Muslims who fled terror got ‘2nd chance’ in NM
It was just after Sept. 11, 2001, when Salim Ansari invited me into his home to have dinner with his family.
We spoke about how after terrorism had struck our shores — unthinkable on Sept. 10, 2001 — so much had changed in the United States, our concerns about safety and vigilance inflamed into paroxysms of paranoia at times, our fears giving rise to suspicion and a hardening of hearts.
Things had changed even more for Ansari and his family. They were Muslim refugees from Afghanistan who knew firsthand the evil that Osama bin Laden could inflict. Although they had been in Albuquerque for two years, although they had cried when the planes came crashing and killing, suddenly they found themselves being lumped together with their tormentors in the minds of some undiscerning Americans.
Ansari’s eldest son, Sohrab, then 16, told me his friends at Sandia High School had abandoned him. He sat alone at lunch, endured the stares and the sneers of his classmates. They called him “terrorist.” I wrote about that and the family’s struggles since 9/11 in October 2001. It was, for me, a story of how we had let our terror over terrorism get the better of us.
I could easily write a similar story today.
What struck me most then about meeting Salim Ansari — paralyzed by warring mujahedeen rebels, beaten by Taliban police, starved and spit on by refugee-hating Pakistanis — was that in spite of everything his hope for the future and his faith in his adopted homeland
remained strong.
“My kids had many friends before the attack, but since the attack they became different. They tell me, ‘Father, my friends don’t want to talk to me. They don’t walk with me,’ ” he told me then. “I tell them to be patient. In a few days, things will be normal again. Americans have minds. They will understand that we ran away from those evil people. We are not those evil people.”
I thought about this sentiment, that family in light of encroaching terrorism, the Islamic State attacks in Paris, the tragedy in San Bernardino, the roiling rhetoric over whether to allow Muslims or Syrian refugees into the country, and I wondered two things:
How is the Ansari family doing 14 years later?
Was Salim Ansari right about us? I can’t answer the second question for you. But I can answer the first.
I recently tracked down Sohrab Ansari, the son who had been called terrorist by his high school classmates.
He had reread my 2001 story and said it brought back many bittersweet memories and many nightmares of his family’s life in Kabul, Afghanistan, their fleeing to the equally hostile Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan and, finally, to Albuquerque in 1999 after waiting 1½ years to be approved as political refugees.
Unlike the rest of his family, Sohrab no longer lives in Albuquerque. He is 30 now, a husband and father of two children, ages 4 and 7. Home is in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is months away from graduating with a doctor of dental surgery degree from the University of Michigan. He would like to return someday to Albuquerque, which he considers his hometown, to open a dental practice and give back to the community that gave so much to him.
“The United States is one of the greatest countries in the world,” he said. “You are free. You are surrounded with opportunities. People have choices and options. Honestly, I couldn’t have hoped for a better life for my family and I. I am happy and living my dream.”
As for the rest of his family, brother Sulaiman attends the University of New Mexico. Sister Tamana is married and works in a furniture store. Parents Salim and Shaima are doing well. Salim plays on a wheelchair basketball team when he can and still takes classes at the Central New Mexico Community College, as he has since we met.
Despite the ostracism he endured after 9/11, Sohrab said school got better for him, especially after he transferred to Del Norte High School.
“School was great,” he said. “There are plenty of nice people.”
He has thought a lot about the current crisis over Syrian refugees, he said, likening it to his own circumstance years before.
“The Syrian refugees are looking for a better life,” he said. “People are fleeing violence, war and persecution. How can we judge them? You have never been in such situations. Imagine a constant risk to your family’s lives. Imagine you have no freedom and no opportunity for education for your kids. What would you do?
“The majority of people in countries like Syria, Afghanistan etc. want to feel safe, want education for their kids, the basic human rights, freedom and most of the things we take for granted here,” he continued. “They are just looking for a chance to live life, a second chance like I got.”
He is disturbed, he said, by the misperceptions fired up by certain politicians and news media. But like his father, he continues to have hope and faith.
“We need to look beyond the negativity and hatred that we have toward each other,” he said. “We are all the same. The world has room for everyone.”
As we approach a new year, let us hope that our country still has a little room, in our hearts and minds, at least. Let us hope the faith held by the Ansaris in us is well-placed.