Since George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis on May 26, Americans have been having serious discussions regarding diversity while the Black Lives Matter movement continues to fight systemic racism in the United States. The tension in Adirondack communities has also been high, as racist graffiti was found in Saranac Lake, making Adirondack Diversity Initiative Director Nicole Hylton-Patterson feel unsafe, prompting her to move outside the village.

Then on Aug. 4, a powerful blast at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, killed more than 170 people and injured thousands, thrusting the country into further political turmoil.

For Azar Ward, who grew up in Plattsburgh with parents of Lebanese descent in a mostly white city, the emotions of these summer events led her to vent … in a journal-like essay.

“Today, I am in a quandary,” she wrote. “I am envious of correspondents based in Beirut to report on the news pouring out of Syria and Iraq. I regret not honing my language (not to mention, cooking) skills. I wonder who I am.”

Azar Ward is the daughter of Dr. Massoud Azar, a Plattsburgh neurologist born in Egypt to Lebanese parents, and Amal Azar, born in Beirut. She is a 1984 graduate of St. Johns Academy and earned a bachelor’s degree in English at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, in 1988. She married Jeffrey Ward, of Jay, in May 1995 and moved to his hometown. They have twin daughters who just graduated from Keene Central School.

“In a small town in the Adirondacks, I appear exotic, one of a handful of women with black hair and olive skin,” she wrote. “But, I feel like a cheat, getting by on token ‘foreign-ess’ when I have barely kept traditions alive.”

In an exclusive interview with the Lake Placid News on Tuesday, Aug. 18, Azar Ward shared some background about why she wrote the essay and what it means to her.

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Lake Placid News: Why write this now?

M-A: From time to time, I take a stab at journal writing, and then I drop it as quickly as I pick it up. But from time to time, there are just things that sort of bubble to the surface, and I feel like I need to get it down. And when these recent events happened … I just feel like I’ve compartmentalized so much, kind of leading this very typical American life. And then I have to just sort of remind myself that there’s this other part of me. I wanted to acknowledge, and it’s a little bit of a guilt trip on myself, too, for not being more in tune with that.

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LPN: Did you feel like you stood out growing up?

M-A: I did feel like I stood out, and I continue even today, especially when I was working at Keene Central School. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I often looked around and thought, “Did they only hire blondes?” Until I met a family of Greek heritage who was in the school system, and of course we had African-American and Asian students in the school also, so I’m not saying I was the only person with darker hair. But there definitely seemed to be a predominance of individuals who are more fair. And I especially had it come into my consciousness when I would travel just a little bit south of here into the Albany area. And then you’d see more people of Italian heritage, Spanish heritage and all of these. And I definitely felt like I sort of stood out.

People often, when I was growing up — and I’ve read this as people are becoming more sensitized to cultural differences, I have read that people really take umbrage with being asked, “Where are you from?” And you say, “Well, I’m from Plattsburgh.” “No, but REALLY, where are you from?” And I actually used to enjoy it because it was kind of like a guessing game because people would run through every type of heritage they could think of that had darker hair, and they never landed on Middle Eastern at the time. I think now they would.

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LPN: Did you also have your twins in the back of your mind when you wrote this essay?

M-A: Yes, and I touch upon that toward the end that they certainly have grown up very close to my parents and have enjoyed that connection to Middle Eastern culture, especially the food. That’s such an important central part of their upbringing is knowing that my mom was making hummus or making tabbouleh or making the other dishes with lamb or the stuffed grape leaves. … And so I think that they have loved that exposure, and it’s a very important part of who they are. But they also have felt that it’s just unfortunate that they’ve never been able to travel to that part of the world. … I made a quick dash over in 2015.

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LPN: Did your twins ever feel like they stood out?

M-A: No. Have you ever seen my girls? They look exactly like my husband. They are fair and blue-eyed.

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LPN: When you wrote, “I wonder who I am,” do you think about that a lot?

M-A: I do. I do. I think that I compartmentalize, so on any given day, I’m a person formerly working at the school and being a parent and being married to a Ward here in Jay, so people have that name recognition. For many years, my father was a physician in Plattsburgh, so people always asked if I was Dr. Azar’s daughter. So I’ve always identified sort of with where I am and what I’m doing, but I don’t know that I always reveal who I am. And I think part of that is when I do take a moment to do a little bit of writing … I realize that maybe deep down I want to be a writer, but I don’t give it enough attention and time. Maybe now with my girls going off to college, maybe now is the time.

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READ the Guest Commentary here: https://www.lakeplacidnews.com/opinion/2020/08/20/thoughts-on-being-lebanese-american/