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I am not American and the last time I visited the United States was well over five years ago, so I do not pretend to be qualified to write on this topic. I was attracted to the title, however, because it brought to mind an experience I had a long time ago (in the early 1970s), when I was a foreign student in a U.S.university. This experience is still amazingly vivid in my 'not-as-sharp-as it used-to-be' memory.

This is not going to be an account of how I was discriminated against because of my race, color, nationality or religion. I was not - at all. Everyone; students, faculty, and town people, was more than welcoming.

This article is about confusion - the acute confusion I felt one day as I stood in the graduate student cafeteria, holding my lunch tray and looking for an empty seat at a table.

The few times I had eaten in that cafeteria before, I had rushed in at the last moment and taken the nearest seat, made conversation with whomever was seated at the table and hurried away. I hadn't noticed anything untowards - but I had not looked.

But that day I did look. Several tables were occupied, exclusively, by black students. Latinos (but I don't think that term was used then) were sitting at another cluster of tables, and the remaining tables were occupied by white students. The atmosphere in the cafeteria was friendly. 'White table' people were talking and joking with people eating at the 'black tables'. There was no 'tension in the air' or anything like that. However, there was no question that the students were seated 'by color or 'by race'.

I am a timid person, and I was almost painfully shy then. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit at a table where I might not be welcome, or where I was not supposed to sit.

I decided to sit at an empty table, pretending to read. The next morning, at breakfast, as I bent down to get a book out of my bag to read at my table, a black student came over and very nicely asked why I was alone and insisted I come meet his friends. I ate breakfast at the 'black table' that morning. It was fun, and I ate there regularly for a few days.

One day, a classmate I was writing a paper with suggested we have lunch together. We went to the cafeteria, and that day I had lunch at the 'white table', where everyone was nice too.

People often thought I was Puerto Rican. I remember a sales-lady asking me that. When I answered that no, I was not from Puerto Rico, she asked me WHAT I was.

Telling the students at that cafeteria that I was Egyptian always brought a smile to their faces no matter who, excuse me, WHAT, they were. Over the years, I made friends from diners at all of the cafeteria tables. And although I could always sit anywhere I chose, I still remember standing there holding my tray and trying to figure out what I was.

Sadly, I suspect the answer today would be easier: Muslim - and Arab, to boot.

Learn more about this author, Sawsan Elzayyat.
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