UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Pursuit of Happiness and the Other: Being a Syrian Refugee Child in America A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Farzad Amoozegar-Fassaie 2020 © Copyright by Farzad Amoozegar-Fassaie 2020 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Pursuit of Happiness and the Other: Being a Syrian Refugee Child in America by Farzad Amoozegar-Fassaie Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles, 2020 Professor Alessandro Duranti, Co-Chair Professor C. Jason Throop, Co-Chair This dissertation is based on the accounts of four Syrian refugee children who now live in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn. It focuses on the children’s narratives of their treacherous flight out of Syria into refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey, their accounts of their daily lives in the Bay Ridge area, and their views about the future. Each child has had similar experiences, coping with the tragic loss of family members and friends during the Syrian Civil War. Through their journeys the loss of the other destabilizes the self, forming a mode of being-with-other that allows the dead the possibility of “living-after.” It opens the children to being responsible for the ii wellbeing of the dead other, shaping the children’s narratives as a response to the non-responsive other. For the children, the dead other stimulates a way of being-in-the world that is constantly (re)orienting their moral experiences. The dead other becomes an open-ended engagement. This intersubjective relationship to the dead other is examined through Islamic ethics and Sūfī ideals the children have been socialized into and have learned to uphold. The dissertations focuses on Islamic philosopher al-Ghazālī’s concept of “happiness” and philosopher Ibn ‘Arabī’s notion of barzakh (“obstacle” or “separation”), the in-between space of “the world of imagination.” These concepts emphasize Islamic and Sūfī ideals as lived experiences for the children, informing individual virtues as a set of characteristic patterns of knowledge, rationality, motivation and action. The significance in examining Islamic ethics and Sūfī ideals in relation to the children’s lifeworlds is the understanding of ethics as a relationship between moral norms and unpredictable situations. These situations of unpredictability, exemplified through the openness towards the dead other, are a form of being and becoming for the children shaped through their dynamic (re)interpretation of the past and the unpredictability of the future. iii The dissertation of Farzad Amoozegar-Fassaie is approved. Marjorie Harness Goodwin Douglas W. Hollan Elinor Ochs Jeffrey Prager Alessandro Duranti, Committee Co-Chair C. Jason Throop, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2020 iv In the loving memory of my father v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ....................................................................................... II LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... IX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. X VITA/BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH........................................................................................... XIII CHAPTER ONE: THE “PURSUIT” OF HAPPINESS ................................................................. 1 FROM CITIES IN RUINS TO EXQUISITE SKYLINES ............................................................................. 6 DEATH AND THE “DEMAND” ON THE SELF ..................................................................................... 15 A TURN TO ISLAMIC ETHICS .......................................................................................................... 17 A FEW WORDS ON LANGUAGE ...................................................................................................... 23 OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS ........................................................................................................ 25 PART I. FLEEING THE WAR AND IMAGINING THE OTHER ............................................ 30 PRESENTING THE PAST ................................................................................................................... 35 ETHICS IN ACTION ......................................................................................................................... 37 FROM PRAISEWORTHY TO BLAMEWORTHY: THE IN-BETWEENS .................................................... 45 CHAPTER TWO: THE BULLET HOLES IN OUR FRONT DOOR ......................................... 48 I DIDN’T SAY GOODBYE TO AZIZ-JON ............................................................................................ 49 THE IN-BETWEEN SPACE ................................................................................................................ 57 LEARNING TO CARE FOR THE OTHER ............................................................................................. 64 THE IMAGE OF HER SMILING FACE ................................................................................................. 71 WITNESSING AN UNFOLDING TRAGEDY ......................................................................................... 77 CHAPTER THREE: A SOCCER BALL AND THE NEW TEAMMATES ............................... 81 THE INFLATED SOCCER BALL ........................................................................................................ 82 IMAGINING THE IN-BETWEENNESS ................................................................................................. 90 CHAPTER 4. LANGUAGE, GUILT AND THE OTHER ........................................................ 102 NARRATING GUILT ...................................................................................................................... 107 SOCIALIZATION INTO GUILT ......................................................................................................... 111 RESPONDING TO GUILT ................................................................................................................ 112 vi FINDING MEANINGS IN GUILT ...................................................................................................... 116 FINAL REMARK ON THE PAST ............................................................................................ 120 PART II. THE VULNERABILITY AND DELIGHT IN THE EVERYDAY ........................... 122 THE OPENNESS OF THE PRESENT .................................................................................................. 124 LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN ........................................................................................................... 127 CHAPTER FIVE. A STORY AND DREAM OF THE OTHER ............................................... 132 A STORY ABOUT THE COUNTRYSIDE ........................................................................................... 135 HOMEWORK WOES ...................................................................................................................... 145 DREAMS IN ISLAM ........................................................................................................................ 150 IMAGINING THE FACE OF THE OTHER ........................................................................................... 158 THE IMAGE OF THE DREAM .......................................................................................................... 166 CHAPTER SIX: MUSIC, IMAGINATION AND THE OTHER .............................................. 169 SCHOOL, PLAYGROUND AND MUSIC ............................................................................................ 172 MUSIC AS A LIVED EXPERIENCE .................................................................................................. 175 THE DUALITY OF IMAGINATION ................................................................................................... 184 LIKE A FACE OF AN ANGEL .......................................................................................................... 192 FINAL REMARKS ON THE PRESENT .................................................................................. 196 PART III. A FUTURE OF FORGIVENESS AND GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY 198 VENTURING BEYOND THE DARKNESS .......................................................................................... 200 THE ETHICS OF HOSPITALITÉ ........................................................................................................ 206 CHAPTER SEVEN: A LANGUAGE OF REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS ................. 208 THE SOCIALIZATION OF SIN ......................................................................................................... 209 THE GRAVE SIN ........................................................................................................................... 212 A LANGUAGE OF KNOWLEDGE, REGRET AND ACTION ................................................................. 217 THE LANGUAGE OF FORGIVENESS ............................................................................................... 224 GIVING THE PAST A NEW MEANING ............................................................................................. 228 CHAPTER EIGHT: AFTER FORGIVENESS: MORAL REPAIR AND GIVING TO ALLĀH ....................................................................................................................................................