El Clon

I remember sitting with my mom and my family waiting to watch the “tevenovela” or soap opera El Clon to come on at around 9:00 pm PST in the living room of the small apartment we lived in. This soap was a Brazilian soap that the channel Telemundo broadcasted after the 9/11 incidents. The story was translated from Portuguese to Spanish… And in my house, the Brazilian soaps were something we would not miss!!! Everyone had established their beliefs against the Muslim community by now and there were many things I did not understand about this culture or what was going on in the world. I knew "Muslim terrorists" (that is what the news brainwashed everyone with) had brought the twin towers down and when I saw a person in the mall covered up, I was scared. What if that person walking around in the mall was a suicide bomber? I was so afraid of things I did not know much about… It made me shiver…

The story of El Clon, touched on many teaching of Islam and taught many of the cultural beliefs and traditions while the love story developed. As I watched and enjoyed the romance, I fell in love with the look of Jade… she was a beautiful woman who wore a veil to cover herself as she went from living in a liberal Brazil to a much stricter Moroccan environment. In the story we saw her transition and struggle in the social environment. She wore her hijab and maintained herself covered unless she was in front of family or her husband. The subject of an arranged marriage, having more than one wife, the role of women in Islam, her struggle between her modern values and Islamic upbringing played a big role in the development of the love story. I fell in love with all the other things such as her belly dancing and her use of the hijab and the love story of course. Soon the love story came to an end just like any other soap and I kept living in my high school years…