Gathering of Love unites Middle Eastern groups and community at large

College junior Renn Karageorgieva discovered a new love of Middle Eastern food in the Hall of Flags Sunday night. She was one of 300 who stopped by for Mehfil-E-Ishq, or a Gathering of Love.

The event, co-hosted by the Penn Pakistan Society, the Penn Arab Student Society and the Penn Persian Society, aimed to evoke the sort of reaction Karageorgieva had.

“The banquet is a demonstration of our culture to build bonds within our own community, and to show how unique and yet similar we are on a basic human level,” said College senior and masters of science candidate Hadi Kaakour, who is a former PASS board member.

The event showcased the three cultures’ food and music. Penn Sargam, Penn’s Indian classical music group, performed fusion pieces and a Penn Persian Society member performed flamenco guitar pieces infused with a Persian flare.

But the night focused on Western perceptions of Iran, Pakistan and the greater Middle East. The evening began with video clips made by each society showcasing their respective cultures and some misconceptions people often have about them.

In one clip, an Iranian stand-up comedian lambasted the media’s focus on portraying terrorists and said he wished to see the average Iranian represented in the public sphere, too.

“A couple years back, the phobia of terrorism, the phobia of anything foreign was very rampant,” Kaakour said. “Arab, Indian, Persian, Pakistani — people often conflated these identities.”

Kaakour was shocked at the news that Sikhs were murdered because their killers perceived their appearances to be like that of Osama Bin Laden. Most Sikhs keep long hair and beards and wear turbans. “They are victims of violence because of this image,” Kaakour said.

The program also explained this phobia can come from tension between the minority communities themselves.

Mehfil-E-Ishq aims to ease that tension by highlighting what the cultures have in common. The phrase has equivalent meaning across Urdu, Farsi and Arabic.

“We strive to make it an intercultural affair,” Wharton senior and Penn Pakistan Society president Basil Khan said.

Penn Pakistan Society hosted the first banquet in 2004 and only 30 or so Pakistanis attended. In 2010, the board decided to broaden reach outside of the Pakistani community and to collaborate with other cultural groups.

“Since then we have been growing every year,” Khan said. “Our motivation is that Pakistan has been in the news for the wrong reasons. The banquet is another forum at Penn to reach out to non-Pakistanis to show them who we really are.”

Khan said Penn has been very receptive to starting the dialogue, and the students and departments have been very encouraging.

PPS has especially benefitted from joining Asian Pacific Student Coalition in 2010 and gaining access to cultural forums.

Last semester, PPS collaborated with the Thai Student Association and Malaysians at Penn to host the banquet. Total attendance at these banquets climbed to close to 300 with a significant portion of student attendees outside of these cultures.

“There’s a lot of non-Pakistani, non-Persian, non-Arabic people here,” Engineering sophomore Lev Avagyan said, “There’s also less tables than groups of people so you share the tables and start conversations.”

For the future, PPS looks to collaborate with other Pakistani student societies to organize an over-arching conference on foreign policy issues in Pakistan.

“A minute segment of society has been magnified,” Khan said. “We are associated with an image of extremism and fanaticism. Before 9/11, Pakistan’s tourism industry from the U.S. and Europe was substantial. We prided ourselves on our hospitality. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are still like that. We want the West to visit us, to learn more about us.”

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