|
February 25,
2002
NAKED FROM SIN
The Ordeal of Nahla and
Sami Al-Arian
By Alex Lynch
There were no streetlights down the long back-road;
the arms of the yellow gates were left open just enough for a
car to fit through. The darkness of the hidden stretch of road
left the Muslim community center of north Tampa secluded from
the outside world.
In the parking lot, a photographer was
politely asked to leave until she said she had an appointment
with one of the sisters. Effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
on Muslim communities in America have been powerful. Many Americans
reach out in understanding; others have sought retribution through
vandalism and intimidation.
The children didn't seem to notice anything
had changed. A dozen of them ran from the playground past the
Mosque and through the courtyard squeaking and sweating on a
humid January night under the floodlights. Nahla Al-Arian walked
quickly out of the community center for greetings and offered
tea for comfort. A number of women dressed from head to toe in
finely detailed cloth chatted to one another in Arabic and offered
to watch Nahla's youngest daughter while she spoke with the reporter.
Being an Arabic woman in the United
States has proved trying since Sept. 11, being a Palestinian
is another matter entirely. Once, while at a local mall, Nahla
offered to help a woman with her baby carriage down an escalator.
The woman gasped and pulled the carriage away from Nahla as if
she were "going to kidnap the child," Nahla said. Because
she wears a hijab (Islamic head-covering) she has often been
looked at in trepidation and mistrust and when she and her kids
visited her homeland in 1998, now occupied by Israel, they felt
they were looked at like "animals and terrorists".
Nahla's older brother Mazen, spent 3
years of his life in federal custody without being charged for
a crime, 1,307 days from 1997-2000. The secret evidence the government
had held against him proved not to be so incriminating according
to an Immigration and Naturalization Services judge.
Nahla spent those three years fighting
for his release and lobbying to end the use of secret evidence.
In November of last year, while doing
laundry, Mazen was again detained after Attorney General John
Ashcroft received powers given to him by Congress to round up
those he felt were a risk to national security. Two months earlier
in late September, her husband was put on 'paid leave' from his
job as a tenured professor of computer engineering at the University
of South Florida for an appearance he made on the conservative
talk show The O'Reilly Factor. O'Reilly claimed Al-Arian had
ties to terrorists and pointed to an earlier speech he made when
a comment was translated in English to "Death to Israel".
Al-Arian said the producer deceived him by saying he was to speak
for the Muslim community in the U.S. to educate viewers and
avoid unwarranted attacks on American-Arabs.
In December, when Sami's student and
faculty supporters were gone, the university's board of trustees,
a group of local conservative business leaders hand-picked by
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, recommended to university President Judy
Genshaft that Al-Arian be fired. Nahla's husband of 23 years
has been the center of attention in local news and has received
quite a bit of national news as well. He's been called a terrorist
link in the United States by some pundits in the media, but has
also been a rallying point for civil libertarians and academicians.
Their eldest son Abdullah, a Duke University
undergrad and intern to Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., was asked
to leave the White House without explanation while attending
a briefing with members of the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
The incident caused all other groups participating to walk out
in protest.
The FBI has shown up unannounced, searched
her home and confiscated some of the family's possessions. There
have been death threats on her husband and the media have humiliated
her family. Since Sept. 11 she and her family have been treated
with suspicion, harassed and yet her voice remains soft and
centered, her movements are gentle and direct.
"She is such an inspiration,"
Jodi Nettleton, co-president of Graduate Assistants United at
USF and a campus activist said. "She is so strong and has
such courage to stand up during these times. And she's just such
a sweet woman."
Although she's been through a lot before
and after Sept. 11, she is a woman who says she can't complain.
Talking to a reporter seems like too much attention, but she
does offer some insight. "You know, sometimes I wake up
at five in the morning and I start thinking about all of this
and can't get back to sleep," she said staring at her thin
fingers through her hijab. "I feel very scared for my family
and I feel insecure."
"This is stuff she's had to go through
her whole life," Laila Al-Arian, Nahla's daughter said.
"She's a Palestinian refugee. She's very strong in her
convictions even though she's soft spoken."
Only Mazen, the eldest, was born in Gaza
in a country once called Palestine. Nahla was born in the city
of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 75 miles northeast of the holy city
of Mecca. Her father was an Arabic teacher there and supported
the family, which eventually grew to seven children. Nahla was
a shy young girl who didn't speak much, remained dedicated to
religion and studied meticulously at school. Nahla's father knew
the value of education especially for stateless Palestinians.
He made it a priority for all of his seven children and made
countless sacrifices to ensure that they were given a higher
education in college. "My father always used to say, 'education
is a Palestinian's only weapon,'" Nahla said.
When Nahla was very young, her father
brought the family to the occupied Palestinian territories (Nahla
still refers to it as Palestine) every year for vacation to keep
the old homeland close to his children's heart. Nahla remembers
a little family that lived in Gaza whom was close to her family
when they vacationed during those long hot summer days in the
early 1960s. She remembers the family was not rich, but didn't
struggle, most of all though, she remembers how happy and humble
they were. Speaking of that little family brings a smile to
Nahla's face.
In the beginning of the summer of 1967,
Nahla's father again prepared his family for a vacation in Palestine.
Days before departure on June 5, the news came through her father's
little transistor radio in Jeddah. The Israeli army had attacked
and bombed the Egyptian air force that lay idle. The Six Day
War had begun.
"My father literally fainted and
fell on the floor right in front of everybody when he heard the
news on the radio," Nahla said. "It was devastating."
At the end the Six Day War, Israel, armed by the Americans, humiliated
the Arab world. Israel now occupied Syria's Golan Heights, Egypt's
Sinai as well as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in Palestine.
The biggest embarrassment though, was the loss of Jerusalem.
Gamal Abd-Al Nasser, the charismatic
Egyptian socialist president who tried so hard to unite the Arab
world in a Pan-Arab political alliance, offered to resign afterwards.
By 1971 the political environment in
the Arab world had changed. The Saudi Arabian leaders had begun
a closer relationship with the West, and Palestinians, already
immigrants there, were finding it more difficult to stay. It
wasn't long before Nahla's father began having trouble with the
Saudi government.
"The whole situation was very similar
to Mazen's many years later," Nahla said. "There was
a lot of secrecy involved."
Nahla's mother was crushed.
"She cried as if somebody died,
she was very scared about what the future held for us,"
Nahla's brother Mohamed said.
The family was again displaced and unsure
of what to do. In a moment of clarity, or necessity, Nahla's
father decided on Cairo.
Contrasting her mother, 11 year-old Nahla
was very excited to move from Saudi Arabia to the cultural center
of the Arab world. Cairo was a place of modern buildings, the
arts and excellent education and was the center of the Arab world
for women's freedom. She would no longer be forced to wear a
hijab, she would have a choice in Cairo. "Saudi Arabia was
much more strict, especially for women. Segregation was everywhere.
In Cairo, women had choices. I was very happy to leave Saudi
Arabia even though my mother was upset."
At 12 years-old in October 1973 Egyptian
president Anwar Sadat earned the respect of his countrymen when
he invaded the Sinai on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Eventually
the Israelis countered and sped toward Cairo where Nahla was
introduced to war. Living in Eastern Cairo with Israeli planes
flying above, the family got up in the middle of the night to
break the Ramadan fast but wasn't allowed to turn the lights
on for fear of Israeli bombs. The young family was left in the
dark and if someone accidentally turned on a light in the house,
neighbors would scream at them to turn it off for fear of being
targeted.
"That was the worst thing, I don't
ever want to experience anything like that again." Nahla
said. At 14 years old Nahla was devastated when she witnessed
the death of a close girlfriend who was run over by a street
trolley right next to her. The difficulty in watching a close
friend die stayed with her for many years.
During those years in Cairo, there was
a cultural revolution. Cairo was being heavily influenced by
the West, Sadat was liberalizing the economy and the Americanization
of Cairo was in full swing. Like many girls in Cairo, Nahla stopped
wearing her hijab. She went to the movies, public parks and
enjoyed the open society.
But when she reached the age of 15, she
began to have deep questions about life and faith and drew inspiration
from a close friend who was a devout Muslim. Unlike most girls
her age, Nahla began wearing her hijab again and started taking
religion seriously.
She was ridiculed by some men in Cairo
for wearing it in a time of social change. There were very small
Islamic youth movements beginning though. Cairo was starting
to show the ugly side of Westernization such as greed, disparities
in wealth and sexual promiscuity. Mosques began to reach out
to those in need, a place where the increasing amount of poor
people could go for free schooling, food and medical attention
which outlines the traditional sense of Islamic charity in the
Arab world.
"People turned to God for justice.
Going back to God was a revolt against mass consumerism and wearing
the head-covering was a revolt against being treated as sex objects
for young woman," Nahla said. "It was liberating to
wear the hijab again."
An Islamic Marriage It was about this
time that Nahla's older brother Mazen began hanging around with
another Palestinian. His name was Sami Al-Arian. Nahla never
paid any attention to Sami, he was just another guy to Nahla.
Yet the friendship between the young Palestinian boys in Cairo
was a very special and intellectual one. They went to lectures,
spent their money on books and conversed for hours at a time
on philosophy, religion and politics.
"My parents used to get mad at Mazen
for spending all of his allowance on books," Nahla said
proudly. "Mazen is a walking encyclopedia, he really has
a photographic memory."
Nahla's grades were excellent, even better
than Sami's. When it was time for college she chose to study
English Literature even though she was accepted to study medicine.
She studied Shakespeare, Milton, Keats and Blake and was enjoying
college life.
Every once in a while she would sneak
into Mazen's room and read letters that were written to him from
Sami who had moved to America and was studying engineering at
the University of Illinois. Sami was very active in America,
he organized Islamic groups, gave speeches on awareness of Islam
and even went to prisons to speak to Muslim inmates.
"I learned a lot about him through
his letters," Nahla said. "I loved reading those letters
and I learned a lot about his personality. I was impressed."
In 1979, after earning an undergraduate
degree in engineering, Sami came back to Egypt to look for a
wife. When Mazen said his younger sister was available Sami jumped
at the opportunity, as he had already been attracted to her for
some time. And thus began the four steps of an Islamic marriage.
First, Sami's mother came to visit Nahla
and although they never once spoke of Sami, Nahla was quickly
given approval. "My mother and grandmother fell in love
with her," Sami said. Second, the future bride and groom
sat down together to make sure there was a mental and mutual
agreement.
"After one visit we felt we were
ready to accept an engagement," Nahla said. Third, the men
of Sami's family gathered with the men of Nahla's family for
a formal marriage proposal. Nahla's father traveled from south
Yemen and didn't accept Sami's proposal until he got the word
from Nahla that she was sure. Nahla's father had only one stipulation,
after starting a family Sami had to promise that he would see
to it that Nahla would finish her education, of which Sami agreed.
The fourth step is the signing of the
marriage contract finalizing the union. Nahla is quick to point
out where she comes from marriage is important and not taken
lightly. "In our culture, a man enters through the front
door, not the window," Nahla said. "To go to the family
of the woman to ask for her hand shows that he is willing to
commit. Marriage is not just between a man and a woman, but
between two families," Nahla said.
Sami said he had been attracted to her
years before he proposed but never said anything and after reading
Sami's letters to Mazen, Nahla felt attracted to him from a distance
as well. "I had proposals from other men who were much richer
than Sami. But because he was religious and I felt I we were
connected, I chose him."
By then, Sami had been accepted in a
graduate program in computer engineering at North Carolina University.
As an English Literature student in Cairo, Nahla thought she
would be able to understand English when she arrived in North
Carolina. "Wow was I surprised, I didn't understand a single
word, it was nothing like what I had studied," she said.
In order to learn, she started watching
Star Trek re-runs over and over until she improved.
By 1981 she had given birth to Abdullah
and Laila. Abdullah now is a senior at Duke University majoring
in political science and history, a columnist for The Chronicle,
a campus newspaper. Laila is an undergrad at Georgetown University
and was recently elected to the editorial board of La Hoya, also
a campus newspaper.
After Leena was born in 1985, Sami fulfilled
his promise to his father-in-law and Nahla went back to college
after a six-year hiatus earning a degree in religious studies
from USF and has had two of her papers published in nationally
recognized periodicals.
For many years she lived the American
dream. She was free to teach Islam in the Muslim community where
she now has 270 students from many different countries and races.
After graduating from North Carolina University, both Sami and
Mazen were offered doctoral degrees from USF and afterwards were
given jobs as professors at the Tampa university. Both Sami and
Mazen organized groups centered around Arab and Palestinian causes.
The World and Islam Studies Enterprise and the Islamic Concern
Project.
After the first bombing of the World
Trade Center in 1993 was connected to a previous speaker for
WISE both Mazen and Sami were targeted by the U.S. government
for whom they were associated. Later, another speaker ended up
becoming the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant
group connected to terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.
The links prompted an FBI to investigate
and brought unwanted attention to USF. Both Sami and Mazen were
placed on paid leave in 1995 pending the FBI investigation, and
an inquiry by William Reece Smith, an attorney hired by the university
to conduct an inquiry on his own. Lama, the youngest in the family,
had a nightmare about one of the FBI agents that searched Nahla's
home.
Sami was eventually given his job back
but in 1997, Mazen was detained by federal agents without being
charged for a crime. The Secret Evidence Act allowed the government
to hold illegal aliens it deemed a threat to national security.
The detention became a national issue
and catapulted Sami into the national spotlight in his stance
against the use of secret evidence. But Sami was not alone Nahla
and many other Muslim women gave speeches in New York, Washington
D.C., Georgia and Michigan.
"It was the Muslim women that stood
up for Mazen the most. Many of the men were themselves scared
of secret evidence.. For myself, I had to learn to push my shyness
to the side to be able to speak in public but I had no other
choice," Nahla said showing off smiling pictures of George
W. Bush on his 2000 campaign trail holding her youngest daughter
Lama in his arm.
On a nationally televised debate, after
three years of working the legal system for Mazen's release,
Republican nominee for president Bush spoke out against the
use of secret evidence.
"Millions of people were listening
to him when he said that," Sami said. "I couldn't believe
what I was hearing. At that moment, he had every American Muslim
on his side."
By October 2000, Judge R. Kevin McHugh,
after viewing the government's secret evidence against Mazen,
released a scathing review of the government's mistreatment of
Mazen and proclaimed that "WISE was a reputable and scholarly
research center and the ICP was highly regarded. Not one excerpt
of the composite depicted (Al-Najjar) engaging in fundraising
for any (terrorist) organization."
The government then appealed to Attorney
General Janet Reno to review the case on behalf of the government
to which she denied. In November, Mazen was finally released,
but the government had been embarrassed.
When the tragedies of Sept. 11 occurred,
Sami, Mazen, Nahla and the Muslim community of north Tampa immediately
released a statement distancing and denouncing them as acts of
cold-blooded murderers. But the USA Patriot Act was pushed through
by a landslide and in a perplexing move, the government suddenly
linked Mazen to terrorists again in a statement released through
the Department of Justice even after Judge McHugh thoroughly
denied the government on every front less than a year earlier.
On Sept. 26, Sami was asked to appear
on The O'Reilly Factor where, according to Sami, he was to speak
for Muslim Americans in the U.S. Sami was then questioned by
host Bill O'Reilly about ties to terrorists and then mentioned
that if he were the FBI, he'd be following Sami everywhere he
went. Over the next few days, threats were sent to USF where
he was a professor of computer science. The administration immediately
put Sami on paid leave until an investigation of the threats
was undertaken and the campus calmed.
On Nov. 13, 2001, an Atlanta appeals
court ordered Mazen deported, yet, no country was willing to
take him since he had been considered a terrorist threat in America.
Add to that the fact that he is a stateless Palestinian and
he has absolutely nowhere to go.
Yet 15 INS agents took him by surprise
and pushed him to the pavement in his apartment complex while
he was doing laundry and didn't identify themselves until after
he was
subdued.
"He thought he was being kidnapped,"
Nahla said. "He had no idea who they were." Mazen's
daughters were still in the apartment and when the agents finally
told him who they were, he struggled to let his daughters know
what was going on. Mazen was then manhandled by the agents as
was apparent by the bruises and scratches on his arms and hands.
His daughters didn't know until over an hour later what had happened
and for a week the family and his lawyers had no idea where
he was taken.
Since that day in November last year,
Mazen has been under 23-hour solitary confinement in Coleman
Federal Correctional Facility about 75 miles north of Tampa.
He is only allowed one phone call per week for 10 minutes, three-hour
visitation on weekends only and is strip-searched twice a day.
"They even check behind his ears for weapons," Nahla
said. "If it was already held in an open hearing that he
is not a threat, why detain him again in a high security correctional
facility?" Martin Schwartz, a Tampa attorney defending
Al-Najjar said.
Three days after Mazen was detained,
Nahla and Sami appeared on a live local television show, The
Cathy Fountain Show. A neighbor in Mazen's apartment complex,
who witnessed Mazen's detention, called the show and described
how Mazen was treated "like a dog" and went on to explain
that it reminded him of how blacks were treated during the civil
rights era.
"I just started crying," Nahla
said. "I was shocked to hear the description of how my brother
was arrested because until that day, we hadn't heard from him.
Then (Cathy Fountain) asks me what I thought of it while we were
on live television."
"It seems heartless and inhumane
to detain him now," David Cole, a constitutional law expert
at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington said (in November).
Unfortunately, Mazen's health is deteriorating.
He was detained during the holy month of Ramadan where Muslims
fast and one of his attorney's, Joe Hohenstein said he and Mazen's
family were "worried that he may not be receiving proper
treatment for his diabetes."
"Nothing is helping my brother,"
Nahla said. "He is suffering terribly from the 23-hour
solitary confinement."
On one of the family's weekend visitations
recently, Lama was complaining about school and Mazen began crying.
"He cries for anything," Nahla said. "He even
cries when he prays. "
Life went from bad to worse for Nahla
when USF's board of trustees called for an emergency meeting
to discuss what to do about Sami who was still on paid leave.
The board recommended to university president Judy Genshaft in
a 12-1 vote that Sami be fired, the single vote coming from the
only academic on the board. University Provost David Stamps immediately
sent Sami a letter of intent to termiate.
By the time school had come back in session,
controversy split the campus in two and a national debate has
since ensued. On Jan. 9, 2002, the USF Faculty Senate voted not
to support Genshaft's intent to fire because of the lack of due
process at the clandestinely held emergency meeting in December.
Afterward, the state and national faculty union, the ACLU and
numerous civil libertarian groups followed suit as well as scathing
editorials from the local St. Petersburg Times to the New York
Times and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
also sent words of discouragement to Genshaft.
The student government voted to support
Genshaft although 14 of the 36 senators abstained because they
said the student body hadn't been properly polled to represent
them. The Coalition of Progressive Student Coalitions, which
includes 15 campus groups, decided unanimously not to support
Genshaft and so did the graduate assistants union.
Although most people don't agree with
Sami's views of the Middle East with statements such as 'Death
to Israel,' what is at issue with the firing of Sami is academic
freedom, especially for a tenured professor as he is. "Sami
didn't mean death to any particular person or peoples when he
said that," Nahla said of the English translation 'death
to Israel.' "He only means death to the occupation. The
Palestinian people are treated like dogs and it just such a
horrible injustice."
Many people have also questioned Sami
why he even went on O'Reilly's show in the first place and find
it hard to believe he is gullible enough to get duped by the
show's producers. "It's true, he always thinks positively
of people," Nahla said. "We have to treat all people
with positive assumptions until they prove otherwise. As Muslims,
we believe in the goodness of human nature and that people are
not evil."
Nahla smiles proudly and shows the remnants
of her old shyness when she speaks of her husband and in a passing
tone mentions that the word "Arian," Sami's last name
and the name she adopted when she married him, actually means
'naked from sins' in Arabic. Although she has grasped the courage
to overcome her shyness to speak in public and has avoided becoming
cynical, the effects of having her husband and brother arrested,
treated like second-class citizens and admonished in the media
are beginning to show.
"She's definitely been affected
by all of this," her brother Mohamed said. "She is
not the same person as she was before Mazen was first taken in
1997. She was much stronger and happier then."
"I felt at home here until Sept.
11," Nahla said. "After that I've felt like I'm living
in a nightmare. I don't know what will happen to my husband
and my brother or my kids.
"I have a lot of sleepless nights
because of these worries," she said. "I feel better
after reading the Quran. When I put my sacrifice in place of
other Palestinian women, I feel grateful that (Mazen and Sami)
are still alive. Then I think I'm not suffering enough. God gives
me patience and makes me feel guilty if I complain."
The media has been a quandary for Nahla.
At once it has been extremely helpful, cruelly invasive and inflammatory.
Bill O'Reilly of The O'Reilly Factor first created the problem
for Sami by digging up speeches he made 12 years earlier and
later took a stand against the USF administration's intent to
fire, while calling for the head of President Genshaft.
"I have anxiety when I watch American
television, especially talk shows that are sometimes very aggressive
toward Muslims in general," Nahla said. "I feel tormented
by the media how it portrays that American people are against
us."
She then goes on to explain that the
people she meets are not against her family and speaks of when
she recently visited a friend at Tampa General Hospital. A white
man who was walking by shook Sami's hand and wished him and
his family good luck.
One particular media critic, NBC terrorism
correspondent Steven Emerson, has gone after the family with
a fervor and at a speech given locally in January mentioned he
was very hopeful that Sami would be picked up by the FBI in the
next coming days.
"I was crying everyday after that,"
Nahla said. "You know, they accuse us of being hateful after
so much horrible injustice. I just can't understand it sometimes.
The media doesn't look at us as if we're human beings sometimes."
The Muslim community where Sami is imam,
or preacher, is a 15-acre piece of land that includes a mosque,
school, playground, a center for picnics and offices. At their
Muslim community, 20 percent of the board of directors are women
and includes members of six different countries.
"Sami is the one who wanted to open
the board for women," Nahla said. "Every member's vote
weighs equally." Recently though, the most important aspect
of the community to Nahla is the emotional support she gets from
her friends. Especially now that her brother is back in jail
and Sami is under fire.
"I am very lucky," Nahla said.
"When I feel sad my friends surround me, without their help
I wouldn't be able to make it. If I ever need help with my children
they are there for me. They just want me to ask for help so they
can reach out to me."
The parochial school in the community
where Nahla is a teacher has over 270 students. "We teach
tolerance," Nahla said. "We are proud of the fact that
it has a wide curriculum. Above all, we emphasize tolerance and
promote fairness."
Nahla is a religious woman and takes
pride in the fact that Islam accepts other forms of religion.
"God wanted people to be able to choose," Nahla said.
She explains that Osama bin Laden and
the Taliban are a very small group of extremists out of 1.2 billion
faithful. "It is not fair to judge Islam by a small group
of crackpots," Nahla said.
Yet, the community is isolated from the
rest of Tampa, secluded down a long stretch of road. Muslims
are still new to America and the adjustment to understand American
culture has not been an easy one. Many times, Nahla's students
tell her they are scared of the clash of cultures. They feel
Americans don't want to understand their culture and ever since
Sept. 11, they've become a source of hatred. One of the sisters
spoke about how a man was following her in his car and how she
took off her head covering to avoid him. Nahla said American
women sometimes smile at her strangely.
In 1998, Nahla decided to take Abdullah,
Laila and Leena to the Palestinian territories to get a sense
of where they come from. They landed in Cairo where they took
a six-hour cab ride to the Egyptian-Palestinian territory border
where Israeli soldiers checked their American passports. They
were made to wait almost half a day but eventually were allowed
in. Nahla took them to meet relatives in Gaza and once again
met up with the little family she knew as a child. "They
remembered me from when I was a baby," Nahla said. "But
their living conditions had deteriorated incredibly. They were
despondent and living in absolute squalor."
In Gaza, where the vast majority of men
are unemployed there is a saying that states 'Palestinian men
can beat Israeli men in bed because they're always at home.'
In 1982, hundreds of Palestinians were
massacred in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila when Ariel
Sharon was defense minister for Israel. Back then Sharon lobbied
to have Palestinian men sterilized, now Sharon is Prime Minister
and has dashed any hopes the Palestinian's once had since Sept.
11. "The Palestinian people are completely despondent right
now," Nahla said. "I see children killed for throwing
stones, they are portrayed as animals." Nahla and family
were able to roam freely in Israel and the Palestinian territories
because of their American passports, a fact that others were
jealous of, Nahla said. Palestinians have to put in a request
weeks and even months in advance just to go to a movie or a lecture
and more times than they are turned down.
They visited and attended mosques in
Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron but one particular occasion in
a northern coastal city where a lot of Israeli tourists were
vacationing hurt Nahla when her children said they felt like
foreigners in Palestine.
"The tourists were looking at us
like we were terrorists," Nahla said. "It was very
sad for me to have my children looked at that way." "That
was a bizarre experience." Laila said.
Throughout her life, Nahla has been treated
like a second-class citizen without ever being able to call a
country home. Her brother is suffering in solitary confinement
and her husband ostracized. Even through this, she has decided
to believe in the positive aspects of human nature and shield
herself from becoming pessimistic, something that truly isolates
her from American society.
"We have to understand the human
side of suffering and humiliation," Nahla said. "I
refuse to be cynical."
Alex Lynch
can be reached at: shanachie51@hotmail.com
|