Peter Messiha, 10

As an Egyptian-American, sophomore Peter Messiha has a unique journey as a student of Carmel High School. Till recently, Messiha said hadn’t completely embraced his identity. He said, “I used to be self-conscious about a lot of things, I’m Egyptian, I don’t fit in, but now it’s not that big of a deal. I’ve just accepted it and it’s easier to live with.”

He said he was able to navigate his journey as an Egyptian-American by connecting with the large Egyptian community at Carmel. Still,  he said, there are people who will often mistaken his religion for Islam rather than Christianity and try to enrage him through his language and ethnicity.

“(At Carmel), since there’s so many people from everywhere else,  no one really judges you… If you’re by yourself and you (speak Arabic), you might get embarrassed because no one understands you. You might feel different. If there are people with you, there’s togetherness and you don’t feel alone.… There are some people that try to mess with you, some people you might know or some people that might have heard you speaking another language, might call you something just to make you mad…. It doesn’t really affect me, but that’s what happens a lot of the time ”