October 2007 - Editors' Note

Broke like a politician’s promise (shamelessly, we almost decided to tag the word ‘highly’ onto our ‘suggested donation’ of three dollars) we feel the need to mark our paths with bread crumbs of positivity so we can drive this message home (without getting lost).

a-Rabs are everywhere.

One issue into our shoestring operation--trying to preserve and capture our narrative as an isolated “Other” nation in a nation of “Others”--we found ourselves funding a rag with empty pockets and tired, blood-shot eye sockets. Between rhetoric papers and biology homework, we were struggling to make this thing work.

Is it worth it? Are we discovering a community of a-Rabs? Are there alleys and rallies full of cats that looked our slipshod magazine up and down and said “Hell yes!”?

Hell yes! a-Rabs came out of Halal markets and Delis everywhere to debke on the streets upon inception! And what did we have to give them? A sugar window (the kind stunt doubles in Hollywood get thrown out of) in a 400-copy magazine and the promise that one day, they’d have something to be inspired by.

With a couple of grain seeds in our pockets we came out of this thing with wheat thins; international notoriety and local respect; dozens of colorful narratives and characters that immediately wrapped their raps around our raggamuffin publication.

We here at the a-Rab hate to toot our own horns, and we hate name-dropping even more... but there was even word on the street that Boots Riley of the Coup gave it a scan at a local cafe. [Husam even has the signed bootleg CD to prove it, unceremoniously labeled: “Boots was Here”]

The success of this project, is nothing literate, it’s nothing text can capture:

It’s oral history.

It’s the story of not being able to find A SINGLE BOXCUTTER in the Muslim Student Association/Arab Student Union/Students for Justice in Palestine office on campus with which to open our hot-off-the-press batch of magazines (we eventually found a bunch in the College Republicans office, suprised?);

It’s about asking folks to write for our magazine only to hear the same response, ”But wait, I’m not an a-Rab!” (yes you are! read the last issue!);

It’s about borrowing resources from the Black Panther Party office in South Berkeley and having coffee and furious laughing fits with the loud Palestinian guy named Bishara who started a trucking company that employs recently incarcerated people looking for work (Running Lane Inc.: “from Jailbirds to Roadrunners”).

It’s about a new understanding of what our narrative is. It’s about a fresh beginning. It’s about our promise to stay soulful, taking the lies of imperialism apart from one issue to the next.

It’s about that spiky-haired kid with the turned back on the back page of the last issue: there’s no turning back now.

Peace all, enjoy and stay up,

Husam and Yaman