I'm done being demonized

On refusing the insult

We were sitting on the couch late one night over the holidays, scrolling through the options on our streaming services. Action. Tear-jerkers. Blockbusters.

When we visit family in Toronto, my mom-in-law and I are outnumbered. M is one of two boys and then there are our two boys. So there’s a large appetite for comedy and action and a small one for small sets with lots of dialogue.

I have written before about loving movies that do not love me back. About wincing through jokes about Mogadishu and Karachi. Through punchlines about goat meat and camel meat. Libyan terrorists. Barded men with a row of veiled, trailing wives.

My threshold used to be high. I could take a joke, or two, or seven, in exchange for a slick movie. Action and adventure. A ragtag group who overcomes the odds to beat the bad guy, except the bad guy is vaguely ethnic and speaks in guttural tones.

This last winter break, I realized I was done.

I can’t do it anymore. I can’t watch apocalyptic scenes where the killers are hook nosed and accented. Where the faces are partially hidden by turbans. I could list about 30 movies that fall into this category, but why bother? We all know them. The hero could be Bruce Willis or Chris Pratt or John Krasinski or some kid I’m too old to recognize.

Maybe I can’t watch a reel apocalypse anymore because I have already watched the real apocalypse.

Maybe I can’t watch bad guys in turbans anymore because whenever I see a turban now, I think only of Khaled Nabhan. Because I am heartbroken that people do not know Khaled Nabhan.

Do you know Khaled Nabhan? Let me tell you about him.

I first met him on my phone’s screen, weeks into the bombing of Gaza in the fall of 2023. A grandfather with a soft voice, holding a perfect little three year-old in his arms, kissing her closed eyes.

The three year-old was Reem, who’d just been killed by an Israeli airstrike. She was lightly covered in dust, with a gash on her cheek, but otherwise looked like she was sleeping. Her pigtails were still intact. There was not much blood.

With quiet desperation, Khaled opened one of Reem’s eyes, and then the other. He asked her to wake up. She would never wake up again.

Do you know the smile of a person in agony? This was Khaled’s smile that I would come to recognize in every subsequent video.

He wore the traditional Arab thawb¹ and a turban on his head. His beard was long and thick. He looked like he could audition for the part of terrorist in all the movies I used to watch. And he looked like he could get the part.

In the video, Khaled described his love for Reem to someone off-camera. Roh al-roh, he called her. The soul of my soul.

The words hit a chord in the world’s collectively breaking heart. We all know someone we love so much that they are housed in our deepest recesses. That they are inextricable. Some of us know what it is to lose that person. Khaled did.

He spent the next year playing with other people’s grandchildren. I saw him on my phone screen, taking part in a game of tug of war. Throwing and catching little boys and girls the way my Baba threw and caught every one of his grandchildren.

I saw Khaled deep in conversation with another small girl after her leg was amputated. Don’t worry, habibty, he told her. Your leg is waiting for you in heaven.

In December, just over a year after he lost his beautiful Reem, Khaled was killed in yet another Israeli airstrike. I know little about his surviving family.

In our tradition, we believe there are people who are awaliya-Allah, close friends of God. We are taught that these friends will likely be among the downtrodden here on earth. That they will likely be disadvantaged and materially powerless. But that they will have nur² in their hearts, and that we will see nur on their faces. There is no way to know, of course, but I saw nur each time I saw Khaled Nabhan on my screen.

I’ve written to you about the Muslim men I know. About the way these men remind me of other men, who lose their limbs or their lives or the souls of their souls. About the way these men are demonized, painted into cartoonish caricatures.

I am done accepting this demonization. I am done padding the stats or filling the coffers of the studios that promote it. I invite you to be done with it too.

MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin’s beautiful eulogy of Khaled Nabhan, or Ammo Khaled as so many of us have come to think of him.

aymanmsnbc

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1. A thawb is a long-sleeved, one piece garment worn in the Arab world. There are many other names for it, including galabiyya, as it’s called in Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawb

2. Nur is the Arabic word for light.