Day War, in which Israel occupied his parents' native regions of Gaza and the West Bank.

Three years later, the family moved to the United States at the invitation of relatives who had been stranded there because of the occupation. Throughout Tarazi's childhood, his parents never told him why they moved to the United States or even that he was Palestinian.

"I grew up in a family that wanted nothing more than to forget," says Tarazi. His mother "felt that being Palestinian was like a disease, that you try not to give it to your children," he recalls. Tarazi thought for many years that his family was Arab simply because he spoke Arabic at home.

Only later did he learn that the Tarazis were a prominent Christian family of intellectuals and professionals in Gaza and that his father's cousin, Zuhdi Terzi, was the PLO's observer at the United Nations.

When Tarazi learned of his Palestinian background at 14, his first reaction was embarrassment. He thought immediately of "PLO, Yassir Arafat, every stereotype you've ever heard..."

But that began to change when he enrolled at Andover. His parents stopped hiding the strength of their feelings about Palestine, and Tarazi grew more sensitive to comments like a reference to Arafat's "dishrag headdress" in a letter to the editor of his school paper.

Over his first Christmas vacation from Andover, Tarazi sat down with his parents and insisted on learning the family history. "It was like pulling teeth," he recalls.

Learning about his background encouraged him to start telling the Palestinian side of the story to classmates at Andover. "Whether they agreed was not important," he says. "What's important was that they understood that there Was another side to the story."

An Andover grant to work with Palestinian refugees in Israel strengthened Tarazi's convictions further during his junior year.

Tarazi, then 16, made the trip over his parents' objections. "Why do you want to go back?" they asked. "We brought you to the United States to get away--to give you an education." Tarazi says his father wanted only to raise a family without the pain that went with being Palestinian. "He felt like everything he had worked for had fallen on its face," Tarazi says.

As a Harvard freshman, Tarazi joined a group of seniors in founding SAS and kept up his informal debates with classmates on Palestinian issues. He says some saw him as waging a private crusade or even as anti-Semitic. Sophomore year, he majored in Middle Eastern History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Tarazi spent the fall semester of 1987 studying in Cairo, where he says he realized Palestinians could count on little help from their Arab neighbors.

Administrators at the American University in Cairo treated Palestinian students as "controversial people who need to be silenced as much as possible," he says. And while many Egyptians were sympathetic to his cause, Tarazi says he also encountered prejudice similar to Western anti-Semitism from cab drivers and restaurant managers. In a dispute over a fare, one driver, meaning to call Tarazi greedy, said, "don't be such a Palestinian."

The Palestinian uprising that is still in progress began that November. Hearing it discussed constantly in Cairo, Tarazi expected public interest in the Palestinian cause would rise in the United States as well. He was disappointed onreturning home. "I realized, it's me: I have tomake people sympathetic," he says.

Another spur to Tarazi's activism was the newsthat a cousin had died in the uprising, beaten todeath by Israeli soldiers. He read about it inThe New York Times.

Soon after, Tarazi won the presidency of SAS byproposing a campus publicity campaign on allegedIsraeli atrocities. The group put up informationalposters that were promptly torn down and defaced,especially in Dunster House, where the masterissued a warning to the defacers.

Tarazi sees SAS as embattled: posters forcultural events and speeches are torn down asoften as political broadsides, he says. That wasparticularly the case in SAS' campaign forQuestion 5, last fall's ballot initiative callingon U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.) tosupport sanctions against Israel. Tarazi saysposters in favor of the measure were removed sofast that students finally glued them down andcoated them with clear packing tape.

The measure succeeded narrowly, to everyone'ssurprise. "Our goal was simply to educate," Tarazisays. "As Americans, we did not feel comfortablestanding by and watching."

Charges of anti-Semitism trouble Tarazi. Hesays many of his political allies are liberalJews, and he argues that one can support aPalestinian homeland without being anti-Semitic ordenigrating the Jews' history as victims ofpersecution.

Tarazi says that view was one reason why heplayed a Jewish character in a campus productionof The Diary of Anne Frank. "I wantedpeople to know that you can be pro-Palestinian,pro-Arab, and not be a Nazi," he says. However,Tarazi adds, "Just because one group has beenpersecuted in the past does not give them theright to persecute in the present."

If Tarazi shocks people, Kaplan says that isnot his roommate's fault. "It shows howconservative things are in 1989 that people sayTrig is so shocking," he says.

Raised in a religious Jewish family, Kaplansays he came to Harvard with an "unreflecting"loyalty to Israel. Tarazi, who was his freshmanroommate, "would come up with different facts,different interpretations than I had heard."

They argued bitterly, as they still do. "Therewere times when we went so far, and went nofurther, for the sake or our friendship," saysKaplan. "Sometimes Trig was insulting--he wouldrefer to me as 'a little newspaper Zionist,' and Ithought he was a crank."

But Kaplan says he respects Tarazi's honesty onexplosive subjects. "Often people do not exposewhat set them at odds with the people they'respeaking to." On the other hand, he says Tarazibelieves in discussing political differences withothers in order to improve relations with them.

Having seen censorship abroad, Tarazi says heplans to use the United States' democraticprotections to the fullest. "We have freedom ofspeech--we don't have the administration sendingin censors," he says.

"I can't blame the rest of American society fornot being understanding if I haven't done my shareto change that understanding," Tarazi says