Project Rebirth

by Dr. Robin Stern

  Everything was designed around one central question, the one that Debbie believed could serve as an inoculation against any ignorance that the children might be exposed to: How can I see myself in others?

  In her excitement over the upcoming opening of the school, the Kahlil Gibran International Academy, Debbie quoted anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

  But, as Debbie was to learn, a small group could also commit to bring down those efforts.

  As far as Debbie knows, the rumors started online the summer before the school was to open. Several bloggers, who categorically opposed the opening of a school that included curriculum on Arabic language and culture, began investigating Debbie’s past, determined to smear her and take down the school.

  As numerous untrue rumors circulated, Debbie was too busy actually building the school community to pay too much attention. Her request for a public relations director was never fulfilled, so she decided to keep her head down and hope the storms would pass. She had a school to create.

  Then came the blow that brought it all crashing down.

  The phrase “Intifada NYC” had been printed on a T-shirt sold at a summer festival in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The offices of the organization selling the T-shirt were located on the same floor as SABA, a Yemeni American association that Debbie had founded along with three neighbors. Ironically, SABA had just won a prestigious Union Square Award in 2006, for which they had been nominated anonymously, to boot, for their grassroots activism and work at building community.

  The tenuous connection between Debbie and the T-shirts was exploited in the media to raise public suspicion of her as someone who would use her position as principal of the Arabic-English, dual-language school to proselytize to students, or even worse, promote a violent uprising.

  As far as Debbie understands, some of her superiors were at a loss as to how to handle the situation, while others were blindly optimistic that the controversy would die down. The facts showed that the T-shirts had nothing to do with her, and even less with the school, which is why she was strongly encouraged by the Department of Education to give an interview, though her gut told her otherwise.

  Debbie recalls how the interviewer asked her what the root meaning of the word “intifada” was, to which she gave a neutral response. She explained that its etymological origin is “shaking off,” although it has taken on more violent connotations recently.

  Her full answer, however, did not make it to print. The title of the article was “City Principal is ‘Revolting,’ ” giving the public a fearmongering message: It is a danger to the city to have such an out-of-touch principal, who defended such inflammatory T-shirts, educating our children.

  Never mind that T-shirts and the sayings printed on them are considered free speech. Never mind that Debbie had nothing to do with the shirts. Never mind that the actual answer she had given the interviewer was a thorough, informed definition of the word. She had failed to condemn “Intifada NYC,” as the public wanted her to, and so she would lose the opportunity to lead the school of her dreams, blood, sweat, and tears. Debbie was forced to resign.

  Debbie mourned her school as one might mourn a lost child. It was hard to believe that something that she had worked that hard on could be taken from her so easily. Her only consolation was that the Kahlil Gibran International Academy would go on without her. It would be an institution that would outlast the petty controversies and vitriolic bloggers. It would educate children in the beauty of diverse cultures and, ironically, the value of really hearing and learning from those unlike oneself.

  The school did open on September 4, 2007, under a new principal, with only a sixth grade to pilot the school. The Kahlil Gibran International Academy has since relocated to downtown Brooklyn, near the Navy Yard, sharing a space with P.S. 287 and housing 108 students from grades six to eight.

  Kahlil Gibran himself, as if anticipating Debbie’s difficult journey, wrote hundreds of years ago, “Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.”

  Debbie would continue to advance. In March of 2010, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that she had been pushed out of her leadership position in a discriminatory manner. “It was the most incredible vindication anyone could ask for,” Debbie says. She was glad that the story made print in major media like the New York Times. Although this turn of events lent Debbie’s argument the needed weight should she decide to sue her employer, she decided not to. She didn’t want to endure the emotional toll that a lengthy lawsuit would entail. “I couldn’t imagine dealing with another six years of litigation,” she explained. “For what? For money? That was not my intention from the beginning.”

  In fact, Debbie is still employed by the Department of Education. She now works as the special education department coordinator at a school in another part of Brooklyn, the Benjamin Banneker Academy, where she has had the opportunity to expand her own horizons and work with a largely African American population, a significant percentage of whom are Muslim.

  Debbie would rather focus on the future than the past. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in urban leadership education at Fordham University. Her expectation is to develop a certification program for teachers of Arabic language and culture so that more schools like Kahlil Gibran can flourish under the aegis of the best minds within the upcoming generation.

  To Debbie’s great relief, Yousif honored his full commitment to the military without being deployed to war. Civilian life has been a struggle for him, but he is making his way. An engaging stint as an expediter—a liaison between the New York City Department of Buildings and local architects—set him in the right direction. He developed communication and negotiation skills, like his mother, that would help him later secure a job in the hotel industry, like his father. “He is throwing himself into his work—really trying to find himself,” Debbie explains.

  One day, as Debbie was walking with Yousif along Battery Park City, near Ground Zero, her son started recounting what it was like down there when he was serving with the National Guard. He described the blanket of dust that covered everything and the buckets they had used to clear it all out. He talked about the other guys, the dark moments, the tender volunteers.

  “Maybe you should tell your story,” Debbie suggested, enthralled but also concerned about her child, whom she sensed had been bottling up so many horrific memories. He nodded quietly. For now, she would have to be heartened by these small moments of openness between the two of them, and the hope that one day, he would tell her all that he had experienced and unburden himself once and for all.

  There was so much lost, but still so much to be grateful for. This ties into one of Debbie’s favorite Muslim traditions. She explains, “I love it when Ramadan falls during the same time as Thanksgiving, because I feel then that the whole country is observing in this time of thankfulness and reflection.”

  Debbie explains that the intention of fasting throughout the month of Ramadan is to reconnect with those who are less fortunate, a time for one to feel the hunger pains, and a time to reconnect with everything that God has given us that is sacred.

  On the last day of Ramadan in 2009, Yousif found a beautiful reason to be grateful. He was on the subway platform in Brooklyn, munching on a beef patty as he waited for the Q train to Manhattan, when he saw a young woman standing nearby that he simply could not take his eyes off of. When the train slid into the station they both stepped onto the same car and struck up a conversation.

  “Are you Muslim?” she asked boldly.

  “Yes, why?” Yousif responded.

  “Do you know it’s Ramadan and you are eating a beef patty?” she asked, smiling playfully at having “caught him,” before exiting the train.

  “Wait!” Yousif bolted from his seat, although he had a few more stops to go, and jump
ed onto the platform beside her. “Can I call you sometime?”

  Yousif and Bedor (a name that means “the sky before the sunrise”) got married on Valentine’s Day of 2010.

  Grieving is most directly associated with the death of a loved one, but human beings are—in truth—exposed to so many different kinds of losses in one lifetime. We lose our faith. We lose our way. We lose our innocence. We must mourn the passing of time and weather the constant changes that besiege our lives—sometimes welcomed, sometimes resisted with all our futile might. Just as we process the death of a loved one in fits and starts, rather than linearly, just as we can’t predict which moments will be most difficult and which will actually prove endurable—losing one kind of life and inheriting another can be a daunting experience.

  For Debbie, September 11, 2001, marked the moment when her struggles and her purpose became simultaneously amplified. Before that Tuesday, she was a Muslim woman, aware of what it was like to be misunderstood, committed to fostering dialogue, but blessed with the luxury of pursuing pluralism with a quiet, deliberate commitment. After that Tuesday, she was plucked from her classroom, elevated and illuminated, burdened with tremendous responsibility, defamed and defrauded, and, ultimately, vindicated.

  Today, she heals. She mourns a time when it was just her and the kids in the classroom, before the towers fell, before Islam became a Rorschach test for fear and ignorance. She can’t unhear the stories of hatred and violence that she has heard from her Muslim sisters and brothers, but what she can do is carry on their courage and grow even more impassioned to fight ignorance at the root. She has experienced, firsthand, the ways in which fear, unexamined, rots and turns into indiscriminate anger and blind hatred.

  Debbie was not given her school, but she was given her son, and for this she is very grateful. Meanwhile, she will continue to fight for the nation that she believes is possible—one where children don’t grow up disappointed in the country they have inherited, but instead have a chance to “advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection.”

  Becoming Whole Again

  Tanya Villanueva Tepper

  At sunset, Tanya rides her motorcycle, “Big Daddy,” over a Miami highway at top speed. The wind blows past her face, her hair shooting out behind her. She looks out at the horizon—sea, sky, and art deco architecture—and her heart and mind are lulled by the lush landscape and the loud sound of her machine. Her sadness and anger, her painful memories and fears about the future, are drowned out by the simple pleasure of riding, fast and free. There is nothing but the elements, this moment, the movement of letting go.

  Tanya, at just thirty-five years old, has been forced to do an unusual amount of loving and letting go. She has had to be impossibly strong in the face of senseless loss. She has had to mourn. Repeatedly. She has had to sit still and feel what no one ever wants to feel.

  But when she climbs onto the bike, the whole world rushes by, her eyes give up fighting to focus on any one thing, and it all becomes a soothing blur. There is nothing to hold on to, so there is nothing to lose.

  Tanya was not always a biker chick. In Queens, New York, in the fall of 2001, you would be more likely to find her flipping through candle or home-furnishing catalogs in her store, Inner Peace, or pasting pictures of gowns into her wedding-planning album. She was thirty-three. She was madly in love with her Argentinean firefighter fiancé, Sergio, and she was planning, planning, planning.

  On the evening of September 10, 2001, Sergio called from the firehouse to tell her good night. They chatted about a few things—the store, the next day’s election, their plans to book the wedding hall on Thursday—while Tanya played solitaire on the computer. Since they’d become engaged, Sergio and Tanya loved to talk about the future—the twin babies they hoped to have, where they were going to live, what kind of vacations they would take. Their future together felt truly blessed.

  When they hung up, Tanya was struck by the realization that she’d been distracted. She hadn’t given her man her full attention. She wondered if he’d noticed. Probably not. Sergio was characteristically happy-go-lucky. He knew that Tanya was entirely devoted to him, that she loved him with every ounce of her being. But just in case, she shot off a quick email to him with three simple words: “I love you.” She fell asleep content.

  She was painting her nails and watching the news the next morning when it was announced that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Tanya started calling everyone. “Did you hear?” she asked her mom. “Did you hear?” she asked Sergio’s mom, with whom she was very close. The thought that Sergio might be there, that he might be in danger, hadn’t crossed her mind. It was shocking but not yet personal.

  But little by little, the realization that Sergio very well might be down there amid the smoke and confusion started to creep into her consciousness. Of course he would go; he would want to help his friends. She called the firehouse, Ladder 132 in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a couple of times, but she got a busy signal. Her fear grew, incrementally, perilously. Her senses suddenly felt superhero sharp. She watched. She listened. She waited, nails half painted.

  And then the first tower collapsed. Tanya let out a primal scream. A thought flashed across her mind: Sergio’s in there, but it was followed by an indignant, No, he’s not. She began talking herself down, “He’s on his way home. Call his cell. He’s on his way home.” She called his cell and got his voice mail.

  Within the hour, people started showing up at her apartment. By noon, thirty people filled her living room. The vigil for Sergio began.

  Tanya had let out a scream that primal only once before. It was the day she learned the true story of her mother.

  Tanya was born in the Netherlands in June 1968 to a German mother, Sigrid, and a Filipino father, who was at that time engaged to someone else in his home country. A few months after Sigrid gave birth to Tanya, she left the baby with family and a promise that she would send for the baby once she’d found work and started a new life. Sigrid was overwhelmed and desperate—trying to make ends meet, strapped with debt, and in a tumultuous relationship. On December 17, 1968, a few days before Sigrid was supposed to arrive home for the Christmas holidays, she killed herself.

  Tanya knew she was adopted at the age of twelve—by her father’s brother Emilio, and his wife, Eileen, whom she was with since birth, but she never understood what happened to her mother until she traveled to Germany when she was twenty-seven. Her uncle on her maternal side unveiled the truth.

  Sergio was the one who gave Tanya the final push and the emotional support that she needed to make the daunting trip. She had such a happy childhood, such a wonderful family, that she had wondered about the wisdom of seeking out what could only be a sad story. And yet, she could never quite shut off her curiosity. Even as a little girl—growing up in the Netherlands until she was two, then in London until she was six, and on to New York—she’d always felt different from her siblings. When she was eight years old, she asked her parents if she was adopted for the first time. She’d met her biological father, even met her half siblings, but she’d never known the truth about her mother.

  Sergio came with her to Germany and held her hand as she learned the cruel news that her mother had been in pain so insurmountable that she’d ended her own life, even though her own daughter’s was just beginning. At the hotel later that night, Tanya traced the letters I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U on Sergio’s back. She felt such a sense of relief. She’d faced the thing she was most afraid of with the man she loved.

  Sergio and Tanya’s first kiss was on June 30, 1994, in Miami, Florida—where Tanya was living at the time and Sergio had just come for a visit. He had a healthy head of black hair and thick, dark eyebrows, and he wore a white V-neck T-shirt that would end up see-through by the end of their sweaty night of dancing together. He was a playboy, to be sure, but Tanya sensed something deeper underneath all of his bravado.

  They spent five straight days together—making love, laughing, and talking about growing
up in the same neighborhood in Queens and their shared taste in music. When Sergio brought up the book Many Lives, Many Masters—the story of a skeptical psychiatrist’s experience with channeling and reincarnation—Tanya’s suspicion was confirmed. She thought, “Wow, not only is he this supermacho man, but he has this spiritual side to him.”

  He returned to New York and their whirlwind romance slowed down a bit. Tanya tried to play it cool but was determined not to let Sergio forget her. She sent him funny cards, called him every once in a while, wished him a happy birthday when July Fourth rolled around. As subtle as she tried to be, there was no denying it. Nobody made her feel the way Sergio did. In 1995, she moved back to New York to, as they say, see about a boy.

  By two a.m. on Wednesday, September 12, 2001, Tanya learned that Sergio was officially on the missing list. By Wednesday afternoon, Sergio’s name suddenly disappeared from the missing list. Everyone let out wild cheers and started crying with relief, but there was still no information about where he was or what had happened to him. The euphoria wouldn’t last long. On Thursday, September 13, 2001, Sergio’s name mysteriously reappeared on the horrible list.

  Tanya then got busy making a missing poster, as she’d learned other family members were doing. Only the best for her Sergio. She made about thirty color copies and passed them out to friends, giving the marching orders—Put them up everywhere and anywhere. We must find Sergio and bring him home. He’s out there.

  By Thursday, the majority of her initial visitors had gone home. Tanya realized that she’d need to keep people posted, so she started to send out emails. The first one read:I really appreciate all of the support and prayers and Sergio will be amazed at all the people who rallied to get him home when he gets here. Keep your hopes high, and send out lots of love and strength to him and everyone down there working and waiting.