Project Rebirth (23 page)

There was silence as Debbie processed what was being requested of her, and then the superintendent's voice chimed in: “Debbie, I need you to come in tomorrow, whether school is open or not . . . You need to help us figure out what we can do.”

Like her son who had been so suddenly called to action, Debbie was willing and able to pitch in.

New York City educators were among the unsung heroes on September 11, 2001. Linda Lantieri, the director of the Inner Resilience Program, an organization that provided retreat experiences and ongoing support for teachers affected by the terrorist attacks and their aftermath, attests: “Miraculously, due to quick thinking, deep caring, and the inner resourcefulness of educators in the area, not a single student life was lost.”

After 9/11, countless educators were transformed overnight into grief counselors, recovery coordinators, and crisis-intervention experts for their students. As Lantieri visited schools in the aftermath of the attacks, she saw educators struggling to cope: “Many displayed the classic signs of compassion fatigue. In all the listening, they had not yet had the chance to check in with their own feelings and tell their own stories.”

Such was certainly the case for Debbie. Although she was experiencing her own season of trauma, she rarely spoke about it to others—instead focusing on her students, her community work, anything to make her feel a sense of purpose in such an uncertain time. Mary Dluhy, director of group initiatives at Georgetown University and a therapist in private practice in Washington, D.C., explains, “When you are processing a loss—whether of a loved one or for a dream shattered—your deepest fears of abandonment, of helplessness, and of loss of control are triggered.”

Being able to channel one's trauma and anxiety into a compelling project, as Debbie did, can be very healing. But nothing could prevent her from worrying about her son. Yousif would call home to let his family know he was all right, but he offered few details of his duties other than that he had been helping to recover bodies and to patrol the area.

“It is a world without time,” he explained to his mother. “We don't sleep here. You eat when you get hungry.” She could do nothing to protect him from the sights and sounds he was being exposed to. Though she had never witnessed such death and destruction firsthand, she could only imagine the way it must be embedding itself into her dear Yousif's mind. She felt as if she could do nothing to protect him.

On October 6, 2001—twenty-five days after the initial attack—Yousif got his first opportunity to come home from Ground Zero. When Debbie opened the door at about eight p.m. that autumn evening, Yousif was just standing there. “I couldn't believe it was him,” she recalls. “It didn't look like him. His face looked so tired and so stressed; his clothes smelled. It was just so scary to look at him.”

He broke the silence: “I am hungry.”

The family sat together in a daze, watching Yousif eat. If Debbie had felt guilty before about allowing such a young person to join the army, now she felt sure that Yousif's experiences at Ground Zero had aged him. “How is it out there?” she asked tentatively.

Yousif took a few more forkfuls of the food on his plate, as ravenous as if he hadn't eaten once in the almost four weeks he'd been gone, and then said, “Mom, I can't begin to tell you. I would never, ever want you or Dad to see anything I saw. Mom, it's like going to hell and coming back.”

Debbie was spending her school days inside the comforting bubble of her little classroom, but working with the school district on what was equivalent to a second job after hours. She explains, “My newfound activism was a way to help me deal with my issues around my son not being home and being at Ground Zero in a dangerous situation.”

Her own mission was clear: promoting religious understanding during this volatile time. This included making sure that no one in the local school communities felt marginalized. She supervised the translation of school board communications with parents into as many languages as possible, did sensitivity training for fellow teachers, and gave talks to parents. She was also the first one that parents knew they could go to if their families experienced harassment or discrimination in or around school.

One of Debbie's favorite projects involved organizing groups of diverse students to discuss their experiences of September 11, 2001, and then paint murals together. Participating children were asked to reflect on questions like these in small groups: Where were you on 9/11? How did you feel when you heard about 9/11? What are your thoughts today about 9/11? What are your thoughts about the upcoming anniversary of 9/11?

She'd seen many children break into tears, expressing their sadness and fear—sometimes for the first time—over what happened that day. “One of the children who cried,” Debbie recounts, “talked about the fact that his name was Osama Muhammed, and how his life was never going to be the same again. People will know he's Muslim and will torment him.”

Debbie felt that the attacks had fanned the flames of ignorance, like that which she'd encountered as a little girl in Buffalo. It now had a grown-up name, Islamophobia, and it was becoming more and more rampant in the post-9/11 world.

According to the
Journal of Applied Social Psychology,
People of Middle Eastern descent experienced 354 attacks in 2000 and an astonishing 1,501 attacks in 2001. Among those who were victims of the backlash, a Middle Eastern man in Houston, Texas, was shot and wounded by someone accusing him of “blowing up the country,” and four immigrants were shot and killed by a man who claimed to be taking revenge against Arabs (although only one of the victims, in reality, was of Arab descent) for the September 11th attacks.

In the face of this kind of violence, Debbie believed, educating the public about diversity and religious pluralism was more critical than ever. It had also become even more important for Muslims and Arabs to have a strong, peaceful voice in public.

In the summer of 2005, Debbie was at a gala breakfast banquet at Gracie Mansion, the historic residence where the Office of the Mayor holds significant events. Thanks to the instrumental work of Debbie and others, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had declared the week of July 9 to 16 the first-ever Arab American Heritage Week.

Debbie had served as the liaison between the mayor's office and the dozens of diverse Arab American organizations involved in the day's celebration. Between safety concerns and everyone wanting to make sure their interests were represented and their work recognized, hers was no easy task.

But Debbie was used to controversy. That past summer, she had intervened when the committee for the United American Muslim Day Parade printed flyers with the year's theme: “The Koran: Salvation of Humankind.”

“I looked at it, and it just made me cringe,” Debbie recalls. She went to her husband, who initially didn't see anything wrong with the flyer. She asked him, “What if you are a human being that does not believe in the Koran? What if your book is the Torah or the New Testament?”

“It didn't even dawn on me,” Naji replied, but proudly threw his support, once again, behind his conscientious wife. Debbie presented her concern at a committee meeting, invited dialogue, and asked them to generate some new ideas.

“Well, do
you
have a title for us?” asked one of the committee members. She had come ready with a friend's suggestion for rewording the theme: “The Koran: A Universal Message.”

It was her constant attention to the importance of language and her commitment to speaking in universal terms that made Debbie such a successful translator between the diverse Arab and Muslim American communities that she loved and the world of New York City politics. Debbie cried as the commissioner of immigration affairs, himself from the Dominican Republic, acknowledged Arabs' contributions to the city since the 1800s. She saw the beauty of receiving recognition from someone of another underrecognized culture.

When the mayor took the stage in July of 2005 and said, “Ahlan wa Sahlan. Welcome,” Debbie smiled at the sound of Arabic and English intertwined in power's mouth.

Meanwhile, things had been continuously difficult for Yousif. Since the end of his service at Ground Zero in February of 2002, he had been plagued by nightmares. It was also hard for him to commit to anything: Jobs came and went, he started college but then dropped out, and stable relationships eluded him. Debbie had tried to convince him to go to therapy, but he had declined.

Yousif had to go see a doctor when his hair started falling out in patches. He also suffered from skin discoloration around his lips, which made him extremely self-conscious. The doctor suggested that these temporary symptoms were probably stress related. Debbie couldn't help thinking that these physical conditions were a result of the months he'd spent at Ground Zero, but she was even more concerned about her son's mental well-being.