story2128.xml

story2128.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-10

I am an American Christian woman. The morning of September 11th, 2001 I was home alone preparing to leave for work. My husband, a Palestinian from Jordan, and a Muslim, had gone to Amman, Jordan to visit his children. He was due to fly home on the 17th, the following Monday. As I dressed, I was in a Paltalk room on the internet where my husband spends a lot of time chatting with other Arab friends about the situation in Palestine. Most of the conversation is in Arabic, but I felt somehow closer to my husband being in that room. hearing the voices and knowing that there were friends of his there.
Suddenly someone typed in text, "A plane has hit the World Trade Center building!" and I ran to the television to see the news for myself. I watched over and over again the horrible scenes being replayed on the news there. I was in shock. And somehow I was getting the sense that this had something to do with some Arab people. Could it be the Palestinians, retaliating for what the USA is doing to support and fund Israel's cruelty to their people in the homeland? That was my first thought. And I longed to be with my husband more than anything else, to have him home safe with me. But then I wondered, as strange as the thought was, if he was safer where he was in a Middle Eastern country than he would be here in the USA with me. The danger for the first time in my life seemed to be here.
I rushed to work and no one there in the store seemed to be aware of what had occurred. When I told them they immediately turned on a display television and we all watched in agony what was happening in New York City and other parts of the East Coast. I paced back and forth. Tears were in my eyes. I needed to talk with my husband.
One of the managers saw how visibly distraught I was and said I was free to go home. I arrived at the house and immediately turned on the internet and searched for some way to contact my husband. I thanked God when I saw a Palestinian friend online, a young man in Irbid, Jordan. I asked him if he would please call my husband for me and tell him I needed him to contact me. He left the internet cafe where he was on the computer and called my husband and came back to tell me that my husband would come online shortly to speak with me.
By the time I spoke with my husband the news of our tragedy here in the USA had reached around the world. He and all those he knew there were appalled by what had been done to the Americans. He was beside himself, and all he wanted was to come home. During the week between then and the day he was to return to the USA, he barely ate, lost interest in all activities he had planned with his children, shopping for things to bring home, etc. And then we began to worry. We heard that no international flights were being allowed to fly into our airports. We feared that the flights from the Middle Eastern countries, with the speculation of the perpetrators of the attack being from that area, would be even more under suspicion. It was time to pray.
I knew a Jewish Christian woman online who I had met there because of her support and sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. She belonged to several pray groups online and when we spoke online she said that there would be thousands of people praying for my husband's safe return. My church posted prayer requests concerning September 11th on a bulletin board and among them was my request for prayer for my husband's safe return. Friends and family prayed as well.
My husband would have been gone 17 days that coming Monday when he was due to fly back to Chicago, an unbearable amount of time to be without him for me. But by Saturday still no flights had been allowed into our airports from abroad and by Sunday only two, one from Paris and one from London. But still we prayed and had hope. Late Sunday night, my husband received a call from Air Jordanian. His flight was to be the first that would be allowed into the USA from Jordan! Thank you, Lord!
We worried that things might be difficult either in Shannon Airport where he would change planes and face US immigration or on arrival here at O'Hare airport in Chicago. He was expecting to see the military pointing rifles at the Arabs on arrival.
In Shannon, when the US immigration official looked at his passport, he took my husband to their office. My husband thought for sure they had found some reason to send him back to Jordan on the next flight. But people were still praying. And God answers prayer. The immigration official said there was a problem with his travel permission. His heart sank. The official continued, explaining that he was qualified for more time than had been initially granted him and that he (the official) would correct that so that my husband would have that additional time added to his travel document. What a relief! Instead of a problem, it was a blessing.
Hours later, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, a very anxious wife was waiting for her husband to return. I had heard nothing from him since he told me that he was told his flight would leave Amman on schedule. I waited and waited, watching face after face come out of the gate area. Then I turned and saw the most beautiful sight, my husband's smiling face and open arms. God had brought him home to me!
Since that day, life has changed for us because of some close-minded, misguided people who did the unthinkable. My husband works for a government nuclear laboratory. He is very educated and had been assured that he would soon be able to move up into a job there for which he is more qualified. But after September 11th, those positions are suddenly restricted to American citizens only. He is the same person, with the same qualifications and abilities that he was one year ago, but doors have been closed in his face. Friends at work have jokingly called him "Bin Laden" and if they see him looking more serious and pensive than usual they have said, "Are you planning a terrorist attack?" with a laugh. He knows they are just kidding. they are good friends. But it is an uncomfortable situation he has been thrown into out of no fault of his own. Other Arabs here in the USA, also being the same people they were before September 11th, have been verbally and physically attacked, or worse.
One thing I know for sure. If we are to let what happened that morning one year ago make us more close-minded, more segregated, more prejudicial, then THEY will have won a tremendous victory in the hearts of the American people. Don't let it happen. Let America continue to be a place where all are welcome. where all the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses" can come to find the freedom for which they yearn. And remember, unless you are a Native American, this is only your country because someone gave someone in your family past, be it ten years ago, or one hundred, a welcome place to call home, where they were free to pursue the freedoms and hopes and basic human rights that they could only dream of in their homeland. That is America! May she always be so!