In August of 1897, in the small village of Henna, Syria, eighteen
miles from Damascus, Mohammed (Ed) Aryain was born. As far back as
he could remember, Ed dreamed of moving to the United States. In
the early twentieth century Syria still suffered from high taxation
and control under the Ottoman Turks. Ed saw Syrians who had been to
America returning home with gold watches and money to purchase
land, and he vowed to do the same. Although his parents did not
want him to go, eventually they relented and watched
fifteen-year-old Ed begin a 120-mile walk to Beirut to board a
steamship. He tells of his emotional first view of the Statue of
the Liberty and of his traumatic passage through Ellis Island.
Joining the network of Syrians who supported themselves by peddling
dry goods, Ed traveled across the Great Plains. Later he rented
storefronts in wild oil-boom towns in Oklahoma and Texas. Finally
he married an American woman and settled in West Texas, living in
Littlefield, Sudan, Brownfield, and finally in Seminole, where he
operated his own store on the town square until 1952. But even
after decades in the United States, a man never forgets his
homeland, and after nearly fifty years in America Ed returned
briefly to Syria to visit those who remained of the family he had
left behind. Eddie and Jameil Aryain, Ed's two sons, have each
written an afterword, providing their perspectives on this unique
piece of Americana. " A] beautifully edited memoir . . . that] not
only puts faces on Syrian emigrants but humanizes them as well"
--Great Plains Quarterly J'Nell Pate is the author of six books,
including, most recently America's Historic Stockyards: Livestock
Hotels, and a weekly history column in her local newspaper. She
lives in Azle, Texas.
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