HOW LIFE CHANGED FOR KHIZR KHAN SINCE SPEECH ON TRUMP

I can’t walk three feet without someone recognising me: Khizr Khan tells HT of life after the epic speech where he took on Donald Trump

WASHINGTON: It was another one of the string of speaking invitations Khizr and Ghazala Khan accepted since their epic sevenminute takedown of Donald Trump at the Democratic convention.

As they stepped out of their home in Virginia to get into the car waiting for them, the driver, who had no prior knowledge of his passengers, rushed out to them and hugged Khizr.

With tears running down his cheeks, the driver, a recent immigrant from an African country, said that when Khan pulled out the constitution, “We felt safe, as a family”. Khan, a Pakistani-descent lawyer who studied advanced law at Harvard, had been planning his speech and his appearance with Ghazala for a while now, on the Clinton campaign’s invitation.

The parents of Muslim American soldier Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004, Khizr and Ghazala Khan have emerged as the most profound repudiation of Trump’s politics.

But the constitution was not part of the plan till the last moment, not until he and Ghazala prepared to leave their hotel for the convention venue on the outskirts of Philadelphia on July 28.

Khan spoke on Friday to HT over phone from their home in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a German TV crew interviewed Ghazala, and Al Jazeera waited outside. “I discovered the copy in my coat,” Khan said, “as I patted myself down to make sure I was not carrying anything that wouldn't clear security — coins and keys, metallic stuff.”

Khan said he mentioned the pocket-sized copy of the constitution to his wife only when they were in the car, and on their way to the convention.

“I told her I am going to be speaking about the constitution (she knew his speech, had helped him edit it down from six pages to two) and won’t it be nice if I showed it … kind of raised it.”

Ghazala, whose silence on the stage has made as much news as her husband’s eloquent speech, agreed, but told him to make sure to “pull it out right, the back is totally flat”.

When he flourished it on stage, watched by Trump, the immediate target, and millions, and more in replays, the book was cover-infront, just the way Ghazala had wanted.

Life hasn’t been same for the Khans since. “I can’t go to get a cup of coffee anymore, I can’t walk on the street any more, I can’t go to do shopping any more. I try to step out and I go three feet and someone will stop me.”

They will try and grab his hand, give him a hug and try and embrace him.

“And then I would walk to the corner of the street and wait for the light to change,” he said, “when people with children would walk up and ask if they could take a picture with me.”

Khan offered these observations in response to a question about how he felt about Trump, the man, he said, he had been thinking about since last year when the billionaire started his divisive campaign.