Corpus Christi Caller · Corpus Christi, Texas · 29 July 1973

CP-1973-006

Palestinian food, music survive

Transcribed from the clipping

“Mrs. Donald Hanna, the former Norma Pennon, discussed Palestinian wedding customs. ‘Weddings are usually large and elaborate,’ she said. ‘There is a lot of singing and dancing. In fact, guests go to the home of either the bride or the groom several nights before the wedding, so that there is a series of parties.’ The guests compose songs spontaneously in Arabic and make specific references to the bride and groom. The odd, bamboo flutes and the durbaeque are used to welcome the guests. The durbaeque is a small, highly-ornamented drum. The Hannas were of the Syrian Orthodox faith and are now members of the Episcopal Church. Hanna has never returned to his hometown, Ramallah. The town had been the scene of considerable fighting during World War I when he was still a boy. Their home was 10 blocks from the downtown area and cannons sounded for four or five days during one fight between the Turks and the English. Other homes were destroyed, but the Hannas’ house was not hit.… ‘Family ties are very strong and we are stricter with our children than most people,’ Dr. Hanna said. ‘Grandparents play an important role; they are looked up to and their wisdom is depended on.’… ‘When I was growing up here, I learned what discrimination was because people thought I was a Mexican-American,’ Dr. Hanna said. ‘I used to tell them that if they wanted to dislike me, then do it for what I was.’ He helped in the grocery story and later worked his way through college and dental school as an ice man, in a filling station, as an oilfield roughneck and as a Fuller Brush salesman… His father said that sometimes discrimination closed doors to Middle Eastern immigrants. He recalled not being able to eat in places in Refugio when he was still traveling… The number of Arabic-speaking families in Corpus Christi was still under a dozen when Mr. and Mrs. Said Karam and their daughter, Amelia, came here from Omaha, Neb., in 1929.”

Photograph caption

A family group of thirteen, three generations of Hannas, named individually in the caption: Mrs. Fahed Hanna holding Robert Hanna Jr., Gail Hanna, Fahed Hanna, Iris Hanna and Kelly Hanna in the foreground; Dr. and Mrs. Donald Hanna and Chrissy in the middle row; Owen Hanna, Mrs. Robert Hanna and Robert Hanna behind.

Context added by this archive

A Sunday feature on the Arabic-speaking families of Corpus Christi, in which the Palestinian one gets its own standing head: Palestinian food, music survive. What survives is a wedding — nights of parties before the day, songs composed on the spot in Arabic naming the bride and groom, bamboo flutes and a small ornamented drum the paper spells durbaeque. A dentist who worked oilfields and sold Fuller brushes says the discrimination he grew up with was for being taken for Mexican-American. Thirteen members of the family are named in the photograph caption.

Cite this item

"Palestinian food, music survive," Corpus Christi Caller, 29 July 1973. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1973-006. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1973-006

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• Downing Airliner Also TerrorismThe Miami Herald · 14 March 1973 · the same year
• Arab women in the Jabalia refugee camp get their UN-supplied foodNewsday · 27 May 1973 · the same year