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The Moment I, an Arab, Became American (Luma Simms, July 3, 2026, Providence)

Sitting around the camp fire listening to the oud, my Iraqi self clapped her hands, snapped her fingers, and couldn’t help but sing along to our favorite Middle Eastern artists. To my surprise, one of the American men from a nearby campsite came over with his guitar and asked what instrument we were playing and what language we were speaking. My dad and the men in our group asked the man to join us. They poured him arak; he was fascinated. Then, at our request, he began to play.

He strummed his guitar and sang Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and John Denver.

The music was familiar because, from our first day in America, I had sought to assimilate; I needed to understand it and internalize it—to enter its peoplehood. I was a fragmented little girl who yearned to be whole. I was sixteen on that particular camping trip; accustomed to being “American” at school and “Iraqi” at home. I knew all the popular American music songs from the radio but had not experienced an American bringing his authentic American identity into our Iraqi Christian subculture.

The Santa Barbara sky darkened and the stars competed with the campfire. Meanwhile, the American man progressed from one song to another, and the music reverberated through me and the lump in my throat expanded; by the time he got to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” I had to fight hard against the tears—I would have been ashamed to cry in front of my parents and their friends.

And then he began to sing another song by John Denver, one that electrified me:

He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year
Coming home to a place he’d never been before
Left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
Might say he found a key for ev’ry door

When he first came to the mountains his life was far away
On the road and hangin’ by a song
But the string’s already broken and he doesn’t really care
Keeps changin’ fast, it don’t last for long

Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
The shadow from the starlight
Is softer than a lullaby
Rocky Mountain high
Rocky Mountain high

The resonance was palpable. He hit the notes, I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky, and I was split by the sonic intonation of his words; they played on my soul and I could sense the existence of two mes; the Iraqi Luma and the American Luma, each moved by the respective music. In that moment, I knew I would never be whole again—my identity permanently bifurcated, my string was broken.