Alia Yunis

Here and There All At Once

Keeping a Full House

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Alia

Full House was my first Hollywood experience…At the end of last semester, I found myself doing something I had never done before: sharing with my students my journey to Hollywood. I told them it began with this show called Full House, which ended before any of them were even born. But they oohed and aahed, a group of students who had grown up all over the world. They had all seen it, connected to it, even though it didn’t represent their worlds in terms of race, gender, social structures or socio economics. I, however, did not ooh and ahh when I was told I’d be on the set up Full House. I had won a comedy writing award from Warner Bros as a student, and prize was to intern on a TV show.

I expected to be put on something edgy, not a show that could hardly be raved about for its writing. But edgy writing doesn’t have as wide of an audience, especially if families and kids are the target market. Jack Gilbert, the internship coordinator told me, Full House is what every studio dreams of: a show that lasts years, remains timeless, and thus can be recycled for royalties for generations to come, and doesn’t cost a fortune to make. “This show’s biggest expense are the actors,” he said. Hearing about Bob Saget’s passing, so soon after remembering those times with my students, has revived the emotional roller coaster of arriving in LA for the first time. John Stamos had been one of the great crushes of my teen years, and I felt a bit star struck in his presence, so it was easier to focus on Bob Saget’s acting. The thing I remember most is when he wanted to change a line in the script, and one of the producers said to him, “No, this laugh is for John; he’s the star in this scene. You play straight.” Saget was the only one of them who was a stand-up comedian. But he just nodded agreement. That’s how ensemble, in real life or made for TV, lasts so long, and that warmth is the part viewers craved and could connect to, despite the show’s lack of diversity. It’s how you keep the house full, as they say in the movies. (of course, there are negatives to what I saw at that time in terms of the writer’s room, but I leave that for another time)

Early Morning Calls

Posted on September 11, 2021 by Alia

How September 11 Made Me a Muslim Writer

When I woke up on Sept 11, 2001 in my apartment in LA, it was still dark. I was a struggling screenwriter up with the sun. I was trying to be like Stephen King, who I’d heard somewhere woke up at 3 am to get his writing done by 7 am. Part of that routine was to not check email, turn on the TV or radio. Thus, in the silence, I jumped when my phone rang at 6:15 am. My caller ID said it was the person I’d had dinner with the night before. “See what your people have done?” he said before I could say hello. “What people?” I asked. “They flew into the World Trade Center.” “How is that supposed to be funny?” I replied to this aspiring comedy writer. By then, I knew who “my people” were, as anytime there was an explosion anywhere in the world, Arabs and Muslims first reactions have always been, “Please don’t let it be us.” But I thought he was in his inner Stephen King writing moment. “I don’t think this is a very funny set up,” I said. Finally, I gave in to his demand that I turn on the TV. There it was and like everyone on the planet, for one reason or another, my future changed. In the blurry hours that followed I remember checking on friends and family in the New York area and began anticipating the way the US would always be different, as it would be for those who would pay the price for this outside the US. The next day, I learned a person in my writing group lost her brother-in-law and my mom’s neighbor in Jordan lost her son, who had just started a job at one of the financial firms. In later years, I would meet a survivor of the towers, who has had respiratory issues ever since. He is Lebanese.

We were told to stay home, but there was something I needed from my car—the water bottles I had bought the day before but was too tired to carry up the stairs when I got home. I was thirsty, and I compared to the other crimes “my people” were being rounded up for that day, a trip to my car seemed fairly safe. Los Angeles had never been quieter. I got the bottles and climbed back up the stairs. An American flag now covered my door. My neighbor across the hall opened his door.

“I heard you going out. I put that up for you,” he said. “So if anyone comes looking for your people, they’ll know you’re one of the good ones.”

He was Irish, like from Ireland. He did not speak like an American because he was not American. I was. But at that moment, I knew that, despite his Irish brogue, he was more American than I could ever be.

“Thanks,” I said, because I knew he meant well. I also wondered how he knew my ethnicity or religion. Maybe it had come up in one of our rare small talk chats on the stairwell. I’d noticed the Honduran family downstairs also had an American flag on the door, but not as big.

“Did you give them their flag, too?” I asked.

“No, they were smart enough to do it themselves,” he said.

The next morning, I woke up at 3 am, not to write like Stephen King but to escape nightmares. I turned on the TV. The cyclical speculation of the media circus was unbearable. I went back to my computer, attempted to escape in writing. But no concentration. As I looked at the dialogue I had written just two days before about two white characters on a mad caper adventure in Baltimore, I knew I wasn’t going to finish their conversation for them. A few months earlier, an agent had told me, “Write about white people, that’s what sells.” But now I would be labeled a Muslim writer and expected to write on “my people’s” behalf, like “Muslim” was a one catch-all person.

“My people” have not always been my best friends—whether Arabs, Muslims, American, females, writers–because they are as diverse as white people and all other labeled groups. Still, I consider it a privilege to write scenes in which “my people” exist, whether good, gorgeous, bad or ugly. I still cringe when people ask me about Islam, as if being born as a Muslim means I know all there is to know about it, that I’m a reliable source, just by birth. No one expects such oracle skills of my friends of other religions. But my characters on my computer screen today do their best to speak as real humans, not merely as “my people” even if I still question if anyone really wants to hear our stories outside of the paradigms of terrorism and oppression of women. For me personally, other early morning phone calls since Sept 11 have shattered my world far more, in ways for which I do not have words, much like I imagine the families of the victims of 9-11 and the wars that would follow it must feel. But for me the writer, 9- 11 is when I acquired a voice as a Muslim writer.

Earth Day & Best of the Fest Connection

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Alia

The Golden Harvest will have an encore screening at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival as part of the Best of the Fest screenings–Super!

Wednesday, April 24 at 4:50 pm at St. Anthony Main:

https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=436771~36893ed1-b0b9-423c-bbab-90f22d0aeafe&epguid=78d5df86-076b-41eb-9b27-8d9e012642d6&

Trees grow in White Bear Lake

I lived in a house only once in my life. For three years. It was in Minnesota in what was a kind of small town back then called White Bear Lake. I was six but I still remember the couple who lived in the house before us saying to my parents that they never had a chance to plant the yard because they had their hands full with a teenage girl that was always in trouble. That’s why they were moving. I wanted to know more about that girl but I was sent out to that empty yard. A few years ago, I went to a look. They were little stick trees when we moved away. Today, the trees are taller than the house. No olive trees, but a great apple trees.

So it fits that The Golden Harvest, which was inspired by dad’s love for trees, will play again at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival as Best of the Fest.

GETTING HERITAGE IN WRITING: This Month’s Aramco World Cover Story

Posted on April 4, 2019 by Alia

These are just some thoughts of mine after my third visit to Cape Town, this time to write this month’s cover story for Aramco World Magazine https://www.aramcoworld.com/en-US/Articles/March-2019/The-Handwritten-Heritage-of-South-Africa-s-Kitabs

Celebrating Heritage Day in Bo Kaap

The first time I saw the Western Cape, I thought “This looks just like Los Angeles,” and then I thought, “This looks just like Lebanon.” I’m not just talking about the magnificent mountains and endless sea. The townships remind me of the camps in Lebanon, certain Cape Flats areas remind me of Compton, and Simons Town, with its dramatic cliff homes and a local museum hosting a meditation workshop with Tibetan chanters, reminds me of Santa Monica. But South Africa’s landscape is all its own, mired in a history all its own. Historian Joline Young has been digging through Western Cape Archives for 20 years to recapture the town’s history, as the archives had been closed to non-whites during Apartheid. As we were walking through Simon’s Town one Saturday afternoon, “We have generations of trauma in our genes.” While that’s not biologically possible, you see a lot of people chasing their genes. That afternoon we ran into a 50-year old woman, Shirleen, whose mixed-race family was relocated (forcibly removed from Simon’s Town) during the Group Areas Act. This was her first time here, and she and her husband were trying to figure out where her uncle’s fishing restaurant would have been.

Simon’s Town’s Harbor

Zainab Davidson, better known as Auntie Patty, would have had an answer. She literally mapped the whole town from memory, which inspired her to turn her family home, Amlay House, which was confiscated during the Group Areas Act, into the Simon’s Town Heritage Museum, dedicated to preserving the Muslim heritage of the town. She is part of the story in “The Written Heritage of South Africa.” She was 60-years old then. She’s 84 today, and lives above the museum with her husband.

I sat down one day with a sheet of paper and I drew a map of Simon’s Town, all the roads, just to see if I still remembered who lived here. I remember the old fisherman, and the old Dutch church, and I remembered lane by lane the cottages, and bigger houses over there. And I took all lanes and went house by house until I had this whole map of our community here in Simon’s Town and it ended at Simons Town Station. Yeah. And then I said to my husband, man I want to start our own museum. –Zainab Davidson (Auntie Patty), interviewed at Amlay House in September 2018

The Golden Harvest to Premiere at Thessaloniki International Film Festival

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Alia

Every filmmaker making a film on her own dreams of it opening at a Top 10 ranked festival. We are delighted thus that The Golden Harvest will make its debut on March 4 at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece. Not only is it a great festival–it’s in the country with the highest per capita consumption of olive oil. We’ll post photos later. More Information on The Golden Harvest

Filming at Monte Testaccio in Rome

The Trailer for The Golden Harvest is Out

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Alia

Visit our new webpage: http://www.goldenharvestfilm.org/

In Cordoba, Spain

The Celebratory Pancake in Abundance

Posted on July 12, 2014 by Alia

In their modern day interpretation, most religious holidays that are about deprivation and/or sacrifice are counterbalanced in their present day celebration with gluttony. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Diwali and yes Ramadan. Newspapers reveled last year in stories about hundreds of people being hoisted onto emergency room stretchers in Qatar, Jordan and elsewhere, due to complications from overeating during this month of fasting. One could even go further and say that there is gluttony in the grab for power and oppression across the Middle East at this time, particularly surrounding Jordan, where I am writing from now.

Part of that greed has resulted in arrival of refugees, rich and poor, from neighboring countries, most noticeably in the past three years of Syrians, who have not only brought their broken hearts—they have brought their Ramadan efficiency. Damascus and Aleppo are known as food capitals in the Arab world, having held that reputation for centuries. However, it’s not the old traditions that got my attention the other day. It’s rather how those traditions have become so much easier to mass produce. Take for example the grandness of the atayif machines, making it cheaper and easier for us all to eat more atayif, machine that can produce 60 atayif a minute. Atayif (qatayif) is the desert of Ramadan. It’s a pancake that is stuffed with cheese or walnuts or a clotted cream sort of thing and dunked in syrup, a basic principle that carries over to many pancake recipes around the world and to Arabic sweets in general. Few nations are without a pancake of some kind, but most of them are made at home. Atayif is rarely made at home—it is bought at bakeries and stuffed and baked at home. They are actually easy to make, but when you’re fasting all day, why bother when they are so easy to buy.

Sometimes you can still find bakers on the sidewalk making them on their griddles. But mostly today, there is the atayif making machines. I wonder where these machines go and hide the rest of the year—they could be used to make some many other semi liquid batters into yummy things, perhaps say crepes. Although, an embrace of former colonial rulers’ baked goods seems to be out of vogue at the moment in Middle East.

I enjoy the watching the larger machines at work—well actually it’s bakers standing in the sun making them work. Batter goes in, atayif come out—orderly, predictable, comforting. The big machines are a big part of the newly opened Syrian bakeries. It’s likely the machines were designed in Taiwan (ANKO), maybe Lebanon, and they dwarf the smaller machines found in Jordan, never mind the griddles.

When baked, atayif is a simple food, not too rich in complications or calories–f you eat only one or two. But the machine makes it so easy to make more faster, and for some of us that means eating more faster.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe we didn’t make food machines so efficient, not only would emergency rooms be less busy, our heads would be clearer, and we’d have time to think of things that were more pressing than our adequately filled stomachs. Beyond hunger, food is an easy, relatively inexpensive way to sedate oneself—or a nation–whether it is to fill up loneliness or as a numbing device to shut out the din around us that asks us for questions that most of us feel helpless to offer, as we have no answers to solve them.

Aatayif (if you want to make a small amoutn)

1 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast

13/4 tsp. sugar

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup semolina

6 tbsp. milk

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

10 tbsp. butter, melted

For the filling:

11/2 cups shelled walnuts, finely chopped

4 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

For the syrup:

2 cups sugar

1-2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Orange blossom flower water (optional)

1. For the pancakes: Dissolve yeast and sugar in 2/3 cup warm water in a

small bowl and set aside until foamy, about 10 minutes. Combine flour and

semolina in a large bowl, then add milk and 1 cup water and beat on medium

speed with an electric mixer until smooth, 2-3 minutes. Add yeast mixture

and continue beating until batter is smooth, about 1 minute. Combine baking

soda and 1 1/2 tsp. water in a small bowl and beat into batter on medium

speed. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot until

batter is foamy, about 1 hour.

2. For the filling: Combine walnuts, sugar, and cinnamon in a medium bowl and

set aside.

3. For the syrup: Put sugar, lemon juice, and 11/2 cups water into a medium

saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring often,

until sugar dissolves, 2-3 minutes. Keep syrup warm over lowest heat. A spoon of rosewater or orange flower blossom water can be added to the syrup at this point.

4. Preheat oven to 350°. Heat a medium cast-iron or other heavy skillet over

medium heat until hot but not smoking. Brush skillet with a thin layer of

oil. Pour 1/4 cup of the batter into skillet and swirl skillet to spread

batter out to a 5″-wide pancake. Cook, undisturbed, until bottom is browned

and top is covered with bubbles and no longer moist, 1-2 minutes. Do not

flip pancake. Transfer pancake to a clean surface and cover with a clean dry

dish towel. Repeat process with the remaining batter to make 12 pancakes in

all, brushing skillet with more oil as needed.

5. Put 1 pancake, browned side down, on a clean surface. Spread 2 tbsp. of

the filling down center of pancake, fold pancake in half, and press seams

shut to enclose filling completely. Repeat process with the remaining

pancakes and filling. Brush both sides of filled pancakes with melted butter

and transfer to a baking sheet. Bake until warmed through and cheese nice and gooey, 5-6 minutes. Dunk

pancakes, 1 at a time, into the warm syrup. Serve with remaining syrup on

the side.

Another Place the Deer and the Antelope Roam (or Why Abu Dhabi is Called Abu Dhabi)

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Alia

I’ve been spending a lot more time around animals lately than I ever thought I would. And if you asked me to guess where I might one day be maximizing my time with deer and antelope, I probably wouldn’t have picked Abu Dhabi. Especially as I lived in a place called Minnesota, where people hunted them for fun and for stew and where I was much closer to the North Pole and Rudolph. I also always thought Bambi needed a forest.

Arabian Oryx at Preserve

But next time you’re in Abu Dhabi, take a look at the 50 dirham bill. It might not go far in the mall, but it will get you a cup of karak tea, a few Chips Oman sandwiches, and the chance to see look at the Arabian Oryx inscribed on it.

Dhabis

The Arabian Oryx was just about extinct until the late founder of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed, began a conservation project to save them more than a decade ago. Today, they are getting released into the wild again, but good luck spotting them in the vast, desolate horizon of rolling sand dunes. Today, the best place to see them is at the Al Ain Zoo. Unless you are lucky enough to be my senior class, who has spent the last several months working on a documentary about the vets/zoologists/international cowboys working on the UAE’s Oryx preservation project. (more on that to come).

Baby Oryx

When you see your first Oryx, he or she will look you straight on—with eyes that are the stuff of poetry. In Arabic, tell a woman has the eyes of an Oryx, and you attesting to her she has captivating beauty.

But beauty is not only what meets the eye: the Oryx have mastered the desert–they travel in herds, they are a symbol that water is near, they can outlast a camel in the heat, and they don’t let it slide if you try and mess with them. They can prance agilely at 90 kilos. And beauty is power, too. Watching what they do to each other’s horns when they fight, you know you don’t want them coming at you with them.

In a desert, these are all beautiful qualities. Something worth being named for. Indeed, Maha is a rather common name throughout the Middle East, and it is the Arabic word for the Oryx. And Maha is not alone. There is also Reem or Reema, another popular name and gazelle. And the cute little one called the Dhabi, which yes, is native of Abu Dhabi. There are lot of stories about how the dhabi helped the island of Abu Dhabi get its name, kind of like there are abundant legends about places in the US named after bears and beavers. And just maybe while English language countries don’t name baby girls after deer, gazelles and antelope, it got me thinking the word “Dear” and “Deer” in English perhaps are not that far off from each other. A rather dear deer thought that failed the test when I discovered ‘dear’ is from something that is extinct: old Norse.

My Friend Sami Deeb

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Alia

In May, I learned that I would be doing two events in Seattle as part of my book tour. I made a mental note right away to let my childhood buddy Sami D. know soon. We had grown up together, and spent hours hanging out as teenagers, he, Sami Z and me. And as adults, we’d stayed close for many years, helping each other out with life from across long distances. Of all the questions we asked each other as kids–who do you think will get married first, who do you think will leave Beirut first, even who will retire first –we had never asked each other who would die first. In recent years, we hadn’t been in contact as often, but when he had e-mailed a few months earlier, he did not tell me that he was ill. He was always in my heart, I knew he’d think it was cool that I’d gotten my book published, and he and his wife could come to the reading as for once we’d be in the same city. A week later, he passed away, as I learned through his sister, Lamya, who he had idolized.

Sami D was one of the great things in my life—kind, sweet, funny, honest and sincere, and I will always miss knowing he is here. When I was in Seattle, I had lunch with his wife, Mari, and their son, and Sami’s dad, Samir. Samir also came to my reading, and when he walked in the room, I knew Sami was there, too. Mari is one of the most amazing women anyone could ever meet, and for reasons having nothing to do with losing her husband at a young age and for lovingly taking care him during what was a difficult and painful illness. It is her wish that I share with you these words Sami wrote shortly before passing away.

As You See Me..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As you see me lying dead
Have some thoughts pop in your head.
My body silent, soul awakes
I send my love from heaven’s gates

Now gaze up high towards the light
Summon all your strength and might
I’m trusting you to do what’s right
Never leave from my spirit’s sight

Look at me, I’m resting free
Then leave and love each faithfully
Remember me as you will,
Calming waters, deep and still.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See Yourself Alive..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you see yourself alive,
Thrive and arrive at your wildest contrivance.

Believe in five criteria
To help survive trials and violence.

Seek brightness and dance.
Cry a teary river, take a chance.

Your dreams derive from being alive,
Provide pride and driving force afire.

Look into your eyes,
There are no lies there.
you are wise,
And your kindness will be all you ever had.

Sami Deeb – 2009

Conversations In LA Go To The Dogs

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Alia

Rodrigo of Hollywood

When I first got back to LA a month ago, one of the first conversations I overheard was a young woman saying to her friend “I don’t know if I can wait 10 years to be famous. That’s like forever.” To which her friend replied, “Yeah, I’m so sure it’s not as much fun being famous when you’re old.” I said to myself, “Ugh, I’m back.” But within a couple of days, I was happy to be back to the conversations in LA. and now am sad to be leaving them. They’re the conversations with some of my oldest friends and colleagues and strangers, and even when they have that distinct LA flavor, it is comforting in it familiarity.

Yesterday, I met up with my friend Elizabeth, and while we were chatting, she was also texting with her boss. About their dogs. Elizabeth’s Rodrigo is very hip to the dog scene in LA. He’s goes to a very trendy doggy day care, and saw his first psychic at a young age. (The psychic envisioned many things, including that Rodrigo would like chicken, and imagine that, he does). She let me share the conversation with her boss:

E’s Boss: Do you know or can recommend a pet psychologist or homeopathic pet therapist. My dog is having some issues with peeing in the house and my vet has ran a number of tests and it’s not anything medical. My dog walker sugested a pet psychologist or homeopathic pet therapist and I did a yahoo search and turned up nothing.

E: A friend of mine takes her dog to pet acupuncture. If you like, I can get the name for you. Rodrigo had a reading with a pet psychic. It was very insightful into his thought process. I don’t have her name, but I believe it was the pet psychic on the animal planet. She was really amazing. I can try and get her contact info.

E’s Boss: Both would be great! Thanks

E: I will work on it tomorrow.

Conversations in LA

E’s Boss: Thanks so much!