{"id":37686,"date":"2026-03-26T20:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/37686\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T20:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:33:12","slug":"im-a-muslim-arab-living-in-alabama-this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-watch-1-home-destroy-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/37686\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m A Muslim Arab Living In Alabama. This Is What It Feels Like To Watch 1 Home Destroy Another."},"content":{"rendered":"

In my four decades as an immigrant to the United States from Damascus, Syria, I have witnessed war not as something distant, but as something almost expected \u2014 not foreign, but closer than my skin. It\u2019s something sad and quiet that tears me to pieces every time. Just the fact that I can say \u201cevery time,\u201d shakes my world at its foundation.<\/p>\n

Why does there have to be an \u201cevery time\u201d?<\/p>\n

I came to this country in 1984 as an 18-year-old full of dreams, seeking freedom and all that other stuff that sounds trite but is true. And throughout my adulthood here, war has arrived in headlines, in conversations, in the subtle shift in how people look at me when the news turns to the Middle East. As a result, we \u2014 Muslims \u2014 have become an entity other Americans consider not only with prejudice, but with ample suspicion.<\/p>\n

More than once, I have been asked \u2014 directly and without hesitation \u2014 if I was a terrorist. It\u2019s happened not just here in Alabama, but across this vast country I now call home. I have learned to answer with patience, sometimes with humor, but mostly with silence. No matter what I do or don\u2019t say, the question lingers long after it is asked, and with it lingers a wound that has oozed blood and shame \u2014 a wound that has stayed red and raw.<\/p>\n

\""In“In 2018, I worked as the editor of the Selma Sun in Selma, Alabama,” the author writes. “Here, I am standing in front of the iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge, a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement.”<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Karim Shamsi-Basha<\/p>\n

Still, this is not a story about those hurtful questions. This is a story about what it\u2019s like to wake up to two worlds achingly entangled.<\/p>\n

In one world, there are grocery lists, small talk and the gentle rhythm of Southern life. A cashier smiles and asks how my day is going. Someone comments on the weather. A neighbor waves. Life feels steady, almost tender in its predictability.<\/p>\n

In the other world, my phone lights up before the sun rises with messages from relatives. Missed calls. Headlines I hesitate to click. Names of cities that sound like home that are now spoken in the language of destruction.<\/p>\n

Every day, I move between these two worlds with plenty of guilt. <\/p>\n

Once during the decade-long Syrian war, I stood in line at my Birmingham coffee shop while speaking to Momma in Damascus. I asked her how things were. It was my turn at the counter at that moment, so I nodded at the barista taking my cappuccino order, then went back to Momma, who was saying, \u201cThe bombings were not that close today. Our building did not shake.\u201d <\/p>\n

During the Gulf War, I had relatives in Kuwait, and similar interactions took place. I lived my life here in America, facing dilemmas like where to go for lunch or when to pick up my dry cleaning, and they lived \u201cover there,\u201d deciding if it was worth risking their lives to go to the store.<\/p>\n

With bombs falling across the Middle East today, these two separate but conjoined worlds persist for me. I nod politely in conversation while part of me is elsewhere, listening for the next update, the next confirmation that someone I love is still safe.<\/p>\n

As the conflict between my two worlds sharpens, so do the sweet memories of my first home.<\/p>\n

At times, when I close my eyes, I return to Damascus \u2014 not the city of headlines, but the one that lives inside me.<\/p>\n

\""I“I took this photo of Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city on Earth, during my last visit in 2024,” the author writes.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Karim Shamsi-Basha<\/p>\n

I see myself as a boy, running through the streets of the Abbo Rommana neighborhood, on Abdul Malek Street, my feet flying over the sidewalk, my laughter echoing against the cement buildings. The days felt endless. We played without thinking of time, without thinking of anything beyond the next game, the next joke, the next burst of laughter.<\/p>\n

On Fridays, I would walk with my Babba to the mosque. He moved with quiet dignity, greeting people along the way, his presence steady and calm. Inside, the adults stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer \u2014 composed and reverent. We, the boys, tried to be still but rarely succeeded. We would sneak glances at each other, suppress laughter, and whisper just enough to feel rebellious. After the prayer, we ran across the vast rugs, our bare feet sinking into their softness, as if the mosque itself were holding us.<\/p>\n

Life spilled into the streets. Food wasn\u2019t just something we ate, it was something we lived. The scent of shawarma turning slowly over red coals wrapped itself around us. Vendors pushed carts where falafel crackled in hot oil. You smelled it before you saw it \u2014 cumin, sumac and the scent of fresh parsley rising like a promise. Others sold cactus pears with bright skins catching the light, boiled corn steaming into the evening air, and roasted chestnuts that warmed our hands on cool nights. We indulged as the lone Arabic ney sang somewhere nearby.<\/p>\n

We stood outside late into the night \u2014 talking, laughing and sharing stories that felt important, even if they were not. Our street was our world. It shaped us and made us feel like we belonged to something larger than ourselves.<\/p>\n

This is the Damascus I carry with me when I hear the word \u201cwar.\u201d Not strategy. Not politics. Not maps. Just memory. Texture. The sound of a farmer calling out his apples. The scent of cardamom rising from ahwe murra, bitter Arabic coffee. The vivid colors of Souq al-Hamidiyah, its narrow shops spilling over with za\u2019atar and Aleppo pepper, prayer rugs and rosary beads, engraved copper pots, mosaic boxes, and books time has quietly forgotten. <\/p>\n

Home in the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth.<\/p>\n

\""Here“Here I am, just 4 years old, at my sister’s birthday party,” the author writes. “I am to the left of her, grinning big, as she blows out her candles.”<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Karim Shamsi-Basha<\/p>\n

Then I open my eyes, and I am in Alabama.<\/p>\n

Life is different here. This is another home I have made. It\u2019s a place that has given me a lot. A place where I built a life, raised a family, found friendships and discovered parts of myself I may never have known otherwise.<\/p>\n

I love much about living in this country. I love the freedom. No, I live for this freedom that I grew up crying for. I live for the ability to speak, to write, to stand on a stage and tell my story in my own voice. Yet, there is a tension I cannot ignore. The same country that has given me this life is often fraught with the stories of destruction I wake up to each morning.<\/p>\n

This is the contradiction I carry: loving a place that gave me wings, while grieving what it has done, and continues to do, to the very place that shaped my wings\u2019 feathers.<\/p>\n

There are moments when this tension feels too heavy to carry \u2014 when gratitude and grief sit side by side, neither willing to move.<\/p>\n

Someone asks me, \u201cHow are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

I pause just for a second too long because the answer depends on which world I find myself in at that moment.<\/p>\n

\""I“I visited Israel and Palestine a few years back,” the author writes. “At the Western Wall, I wore both a yarmulke and the Arabic turban, hoping to send a message of coexistence.”<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Karim Shamsi-Basha<\/p>\n

Sometimes grief arrives loudly via breaking news and urgent messages. Other times, it comes quietly, slipping into the middle of an ordinary day. It\u2019s in the way my hand lingers on my phone before I put it down. In the way a word in Arabic can suddenly pull me back into a memory so vivid it feels like I never left.<\/p>\n

When I speak to my sister on the phone, she calls me \u201cKarromay,\u201d and I am instantly back in Damascus, where my Momma always called me that. Karromay means \u201clittle Karim.\u201d It is tender. Aching now. Momma passed away a couple of years ago, when that massive earthquake struck Syria and Turkey.<\/p>\n

Different things ignite this grief. A stray remark. A question about \u201cthose people over there.\u201d A look heavy with suspicion. There is a loneliness to this \u2014 not because people here do not care, but because it is hard to explain what it means to carry noise and silence at once.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to be seen, at times, as something other than human. As a symbol. As a question. And yet, there is also something else.<\/p>\n

It is fragile, yes, but it persists.<\/p>\n

I have seen it in small moments. In a stranger\u2019s kindness. In someone choosing to listen instead of judge. In the quiet recognition that we are more alike than we are different.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe author (left) with his three children, Zade, Dury and Demi, in Alabama. “I consider myself the most fortunate father on this planet,” he writes.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Karim Shamsi-Basha<\/p>\n

Watching another war unfold from Alabama has taught me this: We cannot control what others do. We cannot stop wars with our hands alone. But each of us lives in a small world we do control. We can smile at a stranger. We can reach out to someone who is different from us. We can choose compassion over fear. We can remember that the person standing in front of us carries a story we may never fully understand.<\/p>\n

We can be \u2014 simply and profoundly \u2014 human. That may be, in the smallest of ways, where peace begins.<\/p>\n

Karim Shamsi-Basha is a Syrian American writer and former columnist for MOSAIC.NJ.com<\/a>, a platform amplifying marginalized voices. He immigrated from Damascus to the U.S. at 18. His children\u2019s book, \u201cThe Cat Man of Aleppo,\u201d earned the 2021 Caldecott Honor and the Middle East Book Award. Karim\u2019s work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, Time, People, The New York Times and The Washington Post. A single father to three beautiful humans, Zade, Dury, and Demi, he lives by the motto \u201cCarpe diem,\u201d savoring every moment of this extraordinary life.<\/p>\n

Do you have a compelling personal story you\u2019d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we\u2019re looking for here<\/a> and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my four decades as an immigrant to the United States from Damascus, Syria, I have witnessed war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[9749,1680,196,2337,95],"class_list":["post-37686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-alabama","tag-immigration","tag-iran-war","tag-islamophobia","tag-syria"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116297387457259743","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}