We need a new symbol

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she/With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Taken from the plaque in the Statue of Liberty exhibit, inscribed with the sonnet The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus.

Few people know that the Middle East inspired the grandeur suffused throughout the design of the Statue of Liberty, which became a beacon of hope for the world - the ultimate representation of a welcome to all newcomers, irrespective of their fortunes.

As the story of the statue shows, it could very easily have been erected in Egypt and come to represent the epitome of opportunity for the region. Its designer, French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, while on a trip to Port Saeed, was inspired by the epic scale of construction of the Suez Canal under the supervision of Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, who later became a lifelong friend of his.

According to the official history in the Statue of Liberty National Park: "[Bartholdi] envisioned a giant lighthouse standing at the entrance to the canal and drew plans for it. It would be patterned after the Roman goddess Libertas, modified to resemble a robed Egyptian peasant, with light beaming out from both a headband and a torch thrust dramatically upward into the skies. Bartholdi presented his plans to the Egyptian Khedive, [Esmail] Pasha in 1867 and, with revisions, again in 1869, but the project was never commissioned because of financial issues that the Ottoman Empire was going through".

The statue was thus intended originally as a statue of freedom for all people in the Middle East, located at Port Saeed. Ironically, 'freedom' is now a dirty, empty word for those in the region who associate it with George W. Bush's misadventures in Iraq. But one day it may come to really mean something for us.

The statue's name was supposed to be either 'Egypt' or 'Progress'. Bartholdi was so taken with Egypt's immense structures - those "granite beings of imperturbable majesty", their eyes seemingly "fixed on the limitless future" - that he attempted for two years to persuade the Ottomans to buy into the idea, losing his fortune along the way.

The statue could have become the ultimate symbol of the immigrant, of diversity, of a complex and rich tapestry of traditions, yet the Muslim world was too poor to fund it. How times have changed. Today, I'm pretty sure someone in these parts would be able to provide the money.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's United States is no longer the haven of choice for the immigrant. We're more concerned with how to make it through those checkpoints than with the American dream, while even the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court raised eyebrows, marking a radical departure more than 100 years after the Statue of Liberty was erected.

The idea of the 'other', the Muslim fifth column, has taken firm root in the imagination of the American polity and there seems to be little hope for change. Whither Liberty's path now? "When will you turn your face toward the East, O Liberty?" asked Ameen Al Rihani, the Arab-American poet who later played a dynamic role in his country's relations with his homeland.

"Shall the future never see a statue of freedom near the Pyramids?" But does Lady Liberty need to turn her face? Or could the idea that she has come to represent be relocated in its entirety?

It's abundantly clear that the Middle East now needs its own Statue of Liberty. I don't mean a direct import, like so many other absurdities, nor a sculpture in human form (to allow for all sensibilities), but a visible introduction and bold departure from the past in the form of a statement to all those who visit our shores by plane, land or sea.

I don't mean something that commemorates specific regimes, nor nationalistic landmarks, tropes that tell of victories in wars or harbingers of times to come. It's message should convey more than ahlan wa sahlan (welcome) and capture the idea of the region's destiny as the birthplace of all civilisations and the confluence for all ideas.

What other global icons do we have for immigrants to reassure them of their place among equals? If I could, I would etch the Hajar Mountains, which cradled all tribes across the peninsula and were the theatre for the Dhofar Rebellion, with a permanent message. But what would it say? And who would we choose to write it?

Habiba Hamid is an independent writer based in Dubai.