Every Arab American should make at least one trip to Dearborn, Michigan, the unofficial capitol of the Arab American community.

The streets are lined with Arabic businesses of every conceivable type, their marquees screaming Arabic services from restaurants, law firms, car dealerships, grocery stores and bakeries.

As a child in the 1960s, I would make the nearly five hour drive with my parents from Chicago. Many of our cousins lived in Dearborn and the other sprawling suburbs that hugged Dearborn and also boasted large Arab American populations. The Arabs live in every area of metropolitan Detroit, although the largest concentration is in Dearborn, a city of 100,000 where more than a third are Arab.

Arabs made their way through Ellis Island in New York to Philadelphia, Toledo, Flint, Windsor and Detroit, drawn to the Michigan area by the never ending hunger of the Ford Motor plants for blue collar workers to man the assembly lines.

Although there were some Arabian grocery stores in Chicago, my mother loved to browse the aisles of the grocery and bakeries for ingredients for her homemade Arabian foods and desserts including mahmool, knaffah and baklawa. The only other option to secure bags of the necessary spices and oftentimes hard to obtain ingredients was to cable relatives abroad and provide long grocery lists they were obliged to stuff in their suitcases along with their clothes.

The long, slow ride to Dearborn was a family road trip many Arabs living in the Midwest would long to make. Even then, there were fast food stores where we could stop along the way besides Burger King and McDonalds that were Arab owned and operated, like Elias Brothers hamburgers. My father never ate fast food hamburgers unless they were from the Elias Brothers franchises in Michigan.

Today's Dearborn is not much different from the 1960s, although the Arab community's success has driven it into larger homes and deeper into Detroit's cultural and societal history.

Today, the map of metropolitan Detroit resembles a scrambled map of the Middle East. Most of Dearborn's actual Arab residents are mainly Lebanese and Iraqi Shi'a. Christian Palestinians from Ramallah are clustered west of Dearborn past Livonia. A tight pocket of Yemenis are living in Hamtramek, east of Detroit. Iraqi Chaldeans, the largest group, live in several areas stretching from Orchard Lake to Sterling Heights and Highland Park. The Syrian and Lebanese Christians live north in Troy. Throughout these communities are Arabian owned businesses of all kinds. But they're spread out. Dearborn, though, is concentrated with them.

As such, many Arab centers have found permanent homes in Dearborn representing all of the communities. On Chase Avenue is the offices of the Arab American News Newspaper, one of the most professional English language publications in America, publishing since 1985.

In May 2005, the Arab American National Museum opens at Michigan Avenue and Schaefer Road on the south side. On the West Side near Southfield Freeway (39) is a cluster of Christian and Muslim religious centers. The new Islamic Community Center with its towering minarets is the largest mosque in America, completed in 2005. Next door are several Orthodox churches. On their immediate north border is St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Parish. As fate has it, the only entrances to the mosque and Arab churches are from Ford Road (153). Behind it, the streets have been blocked, cynics might say to keep Arabs from other areas of Arab Detroit from wandering mistakenly into the non-Arab Catholic areas.

The Arab perimeter is bounded by four main roads, Livernois on the east, Michigan Avenue on the South, Warren Avenue on the north and Evergreen on the West. This rectangle is divided from north to south by several intersecting roads including Schaefer, Chase, Greenfield and Southfield. Many of the best restaurants are located on Warren Avenue and across the town on Michigan Avenue.

In addition to touring the new museum, and visiting the Orthodox and Catholic churches and the new Mosque, visitors will want to eat at any of a number of great Arabian restaurants.

My favorites include Al-Ajami at Chase and Warren in a large strip mall called the Arabian Town Center that is filled with Arabian stores and where Arabian music blares into the streets from speakers. The waiters will bring out large dishes of pickled light red beets and pickled yellow colored cabbage. The cabbage is fresh and both are great pre-meal snacks. You'll get the dish with a "Marhaba" from the staff. The tabouli is a mixed diced.

Menus offer the same foods, but prepared slightly different depending on the national origin of the restaurant owners. Mainly, you'll see the differences in the salads and in some of the entres such as stuffed grape leaves, hot and filled with rice and lamb in Palestinians restaurants and chilled and vegetarian drenched in olive oil.

Further east on Warren Avenue at Miller Road is Al-Ameer, with its tightly packed seating and tables, but distinct Lebanese and Southern Lebanon Shi'a foods. The kibbee nayeh (steak tartar) is deep red and tasty. The tabouli is heavy in parsley, topped in diced tomatoes. When you sit down, the tables have salt and pepper shakers, and small bottles of olive oil. You may also notice that the Arabian bread is of a smaller diameter, about six inches, puffed out from the heat. They're made with and without sesame seeds. In Chicago, for example, the Syrian bread is usually 12 inches in diameter and thicker.

Nearby is another favorite, Cedarland. Next door to the Arab American National Museum is Adonis, with its Arabian entertainment and meals. Across the street is the Pineland Restaurant. Another great spot on Warren Avenue is Shatila Bakery & Grocery which offers a Starbucks atmosphere in a large crescent-shaped dining area with three large (not real) palm trees in the center. Shatila offers the widest selection of pastries, some stuffed kibbee and meat patties and coffees at separate counters.

As you drive through the streets of this municipal bazaar, you'll be overwhelmed with billboards promoting realtors and attorneys with Arab names. And at each restaurant, you'll find copies of the three popular publications, the Arab American News, Community Bridges published by the Arab American Chamber of Commerce, and a new publication called The Forum & Link which features many fascinating features, profiles and news stories. These are great places to start with when deciding where to eat or visit. They're packed with information in English and Arabic. You'll also find listings for several important Arab American organizations including ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), the ADC (American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee), and the Arab Chamber.

All of these centers and publications welcome visitors and will even help set your tourist navigations. At the local Borders, where the manager is an Arab American, you can also pick up copies of Arab Americans in Metro Detroit, authored by one of the museum board members, Anan Ameri, and published by Arcadia Press.

If you haven't visited Dearborn or Metropolitan Detroit. you must make the hajj. If you have been there, you'll want to go back and return to the heart of your cultural roots.

Nowhere is my pride strengthened more as an Arab American than when I visit Dearborn and wade through its thick, rich Arabian cultural and national diversity.