By J. Zach Hollo
For Sharifa Abdulhameed Ahen, Northwestern University in Qatar is, quite literally, home. During Qatar Foundation’s inception, her family’s house happened to be on the plot of land scheduled for construction.
“Qatar Foundation bought my house, and then they built universities [on the same land], so technically I’m already at home,” Ahen said.
Ahen has three sisters and two young brothers. Her parents (a Qatari father and an American mother) met at Indiana State University, where they received their undergraduate degrees. Growing up in Qatar, Ahen said she was not aware of the distinction her mother’s nationality brought her, until one day, her mother visited her grade school.
“All the kids were like, ‘oh my God your mother is like … she’s a kafir [a non believer of Islam] cause she’s like a foreign woman with blue eyes,’” said Ahen.
“I remember crying so hard.”
Kids at her secondary school, Al Bayan, would often ask Ahen why she is so white. And once they found out that her mother was a white American, they would ask questions like, “Do you have a boyfriend?,” or “Do you go partying?” or “Do you know what alcohol tastes like?”
Ahen said that since her childhood, she is much more comfortable with people knowing that her mother is American.
“When I go to the States I’m not perceived as American … When I’m [in Qatar] I’m not always perceived as Qatari,” she said.
After graduating high school at 16, Ahen spent two years studying business administration and marketing at Qatar University. She did not enjoy it, and described QU as a place where people are simply trying to get a degree that will land them a job with a high paycheck and little work. She then applied to Northwestern University’s newly opened campus in Qatar Foundation in 2009, and pursued her interests: writing, women and cinema studies.
Ahen graduated from NU-Q’s school of communication on May 5. She says two of her favorite professors here were Quinn Miller and Hamid Naficy, two communications professors who have since left the university.
“Just being around them … I can absorb something from them because they are such intelligent people,” Ahen said. “I’ve never met people that are so smart and so accomplished and so inspirational and that actually care about the students at an emotional, personal level.”
Ahen does not know what she plans to do next, other than a six-week sojourn to the U.S. over the summer.
But she says she’d love to be a professor in the future, and wants to see NU-Q evolve into a more homegrown university, with Qatari professors. “It’s good that [expatriate professors] are training us,” Ahen said. “But at some point we [Qataris] need to start doing it.”