Dad’s fury at abuse over kids’ headwear
AHMAD Popal is angry. He’s furious. He’s ropeable.
Not to mention absolutely devastated.
That tends to happen when someone calls you “an (expletive) animal” for nothing more than letting your little girls wear head scarfs at the shops.
“I picked them up from school and they normally take their veils off in the car,” Ahmad said of seven-year-old Medina and five-year-old Amina, who attend Australian Islamic International College at Carrara.
“It’s part of their school uniform, otherwise they don’t wear them, but because it was rainy and a bit chilly, they said ‘It’s cold, we want to wear them’.
“We did our groceries and were about to leave when a gentleman in his 50s looked at me and said ‘You (expletive) animal, look at these kids’. I said ‘Excuse me’ and he said ‘Look what you’ve done to these kids’ and swore at me again.
“I took the trolley and kids to the car and told my wife I had to go back. My hands were shaking. I’ve lived in Australia for 22 years and never seen something like this.
“I couldn’t find him but I saw another guy and said I was looking for the gentleman who was there before and he said ‘You know what? (Exple- tive) off, I don’t like Muslims either’. I said ‘Excuse me, are you racist?’ and he said ‘No. (Expletive) off, you Muslim. (Expletive) off from here’.” Then the cavalry arrived. “I straight away had three people back me up,” he recalled. “They were all Australians saying ‘You poor thing, we’re so sorry’.
“A lady was yelling at the guy saying ‘You should be ashamed of yourself’.”
Ahmad faced a couple of tough conversations in the wake of this week’s attacks at Southport Park.
His stunned daughters wanted to know if he was a bad father for not making them remove their veils. He had to reassure his scared wife when she suggested that maybe she shouldn’t wear her own when she went shopping the next day.
He also phoned the Coast Bulletin.
“If I was a hothead, I would’ve knocked his head off but I said ‘No, I’ll deal with you with the power of the Gold pen’,” Ahmad said. “I’ll be happy if I can change even 2 per cent of people with this story.”
Ahmad wants you to know he arrived in Australia as a 13year-old refugee from Afghanistan. That he attended Keebra Park State High and his three daughters will decide when they are teenagers if