Marc Ramirez - Seattle Times staff reporter
May 5, 2003
An old Turkish oil lamp dangles from the ceiling. Atop a corner cabinet is a second-century cup from Lebanon, light as eggshell. Near the living-room window, surrounded by centuries-old Middle Eastern rugs, are 16-inch-high Syrian wedding shoes that once helped young brides measure up to older husbands-to-be, as if on mother-of-pearl stilts.

It's like wandering a museum of Middle Eastern history, which happens to be exactly what Rita Zawaideh has in mind ó she'd just like it to be anywhere but in her home.

With the recent looting of Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian artifacts from Baghdad's National Museum, the world has been reminded of the value of Middle Eastern antiquities. But for Zawaideh, making sure such items remain for posterity has been a longtime calling.

Over the past seven years, the Jordanian-born tour operator, Middle East business negotiator and local community activist estimates she has spent $1.5 million in pursuit of a passion fueled by both personal pride and a desire to save a vanishing past. "Everything I do is governed by my interest in the Middle East," she says.

Her efforts began nearly a decade ago, when she realized Palestinians were selling family heirlooms to cope with poverty. "They were destroying their own heritage," she says. "They needed money for survival. They were taking silver pieces off old headpieces and melting them down. I wasn't going to let it happen."

Now, elaborate face masks draped in cascading beads and chains adorn the wide, carpeted stairwells of her home.

"That's the kind of thing people were melting down," she says. "They were like pieces of art."

This silver ankle bracelet dates to about 1700, Rita Zawaideh says, and was worn by slaves in Yemen. She collects everything from jewelry to furniture.

History was being lost in other ways, too. People were shunning authentic materials to make traditional dresses or baskets with synthetic ones that were cheaper and quicker to use.

As she grew more serious about her mission, she cultivated a network of dealers she knew as reputable to contact her when they found something interesting. At times, she says ó for instance, during Lebanon's rebuilding ó she has encountered people offering stolen items, but she says she has always refused them.

Until recently, Middle East-themed museum shows in the United States have been limited to traveling exhibits, but in Detroit ó home of the country's largest Arab population ó plans for the Arab American National Museum are under way with the help of the Ford Motor Co.

Seattle, with its relatively small Middle Eastern population, seems an unlikely place to echo such an undertaking. But Zawaideh, who was just 6 when her family came to Seattle in the late 1950s, hopes to share the identity she has forged here and educate a public she sees as just as important to reach.

"It's a way to educate people," she says. "To show kids born here they can be proud of who they are. When I grew up, there would be visiting exhibits, but not established ones that encompassed the whole region, interactive ones where kids could try on clothes and smell the spices."

Salaam Cultural Museum, the nonprofit entity she formed, still lacks a permanent, public space, so for now her home is a potpourri of antiquity: There are rug beaters from Yemen, a Moroccan military rifle, a Syrian hope chest. Though she's exhibited in various Seattle Center venues and at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI), most days her collection devours every empty pocket of her residence.

How to use space, then, in such an environment? Antiquities become furniture. A weathered pot for camel-milking is now an end table. In one corner, she unlatches a centuries-old Moroccan window; behind it, her television peers from a customized, ultra-rustic entertainment center.

But, says Zawaideh: "This is too cluttered. I would not mind getting a lot of this stuff out so I can have a normal life. I want to modernize my place."

For her, it's about more than nostalgia. The travel-and-tour operation she started in 1984 after a decade spent working in Syria focuses on the Middle East region, and she produces a lecture series about her culture's contributions to science and calligraphy. At Seattle's 1990 Goodwill Games, she helped launch what would later become the annual Arab film festival.

The University of Washington graduate has spent years documenting local Arab immigration ó the first Arab family arrived in 1890, she says ó and in the months that followed Sept. 11, 2001, she became the voice of the Arab-American Community Coalition, which formed in response to concerns about nationwide anti-terrorism investigations.

"People have their hobbies," she says. "In a sense, this has been mine."

Zawaideh said there's a need to broaden the collection, which is why finding a permanent location and acquiring grants are so important. Among the members of her Salaam Cultural Museum board are Fawzi Khoury, former head of UW's Middle East library collection, and Jere Bacharach, a renowned Islamic historian and former director of UW's Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Khoury says Zawaideh's project, while not on the level of the Seattle Art Museum or MOHAI, nonetheless would provide a valuable window to the Islamic world.

"Something like that would be a great contribution to Seattle," he says. The items he has seen, he says, are "absolutely real and magnificent."

Zawaideh has amassed her collection largely while conducting business-related foreign tours. The items ornamented the walls of homes and restaurants. "Is there anything you want to sell?" she'd ask. "It got to the point where there were things I started to look for," she says.

Some items, such as village dresses and wedding gowns, bide time in her garage or in storage, many in still-unopened boxes. Occasionally she's raised the hackles of customs agents unaccustomed to travelers loaded down with ancient daggers.

Her most unwieldy possession, however, draped under sheets like a deep-sea exploratory capsule, is a huge bronze pot that she saw outside a shopkeeper's door while driving near the Turkish-Syrian border.

"I screeched to a halt," she recalls. It took four men to hoist it atop the car once she and the merchant agreed on a price. Federal Express delivered it right to her door. Now, she says, "it's just sitting in my garage. It's so sad."

She's looked in vain at old warehouses, schools and churches, hoping to find a home for the museum. With the recent loss of priceless, cradle-of-civilization treasures at Baghdad's National Museum, preserving such items is more important than ever, Zawaideh says.

Like a lot of other people, she says she cried at the news of the ransacking.

"It was a huge loss to the world," Zawaideh says.

For now, her all-encompassing quest to share a world she knows with the world around her continues a step at a time.

"It's being proud of where I'm from and wanting to share," she says. "At some point, we all look for our roots."