Chestnut Hill is one of Philadelphia's most genteel neighbourhoods, a beautifully shaded, hushed bastion of the oldest of the city's old guard. Just past the manicured grass tennis courts of the Philadelphia Cricket Club, founded in 1854, is Chestnut Hill Academy, an all-boys school founded in 1851. A little further down the road is the academy's sister establishment, the all-girls Springside School, founded in 1879.
But for all its blue-blooded tradition, a wind of change is rustling through this leafy enclave. In recent summers, Springside has played host to a very different sort of institution, founded in 2002: it's a camp called Al Bustan, and its mission is to teach children and teenagers the fundamentals of Arab culture using the arts. During the past three weeks, 55 children aged six to 16 have come every weekday to Springside to participate in Al Bustan ("the garden" in Arabic). A tour of the building can be an assault on the ears, but a pleasant one: a chorus of children counting aloud in Arabic gives way to the giggling of teenagers shooting a video dispelling ethnic stereotypes, their chatter then drowned out by the impressive thunder of traditional Arab drumming. Embroidery stitched by tiny hands adorns the hallways, and everyday objects ranging from blackboards to toilets are colourfully labelled in both English and Arabic.
"My favourites are art class and dabke," says Keira Norford, age 12. "Dabke is a dance they do in some Middle Eastern countries," she adds helpfully, as an afterthought. If the children of Al Bustan are consciously informative in conversation, then the camp's organisers have achieved their primary objective. "We want kids to leave here loving Arabic language and culture, and to be able to share that with others," says Hazami Sayed, Al Bustan's founder and director. She estimates that the camp is split evenly between children with two Arab parents, children with partial Arab heritage, and children with no Arab background whatsoever. Campers' families practice a variety of religions, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Sayed's interest in teaching children about Arab traditions originated in her own home. Sayed, who was raised in Kuwait, and her husband, who is also Arabic, became Americans after pursuing university degrees in the US. They have since had two boys, now aged nine and 13. "We knew raising our children as both Americans and Arabs would lead to multiple identities and allegiances," she explains. "We wanted to help them navigate that duality by giving them access to their heritage through the language."
She tested the idea with other Arab-American families, and mustered an inaugural class of 18 young children for the day camp's first summer, six years ago. Apropos of the organisation's slogan, "seeds of culture," the camp has since grown steadily both in the number of campers and its breadth of programming. Arabic language instruction remains the core of Al Bustan's curriculum, though the approach is more one of exposure than immersion. "Three weeks in the summer is not enough to provide comprehensive language instruction, so instead we try to teach the basics through calligraphy and visual arts," Sayed says. Evidence can be seen in the crafts room, where children are completing letters of the Arabic alphabet in small squares of tatreez, the traditional form of Palestinian embroidery.
An informal poll of campers reveals that drumming is far and away the favourite discipline offered at Al Bustan. "I love the percussion ensemble," says Alexandra Macbeth, 12, who participates in a drumming group all year round. "We take Arab rhythms and sometime add our own beats. It's cool." Joseph Tayoun, the camp's percussion instructor, has led several Al Bustan alumni on to more formal musical apprenticeships.
Poetry and theatre also play a role at Al Bustan, where the drama teacher Leila Buck encourages each child to use his or her jism (body) and qulb (heart) to express creativity. This summer younger campers are also learning about the poetry of the Palestinian-American author Naomi Shihab Nye (A Taste of Palestine: Menus and Memories), who has been in touch with her newest fans via e-mail from her home in Texas. (Print-outs of the correspondence are proudly pinned to the bulletin board). Meanwhile Laurel Harig, one of the camp's counsellors, is introducing older campers to the free verse of Iraq's Abdul Wahab al Bayati.
Last year Sayed and her collaborators added a programme for teenagers, partly because some repeat campers had grown too old for the original programme, but also because the staff recognised that adolescents experienced a unique set of challenges as they and their peers became more aware of current events and conflicts in the Middle East. "I'm a senior in high school, so when I meet sophomores or freshmen, they ask me questions about Palestine," says Mokhtar Bdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian-American who was born in the Middle East and moved to the US when he was five. "They don't really know about it. They are just like 'Poor Israel - all the other Arab countries are attacking it.' They don't get the other perspectives. Since I've been coming to this camp I've had a couple of really good debates with some of my Jewish friends. That's really helped, because when I was younger I was really, like, 'Palestine is good, and Israel is evil,' and since then I've become more open-minded about the issue."
During a previous summer, Bdeir and his peers at camp produced a short film called Ditch the Frame under the supervision of the video teacher Dana Abourahme, formerly of Abu Dhabi and now based in Beirut, where she works with teenagers in Palestinian refugee camps. (She travels to Philadelphia in the summer expressly to teach at Al Bustan.) "Ditch the Frame was a pretty daring video," recalls Bdeir. "We used racial slurs and stuff and with irony we showed how they weren't true."
This year, the teenage campers are producing another film intended to combat stereotypes. The young auteurs happily share some raw footage of a scene in which an "average American", portrayed by the 13-year-old camper Sam Hill-Cristol, asks an Arab-American friend about the kaffiyeh and its perceived connection to terrorism. "To wear the kaffiyeh you have to have bombed, like, five countries," she deadpans in return.
(The skit was occasioned by a recent controversy involving the American television personality Rachael Ray, who wore a kaffiyeh-like scarf in an advertisement for Dunkin' Donuts. The scarf has become something of a fashion accessory in the US, with Hollywood celebrities and young hipsters donning what one conservative commentator calls jihadist "hate couture".) Programming for the teenagers is meant to provide them with analytical and rhetorical tools to present facts about Arab culture and educate peers about its nuances. "We want to offer teens the opportunity to think critically about the world around them," says Sayed.
When it comes to younger children, Al Bustan staff approach such issues more gingerly. Sally Bonet, an Egyptian-American educator who is also the camp's manager, recalls a cautionary tale from a public elementary school where she once taught. "It was the anniversary of September 11, and the school principal called for a moment of silence, which I support. But then I had seven-year-olds staring at me asking, 'What's September 11?' I told them it was something they should discuss with their parents, but a newer teacher actually described what had happened on that day in 2001. It became awkward: how do you explain the difference between a good Arab and a bad Arab to a child of such a young age?"
Questions like that weigh on Dr Lamia Barakat, a psychologist and member of Al Bustan's board of directors. All three of her daughters attend the camp. "As we speak our children's textbooks are being updated to include September 11 as part of our American history," she says. "My concern is that they will present a stereotypical description of the event, and won't talk about how many in the Arab world view what happened on September 11." Her hope is that Al Bustan will give her children "a basis from which to inform their peers about Arabs, so that they might learn something not necessarily covered in schools".
Camp staffers take a broad approach to the issue and avoid overtly political dialogue with younger children, preferring to impart the rudiments of Arab culture as a foundation for more complex discussions to be held in later years. "Unfortunately Arab culture is highly vilified today," says Nehad Khader, who teaches Arabic and dance at Al Bustan. "It's therefore extremely important to demystify the language and the related heritage for kids."
While Sayed is aware of the negative stereotypes about Arabs to which some Americans subscribe, she is relieved that her own efforts have met with little objection. She says that although Al Bustan hit a few snags in its infancy, all misgivings were dispersed by a thorough explanation of the camp's mission. Asked about any serious controversies, she responds, "Insh'Allah, no". She is in some ways lucky, however. The camp's umbrella organisation, a non-profit also called Al Bustan, contracts with some Philadelphia public schools for year-round arts instruction services, and also helped students at a state secondary school establish a club called Abna'a al Mustakbal (Arab Future Leaders). It is this kind of overlap with state education that has ignited controversy elsewhere in the US. New York City's publicly-funded Khalil Gibran International Academy has become a lightning rod for controversy, a situation that Sayed monitors closely.
Part of what makes Al Bustan unique in the region - and more unassailable by critics, Sayed believes - is its staunchly secular orientation. While many mosques in the area offer Arabic language instruction, for the purposes of the camp Sayed very specifically wanted to separate Arab culture from Islam. "The arts are not an integral part of language instruction at the Islamic centres," she explains, though she admits to publicising the camp at mosques and Maronite churches. "The mosques teach Arabic with the primary goal of reading the Quran, while our goal is to make the language accessible and enjoyable for as many different kinds of people as we can. We use methods that are friendly to children, that you can't find elsewhere, to my knowledge."
Al Bustan has proven particularly appealing to Arab Christians. "Because Christians are such a minority in the Arab community here, I was pleased to find a place where my children could still learn about the culture but be with other children of all religions," says Barakat, who is a Christian. "I do want them to learn about their religion and what Christianity is like in the Middle East, but that is something I do with them at home."
The camp's unique positioning has made it a natural victor in the never-ending and highly competitive quest for funding. Though campers pay fees - typically $750 (Dh2,755) (with financial aid available for those who qualify) - Al Bustan requires significantly more money to sustain its annual budget, which in 2007 was approximately $150,000 (Dh551,025). Over its lifetime, Al Bustan has received funding from a wide variety of public and private sources, including the Qatar Embassy, The Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and the US government's National Endowment for the Arts.
"Al Bustan is just so strong in terms of the quality of the instruction it offers," says Beth Feldman Brandt, director of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation, a private donor to Al Bustan's programmes. "We were attracted to Al Bustan because it serves not only the Arab community but also the schools, and is open to all people who want to learn more about Arab culture." Back at Springside, as grown-up talk of stereotypes, global politics, and financial wherewithal subsides, a din rises in the hallways. It is four o'clock, and camp is over for the day. But one last child agrees to weigh in on his experiences at Al Bustan: "I didn't want to come here at all at first," confesses Zachary Mohammad Abu-Orf, age eight. "I didn't think it would be fun at all, but my mother said I should trust her. Now, I love it."
