November 25, 2002
Synopsis
When Aisha Said’s Tears of Fatimah won the 2002 FORETELL International Writing Prize, little did she know that she was truly predicting the future. Based on her true story and a 20-year projection into the American future, being determined by existing realities, she shows how new anti-terrorism laws and strategies, while tackling the problem of security, generate a barrage of new challenges.
In a scenario of “you cannot have roses without thorns”, the Omani immigrant narrates her 20-year struggle in her unsuccessful attempts to return to America after fleeing with Fatimah, her American born baby, from perceived threats and harassment in the aftermath of the tragic September 11 2001 New York Trade Center bombings.
Mistrust grows into xenophobia as immigrants’ liberties are violated. Even huge budgetary allocations to the new mega-agency The Department of Homeland Security do not achieve the primary objective of making the American people feel safer.
Learning its lesson that “costly weapons don’t make good soldiers”, a new security strategy based on the principle of “Low Tech. And High Concept” was launched in 2019. Called The Freedom of Non-Association Program, Americans were encouraged to stay in-doors more. The idea was to monitor the few on the move via satellite and arrest any suspicious persons. While the program almost totally eliminated outdoor crime, it created an atmosphere of uneasy calm in the country.
It is 6.30 on a quiet Monday morning, the first Monday of January 2022. The Streets of New York are peaceful. A few people can be seen walking along the sidewalk. Police patrol cars driving slowly without the usual blaring sirens and one or two taxicabs are all that are seen around. On the 97th floor penthouse of no. 333 East 95th Street, 13-year-old Nancy Green sits relaxed on a black leather divan still trying to decide whether to concentrate more on watching the monotonous TV or be consumed more by the 20 year old magazine she found in her dad’s archive.
Just then, the usual TV jingle cuts in, “Welcome to KuTV. Will you have your 12-hour stay-in today? The Department of Homeland Security warns that more crimes are committed outdoor than in. Remember you are safer when you stay far”. Nancy immediately reaches for the remote control and without hesitation, silenced the box.
10 minutes later, her father comes into the living room as if searching for someone.
“Ah, there you are!”
“Hi dad.”
“What are you reading?”
“You wont believe it dad, I found this magazine, The World in 2003 up in your archive. This article, Tears of Fatimah was the winning essay in the 2003 FORETELL International writing competition. It was written by one Omani lady.”
“So, what’s it about?”
“It’s about us dad. She was writing 20years into the future. She was trying to warn us against creating laws that would deprive us of our liberty. You know, freedom. Laws like the new security bill being proposed.”
“That’s enough honey. You shouldn’t be reading those kind of garbage; they’ll confuse you.”
As he turns around to walk away, he finds his wife at the doorway, and as if cowered by her presence, he quickly greets, “Hi honey”.
With a stern look, Mrs. Helen Green walks in and in a formal voice she confronts her husband, “Senator George C. Green, it is your civic responsibility to listen to this young US citizen”.
In a quick attempt to lighten the mood she then adds, “Honey, I know you are the head of this family, but I’m like the neck and so it is my duty to steer you to see all sides of a problem so you can take an objective decision. So, while I fix breakfast, you’ll sit down and listen to our brilliant daughter”.
Nancy responds with a smile, “Thanks mum”.
The young lady pulls up a chair next to her dad and reads on:
The following article, Tears of Fatimah is the winning essay for the 2003 FORETELL International Writing Prize, “How much of our freedom should we trade for security?”. It is a 20-year projection of our future written by Aisha Said based on her true story and projected future already being determined by existing realities:
Sunset At Dawn
The events of Tuesday, September 11 2001 changed my life forever. I was in my baby’s nursery assembling the new crib my husband bought the day before, when I heard a deafening bang. I was 36weeks pregnant and since the baby was not due till another month, I was courageous enough to pull myself downstairs to find out what the noise was. I had barely opened the front door when the second explosion came. As I screamed my way outside, all I could think about was my husband. Amin worked on the 99th floor of the New York Trade Center as a Network Engineer and it was our 9th year in America.
When the news came 45 minutes later that the Twin Towers were crumbling I went into premature labour. Fatimah was born that evening through a caesarean section. I did not have the luxury of mourning my lost or dead husband not because his body was never found but because the next few weeks saw threats, curses and abuses from hostile neighbours and passers-by. Hate crimes against Arabs and Muslim communities continued to increase. I was so afraid for my life and my daughter’s that I went back to Oman a month later.
Xenophobia
While most people around the world will remember the horrific attacks of September 11 2001 as the darkest day of the year, for me I could still feel the heat of the smoke that clouded my life. Not only did I lose my husband but also my daughter was born premature and stateless.
For the next 20 years I tried to return to my life in America but new laws kept pouring out to deny my baby and I our right of abode.
In 2005 I set up a web site, You and I are one dot com was set up to let the American people know who the Arab truly is and to help Arab Americans who were discriminated against because of their race. Many Arab American immigrants had been “illegally” arrested, detained and deported based on secret evidence, which is derived from the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. Though the Secret Evidence Repeal Act was passed in 2000, it did not effect the release of any Secret Evidence victim.
In 2002, 2% of the American population were Arabs and now 20 years after, the number has decreased from 4million to 3 million. Despite this fact, the feeling of insecurity in America continues to grow. Like they say in Oman, “If you hurt people around you, even your shadow will scare you”.
Out of 21 separate Arab nations, the U.S. and U.N. only recognize 19 of them, while America is only on "friendly" terms with about 16 of them. Most Arab Americans are admitted under refugee or asylee status.
The word "Arab" refers to those who speak the Arabic language, however almost every country's version of Arabic is different from another's. The people should rightly be called Middle Easterners not Muslims or Moslems, who have a religious association with Islam. Most but not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs; Several Arabs are Christians, many are Hindu, and some are Atheists.
Omani immigrants were one of the wealthiest groups of Arab immigrants. Citizens of Oman Sultanate generally enjoy good living conditions, but we have had a history of civil war and the fear of our oil reserve running out has forced us to seek the “golden fleece” elsewhere.
Stereotyping of Arab-Americans is mostly negative. The Western image of the Arab is that of comic book tales, harem dwellers, and sheikh. The facts are that harems and polygamy have been abolished, for the most part, in the Arab world, and only a small number of Arab nations still have "sheikhs". The Arab image has been continuously dented on TV and in movies as evil or foolish.
With the scare of anthrax-contaminated offices of members of Congress and confronted with warnings that more terrorist assaults were imminent, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, better known by its acronym, the USA PATRIOT Act. It was the beginning of the “Extra Terror-stial Age”. The era of uneasy calm and fear of the unknown.
Within 2 months of the September 11 2001 bombings, the Department of Justice (DOJ) admitted to detaining more than 1,100 immigrants, not one of whom has been charged with committing a terrorist act and only a handful of whom are being held as material witnesses to the September 11 hijackings.
The USA PATRIOT Act conferred vast and unchecked powers to the executive branch and as the Center For Constitutional Rights put it, “To an unprecedented degree, the Act sacrifices our political freedoms in the name of national security and upsets the democratic values that define our nation by consolidating vast new powers in the executive branch of government. The Act enhances the executive's ability to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence, places an array of new tools at the disposal of the prosecution, including new crimes, enhanced penalties, and longer statutes of limitations, and grants the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) the authority to detain immigrants suspected of terrorism for lengthy, and in some cases indefinite, periods of time. And at the same time that the Act inflates the powers of the executive, it insulates the exercise of these powers from meaningful judicial and Congressional oversight”.
The Act was actually directed at Arabs just like The Black Codes Of Mississippi of the 1860’s during the post American Civil War Reconstruction period was against freed slaves. After the Civil War, States such as Mississippi, passed laws prohibiting “vagrancy,” “misspending” one's money, and staying outdoors too late because many Southerners feared that their former slaves would demand social equality and would refuse to work, thereby crippling the economy. With these “black codes” in place, freed slaves often ended up living in conditions little better than those they had experienced under slavery. America was making the same mistakes all over again where hate between the races will create mistrust and disloyalty.
America, a nation of immigrants, traditionally described as a melting pot whose greatness was achieved by the combination of diverse ideas and cultures was at the threshold of shutting itself off from the rest of the world.
The Mega-force
In 2002, President George W. Bush created the mega-agency, The Department of Homeland Security.
170,000 federal employees from 22 different agencies including the CIA, FBI, INS, the Customs, the Coast Guard, FEMA, DEA and other food safety agencies were fused into a huge one-stop shop for preventing and responding to attacks against America. The creation of this cabinet-level agency was the most significant transformation of the U.S. government in over 50 years. Directly under the control of the President, the department could literarily do anything.
However, many feared that there will be infringements on citizen’s liberties and many may surrender their freedom and that this may contribute to a deeper sense of insecurity. They also maintain that violence and terrorism have deep causes whose roots are economic, social, political, cultural, ecological and psychological. Terrorism is not in a race or religion, like murder it is potentially in us all, appropriate stimuli could trigger its action. The surest way therefore to ensure a just, peaceful and sustainable world is to carry everybody along; even the terrorists; because one man’s terrorist, as they say, “Is another man’s freedom fighter”.
20 years after the creation of the new department resulting in billions of Dollars over-budgeting, America still lives with the fear that there are many trained killers waiting to strike. I guess this proves that “costly weapons don’t make good soldiers”.
A new security strategy based on the principle of Low Tech. and High Concept titled Freedom of Non-Association adopted in 2019 has only succeeded in creating a society of uneasy calm. In this new program, people are encouraged to stay off the streets and transact businesses and schooling via electronic media instead of physical travel. TV and radio jingles are used to “advise” people that they are safer at home than on the streets. The idea is to monitor the few on the move via satellite and arrest any suspicious persons.
At the end of the story, Senator Green gets up from the breakfast table, turns to his wife and says, “I think we need a re-think of the new security bill. I’ll try for a filibuster”.
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