Photo by entertailion/Flickr (Creative Commons)
A portrait of Steve Jobs made from 15,000 Apple logos
Okay, so it’s one of many, many tweets of the moment mourning the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs, who died yesterday of complications from pancreatic cancer. In recent months it was reported that Jobs, who was adopted, was the biological son of a Syrian immigrant.
Today, Reuters and the New York Times have quoted from tweets written by Syrians and Syrian Americans who have claimed Jobs as one of their own and, in one Twitter user’s words, “a great Arab American.”
The Times piece cited this tweet from @ArabianSaluki, referring to the ongoing unrest in Syria as protests in opposition to president Bashar al-Assad become increasingly deadly:
The backstory: Jobs was the biological son of Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, at the time a graduate student who was born in the Syrian city of Homs. According to the Reuters story, Jandali, who is now 80, has said the couple was prevented from marrying by Schieble’s father, who ”refused to allow his daughter to marry a Syrian.”
Their son was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (Clara, interestingly, was Armenian American). Jobs and his biological father never met, although Jandali and Schieble later married. They had a daughter, novelist Mona Simpson, who became a close friend of Jobs later in life, after the two discovered their shared roots.
The father of a man whose innovations did no less than change the way in which the world communicates and does business has not done so badly himself. Jandali, formerly an academic, went on to become a casino executive and lives in Nevada. In August, he spoke with the British paper The Sun about what he called a “Syrian pride” that kept him and his biological son from connecting:
“This might sound strange, though, but I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbed, to pick up the phone to call him.
“Steve will have to do that as the Syrian pride in me does not want him ever to think I am after his fortune. I am not. I have my own money. What I don’t have is my son … and that saddens me.”
Since news of Jobs’ death began circulating yesterday, some of the tweets referring to his ethnicity have been decidedly political, like this one from @obadasafi1:
I wonder if Steve Jobs‘ biological father, a Syrian engineer, could get a visa to work in the US today. Imagine if he hadn’t.
A few have been along the lines of okay-we’ve-had-enough. The majority have expressed pride and kinship, and like this one from @HussamAlzamzami, a sense of validation:
Steve Jobs is a son of a Syrian father A message to all who doubt the Intellegence of Arab People
