by Wafa Sultan
On December 15, 1988 I got a heaven-sent gift: I received my American visa, after spending three days and nights outside the U.S. consulate in Damascus. Waiting before me in line was a Muslim woman, veiled from head to toe, who constantly repeated verses from the Koran and implored God to help her get her visa. She turned to me and said, “Daughter, repeat this prayer and I’m sure your wish will be granted: Say ‘God is one, Oh Lord, blind their hearts and their sight.’ “ I looked at her in surprise and asked, “Why do you want God to blind their hearts and their sight?” She replied, “Because if they knew the truth they’d never give me a visa. My husband’s in America already and we’re planning to stay there.”
I lifted my face to the heavens and pleaded, “Oh Lord, set me on the path to freedom and I promise You that I will fight for the freedom of others.”
On the twenty-fifth of that same month, on Christmas night, the plane set me down in Los Angeles, where my husband was waiting to greet me. He was living in a small apartment, and his next-door neighbor was an American lady. When she heard that he was going to the airport to meet me she hoisted an American flag at the door of her apartment and told him: “Tell your wife that America welcomes her.”
I was overwhelmed with happiness when I saw the flag and realized why my husband’s American neighbor, Diane, was flying it. She was unable to pronounce my Arabic name and so decided to give me an American one: She began to call me “Pam.” I did not like the name very much for the simple reason that in Arabic we do not have the sound p, and so, when we try to say it, we pronounce it like a b. It made Diane laugh to hear me introduce myself to others as Bam. Bam was the first word I looked up in the English dictionary, and when I learned it is used to indicate a sudden impact, I ran over to Diane’s to suggest changing the name. I told her, “Diane, I’d rather be called Lina than Bam.” She laughed, and today she still calls me Lina. When I recall this episode now, I wonder if it was mere chance that. I had accidentally referred to myself as Bam—or was it my fate?
That same week I registered at California State University’s, Long Beach, language institute. There were about fifteen students in the class—myself, a woman from El Salvador, a man from Yemen—and the rest were all Japanese. I was like a child entranced by a new toy. I had never met anyone from El Salvador or Japan before, or even anyone from Yemen, an Arab country only two hours away from Syria by plane, and I was glad to make the acquaintance of all of them. In my limited broken English I was able to learn from them within a short time things I had never learned in my own country.
My English was confined mainly to the medical terms I had learned while studying to become a doctor, but nonetheless, from the very start, I felt a great desire to acquire the language. I recall that on one occasion the teacher asked each of us to read a page in the Los Angeles Times and talk about it. I spent a long time leafing through the paper looking for an article that would be easy to read and prepare. My search led me to the Calendar section where I found what I was looking for: the “Dear Abby” column. The first time I read it, I became an addict. Getting to know “Abby” through her column proved to be another important turning point in my life. “Abby” receives letters from readers with problems, to which she proposes a solution. People may laugh when I say this, but you can learn a lot about America by reading “Dear Abby.” Through the people who wrote to her with their myriad of problems, I began to learn about the greater social issues in the United States, both the good and the bad. In turn, reading these letters, even filled with problems as they were, revealed to me the advantages of life in America and, very slowly, made me fall in love with it.
I believe that the quickest way to learn about a society’s advantages is to learn first of all about its problems and how it deals with them. Every time I read about a reader’s problem and the solution she proposed I would imagine the type of solution Islam might suggest and be frustrated at the difference between the two. I would wonder how many Dear Abbys our Muslim world would need in order to solve our problems in more scientific and humane ways. Thoughts of “Abby” and her readers took up residence in my mind and, with time, I turned into a sort of Dear Abby myself, with one difference: I write in Arabic for Arab readers.
After I had been in California for two months our financial situation deteriorated and I found myself in the position of having to accept any job my limited English would allow in order to bring in a bit of money. With the help of a young Syrian I found work at a gas station. Once I had helped blood pump through the human heart; now I found myself pumping gas! Some may think I was embarrassed by my new job. On the contrary, I regarded it as a golden opportunity to acquire firsthand experience of all classes of American society instead of just reading about them in the “Dear Abby” column. I observed the actions and behavior of the gas station’s clients, and listened to what they had to say. Some of them would start talking to me, and sometimes the conversation would branch out into personal matters.
On the whole I felt that people treated me with much more respect than when I was a doctor in Syria. Even when I made a mistake, I was treated well. One day, an American man who had lost his way came into the gas station and asked me if I knew the way to Knott Street. I indicated one of the shelves and told him he would find what he was looking for on it. He smiled politely at me, said, “thank you,” and went on his way. One of the other workers came over to me and asked if I had understood the customer’s question. I replied that I thought he had asked for pistachio nuts. When I realized I had misunderstood the question I was embarrassed, but the customer’s smile and words of thanks still warm my heart today. The fact that I received more respect as a foreign gas station attendant in America than as a doctor in my native land still stuns me and was the thing that took me and shook me by the shoulders. All of the questions I had regarding the morality of our culture and belief system became more pressing, and—as I pumped gas and talked to scores of Americans every day—my need for answers grew more and more urgent.
A year after my arrival, several days before Christmas, Texaco threw a holiday party for its gas station workers at the Hilton Hotel. When I arrived at the party and saw the gaily decorated hall and the carefully arranged tables of food, and saw how we workers—non-English-speaking foreigners, for the most part—were welcomed, I burst into tears. I ran to the ladies’ room to hide my tears and my feelings, but when I came back I felt that the woman sitting beside me had sensed my confusion, as she asked what had upset me. I pointed at another woman and said, “That lady over there looks like my sister in Syria whom I haven’t seen for a year,” then dissolved into tears once more. But it was not the memory of my sister that made me cry, but the recollection—in the midst of a joyous celebration of the birth of another God—of a homeland that had a mandate from its God to prey upon its women and its poor.
I gave birth to another daughter, Angela, after I had been in the United States for a year and a half. She was only forty days old when I welcomed my two other children, whom I had left behind in Syria, at the Los Angeles airport. Our happiness was complete that day when our American dream came true and we seemed to be embarking upon a more settled and productive life. The day my two eldest children started school paved my way into American society. My son, Mazen, who was nine at the time, went into the fourth grade, while our four-year-old daughter Farah started nursery school. By involving myself in their school lives I discovered a world totally different from the one in which I had been brought up. I, too, learned many valuable lessons from the people who taught my children.
Mazen suffered from congenital hearing loss. When we lived in Syria, despite being a doctor, I could not afford to buy hearing aids for him, as these were not produced locally and had to be imported from Europe. At the time Syria had no trade relations with the West, as it had been the subject of an international boycott ever since it had been accused of supporting terrorism. At the school’s suggestion, Mazen was sent to see an ear specialist, and within less than a week he wa
s using his hearing aids. I shall never forget the day we left the clinic with Mazen wearing the aids for the first time, beaming all over his face and twittering away like a little bird, “Mommy, can you believe it! I can hear the cars in the street.” I threw myself sobbing into my husband’s arms and he shouted, “Long live America! Long live America!”
We decided to celebrate that same day and went to a restaurant that I still remember was called Tom’s Hamburger, not far from our home in Paramount. We chose it because it was the cheapest place to go. A hamburger in those days cost 69 cents, and the hour we spent in that restaurant was the happiest of our lives. As we sat around the table we began to play a game in which Farah stood behind Mazen and whispered a word in his ear. If he heard her, he got a dime, and if he did not, Farah got one. I noticed that Farah tried to pronounce the words in such a way as to ensure that her brother would hear them, even though this meant forfeiting her 10 cents.
About a week later a woman called me, introduced herself as Nadj a Ellis, and told me that Los Angeles Unified School District had appointed her to be Mazen’s special teacher, and she would concentrate on helping Mazen with his speech, language comprehension, and vocabulary to ensure that these would improve over time. With time Ms. Ellis became a member of the family. She helped our entire family overcome our linguistic deficiencies and enabled us to keep in touch with the school. Ms. Scarf, Mazen’s home-room teacher, was no less involved in Mazen’s life than Ms. Ellis was and she took as great an interest in him. Mazen would come home from school bursting with excitement and tell me, “Mommy, can you believe it, Ms. Scarf hugs me every day. Why didn’t the teachers in Syria ever hug me?” My child’s questions etched themselves painfully and deeply on my mind and spirit, and I would reply silently: I’m still searching for answers myself, little one.
One day I went to pick Farah up from school at the end of the day and found her in the schoolyard with her teacher sitting next to her, helping her tie her shoelaces. As I stood watching them from some distance away, the sight of the two of them together revived old memories, bitter ones, still lodged deep in my mind. I remembered my head teacher when I was Farah’s age. He came up to me at break time and asked me to leave school and deliver a package of bread he had bought to his home for him. Fearful, I stammered out naïvely: “But we’ve got dictation now.” I had barely finished the sentence before he slapped me in the face as hard as he could. Remembering that sting of that cruel slap, I went up to Mrs. Anderson to thank her for her kindness and she said, “I saw her running toward the gate with her shoelaces undone and I was afraid she’d trip over them.” Mrs. Anderson hugged Farah and said, patting her on the shoulder, “Be a good girl, now. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I watched Farah’s face in the rearview mirror as she sat in the back seat. Her eyes were darting glances all around her, and I thought to myself: How I envy you, little one. Why did fate not give me a teacher like Mrs. Anderson when I was a girl—not to tie my shoelaces, but to bandage my wounds?
When I got home I finished writing an article I had begun a couple of days earlier, and concluded it with the words: “Our Prophet Muhammad says: ‘Teach your children to pray at the age of seven and beat them if they don’t at the age of ten.’ To Hell with a prophet who demands that a father beat his ten-year-old son to make him pray to God!”
One day Mr. Wilson, the head teacher, telephoned me and said, “Mrs. Sultan, Mazen’s left his hearing aids at home. Could you bring them to the school?” I thanked him for calling and told him, “Of course, I’ll be there at once!” I was late, though, in getting the hearing aids to the school, but when I opened the door to go out to the car I saw the head teacher holding Mazen by the hand as they walked together toward our house. When he saw me, Mr. Wilson said, “Mrs. Sultan, I know you’re busy, so I decided to walk with Mazen on this beautiful spring day so that we could pick up the hearing aids ourselves.” Mr. Wilson did not want me to feel guilty for not having brought my son’s hearing aids sooner, and insisted that he had decided to come along himself just to enjoy the beautiful weather.
I gave him the hearing aids and went back to my desk to note down on a few scraps of paper a story I remembered having read in a Muslim book about Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab. The caliph hit his son over the head with his stick for no particular reason, and, when his wife Hafsa protested and asked him, “Why did you hit him?,” Omar replied, “I saw he was getting above himself and decided to cut him down to size.” I followed this story with an account of what had happened to me that day and concluded the article with the words: “Long live America and down with the culture of injustice, oppression, and persecution! Long live Mr. Wilson, and everlasting death to Caliph Omar Ibn al-K hattab!”
As a result of the great kindness the teachers showed to my children, I became profoundly involved in my children’s lives at school, not only in order to support them throughout their education, but also so that I could learn together with them. I used to sign up for every school field trip, adding my name to the list of parents who volunteered to help the teacher escort the students. I often volunteered to help the children across dangerous streets when the crossing guard was absent for one reason or another, and I have kept many of the certificates of appreciation for this that I received from my children’s schools.
I remember how once, when my husband was at work, I discovered that we had run out of milk. At that time a gallon of milk cost $1.69, and, search as I did, I could come up with only $1.68. I asked Mazen to go to the shop across the street and tell the shopkeeper—a very nice woman who knew me well—that I would pay the missing penny next time. But Mazen refused, saying that he would be embarrassed. I was at a loss to know what to do. My small daughter Angela was asleep and I could not leave the house. Then suddenly I had a brainstorm, and told Mazen, “Listen, go to the shop, but before you go inside look around the parking lot and see if you can find a penny that someone’s dropped. If you find one, add it to the money you’ve got, and that’s the problem solved. If you can’t find one, come back home.” Mazen danced for joy at the idea, took the $1.68, and ran over to the shop.
Just a few minutes later I saw him through the window coming back carrying a gallon of milk and laughing out loud. When I opened the door for him I was surprised to hear him say, “Mommy, you’ll never believe what happened! I was looking for a cent and I found a dollar bill, so now I’ve got ninety-nine cents,” and he tossed me the change he had in his hand. I caught him by the shoulder and said, “Listen, honey, that’s America for you: You ask it for a cent and it gives you a dollar—but you have to go out and look for it!”
In Mazen’s first year at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, he submitted a request for financial aid from the federal government to cover his university expenses. I had already promised him that, once he had obtained the grant, his father and I would do everything in our power to pay for everything else. We did not expect this financial aid to cover all his tuition fees, and on the day he was due to pay them he went off to university with an open check signed by me to pay for the rest. A few hours later he telephoned me and told me, laughing, “Mommy, guess what happened!” “What?” I asked. “That’s America,” he said, “You ask it for a cent and it gives you a dollar. The grant covered all the tuition fees and the cost of the books and I’ve still got some money left.” When he got home he tossed me the check I had given him, saying jokingly, “I don’t want your help, America’s more generous that you are!” I caught him by the shoulder and told him, “Listen, this is a debt that will have to be repaid when you graduate,” but before I could finish my sentence he completed it for me: “And I have to donate a hearing aid to Los Angeles Unified School District whenever I can so that it can be given to a needy child—I know that. I know all that. I’ve got the lesson down by heart!”
Of course, there was always a contradiction in our lives that worried me: We were foreigners from the Middle East living in the United States. At the time of the first Gulf War Mazen had bee
n in the U.S. for little more than a year. I observed him as he watched events unfold on the television and tried to give his sister Farah his own childish explanation of what was happening: “We Americans are stronger than Saddam Hussein and we’ll crush the Iraqis.” I tried to hide my tears. There was a discrepancy there between the first half of his remark, “we Americans” and the second, “we’ll crush the Iraqis,” and it stopped me in my tracks. But, undaunted, I moved forward.
Once I realized that my English—and my reading comprehension in particular—had improved sufficiently to allow me to do so, I decided to take the medical equivalency examinations I had to pass in order to validate my qualifications and enable me to practice medicine in the United States. Among the subjects I had to obtain a pass in were behavioral science and psychiatry. Both these subjects plunged me into an ocean of knowledge the like of which I had never previously encountered, and made me feel embarrassed at the superficiality of my level of medical expertise in this field—not as a result of any personal inadequacy, but because of the limited information available on the subject to those who studied at our universities. I believe limitations were imposed because much of this material conflicted with many of the teachings of Islam, and it was kept from students for fear that contact with it would change their way of thinking. Through Kaplan Medical, a school that helped foreign doctors to pass these exams, I met other doctors from Muslim countries such as Iran and Pakistan, and they confirmed that they had not studied these subjects at such a high level or in such great depth at their universities either.
My thirst for knowledge of these two subjects spurred me to delve into them more deeply than was strictly necessary to pass the exams in them. Very early in my life in America I became fascinated by books that dealt with behavioral science and mental health, and I set out to quench my thirst for this knowledge. One day I made to my husband a remark he still remembers: “Now I know why America is a superpower. America is great because its people enjoy freedom of thought. They are the product of a culture that was born in the laboratory under the scientist’s lens, while we in the Muslim world lag behind because we have come from a repressive culture that has no respect for the mind and refuses to acknowledge its [own] failure to come to grips with science.”
