Culturally and anthropologically, there are unique similarities between us. When I used to sit in front of the television in my early teens, I watched an American cartoon about ants that decided to travel the world. Giggling at these tiny insects' goal of circling the earth, I was prepared to identify whichever country these ants reached. Surprisingly, the first destination was a desert where everyone wore baggy clothes, with Arabian oud strings and drums playing in background, which created a tune very familiar to my heart.

Suddenly, the ants mastered dance moves that were close to ours, not to mention the female ant wore a dress that had strong similarity to our fashion taste. This made me jump to the conclusion that they had crawled to us all the way from the US in a single episode. However, the hero shouted it out loud that they had just crossed the Mexican borders. I asked my father how these people called Mexicans are so close to us in everything, only to receive the usual answer: "We ruled Spain for 600 years."

But is it that simple? Early images of Latin America show how Christian women used to wear veils and garments that are carbon copies of the bedouin woman's abaya, which is a large black piece of fabric that covers her whole body and face, only keeping her eyes exposed. Not to mention how Hispanics are quite famous for their strong family ties that resemble the tight-knit family relationships in Arabia, in contrast to the mostly popular Western concept of the nuclear family, with the shaming of 18-year-old boys and girls to not stick with their families anymore.

Nonetheless, did Latinos get all of these traditions from Muslims? Or was it all there before Arabs reached Andalusia? It is not scientific to answer the former question with a confident "yes, we exported it all", nor is it historically sound. A French study on genetics found out that Berbers and Iberian peninsula tribes have the exact same genetic root - some attribute this relation to the fact that modern-day Morocco and Spain were geographical conjoined. The same family warmth and the velocity of speed are some of the traits they inherently shared even before Arabs reached West Africa.

Case in point - the Moroccan Arabic dialect is the fastest in all Arabia, as the case is of Spanish, which is of Latin origin, compared to the rest of European languages. Moroccans and Iberians used to have a large amount of these qualities that they shared already. Plus, the Muslim invasion was not an Arab invasion in the most part - it was a Moorish invasion led by Arab leaders, with a religion that its followers' believed was the the completion of Jesus of Nazareth's message, peace be upon him.

What does all of this say to the closeness of Latinos and Arabs in our modern life? There is no close biological relationship between Arabs and Latinos, not to mention the fact that Berbers and Arabs are two completely separate races with distinct cultural identities. However, human beings aren't defined by their vessels, but by their minds and morals, ie culture. And the more we untangle Arabic and Latino history, language, and arts and even cuisines, the more akin we seem. This is our special harmony that time has chosen not to erase, but to further compose, ever so gorgeously.

By Jeri Al-Jeri