Got this in an email and thought I would share it.
ASHOOR
-------------------------
Assyrian Dream?."Fear Not What One Man Can Do Unto You".
By: Albert Davidoo
Written By: Albert Davidoo and Natalie Badalof
October 7, 2010
Body tense and mind anxious, my feet did not move as fast as my heart would have liked to escape the place which had caused me immeasurable distress and fear. Upon reaching my car, I finally unclenched my hands and felt them tremble in my lap. Not for the first time in the thirty-five years that I have resided in the United States of America, I felt displaced in the only home I am able to call my own.
At twenty-three years old, I emigrated from Iran into this beautiful country with the hopes of finally reaching a place that would accept me by granting me the American promise of freedom, equality, and tolerance. As an Assyrian Christian brought up in an Islamic country, I often felt unwelcome and discriminated against by the masses. In Iran, I overcame whatever prejudices that dictated others? opinions of me and learned to mix with the Muslim people whom I shared a community with. We went to the same schools and I gained many best friends who, undoubtedly opposed to my Christian faith, learned to see past it and accept me as a human being. Within all the turmoil of Iranian society, we somehow endured by reconciling the differences that are the foundation of the barrier separating our two spheres. However, I was ready to find a home where I was not rejected due to my faith, nationality, and race.
I have always believed that the United States of America is the greatest and strongest country on earth that has been fortified by the melting pot of immigrants and natural-born citizens working together on free soil. We are among the most intellectual people in the world with strong industries and the opportunity to advance in our careers and education. We are philanthropists, advocates of human rights, and defenders of freedom. I was visiting Memphis, Tennessee and decided to take a trip to Tunica, Mississippi, which is half an hour away from Memphis. Being a citizen and living in the United States for so many years had given me a sense of being a true American, until I came to doubt what this feeling meant through what I experienced here.
I was in Tunica with my wife. While getting in line for a buffet at a grand hotel, I noticed that VIP members entered a different line than the regular diners. Being a VIP card carrier, I entered the shorter VIP line and awaited my wife?s arrival to the restaurant. A man with a Southern accent from the regular line looked over at me with hostility in his eyes and disgust upon his face. He furiously reprimanded me for cutting in front of him in line, and although I was frustrated by his ignorance of the two separate lines, I moved behind him from the VIP to the regular line to avoid an argument. When my wife arrived, however, she questioned me as to why I was not in the VIP line. In response, the man spoke rude and profane words to us about ?cutting? the line even though they were clearly not VIP members. Among the several cruel racial slurs spoken by this man, he also yelled out, ?You should go back to your ***damn country!? to which I replied, ?This is my country, but since you mean to strip me from the privilege of being an American citizen, I will respond with this: I wish I had a country to go back to.? At this moment, a blonde and blue-eyed woman appeared out of nowhere and began wrongly accusing me that I pushed her. The both of them teamed up in a joint effort to harass me and the man ended up calling security and the police to arrest me after I had walked away. After I explained to the security that this individual was disrespecting my constitutional rights as a US citizen, they accepted the situation as a misunderstanding and walked away.
While I had aggressively defended myself in the situation, the drive back to my hotel was distressing. I had a deep fear that someone could easily put a bullet in my head. Imagine the irony: it was not too far from here, in Memphis, Tennessee that the revolutionary Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated the night after his ?I?ve been to the mountaintop? speech in front of the Mason Temple. The two individuals that publicly insulted me do not represent the country as a whole, but they created a fear in my heart by calling authorities to validate their own wrongful acts. I praise the local authorities for not helping these individuals further attempt to insult me and strip me of my constitutional rights. As I drove past the people of Mississippi on the way to my hotel room, I was as apprehensive towards the faces I passed as I was of the man and woman that had wounded my dignity. The comfort that I should have felt in an American city had been shot down and destroyed because of two racist individuals. The discomfort and fear remained with me in my dreams that night, and did not leave my heart or my mind until I was back in California.
After the incident, I could not help but to think about and somewhat relate to my Assyrian brothers and sisters who are dispersed throughout the world without a homeland, particularly those in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Iraq. They do not have the privilege to feel the comfort of being a part of a nation that supports and defends them. While I had the right as an American citizen to defend myself in the incident in Mississippi, the Assyrian refugees have no laws or police force to protect them, nor means or resources to defend themselves against injustice. Hopeless and displaced, it is no wonder our religious leaders are being kidnapped and killed, our Assyrian sisters and mothers are being abducted, raped, and murdered. Here in our American bubble, we are ignorant to their pain. We do not take action to protect them, save them, or give them a reason to have hope.
I wish for nothing more than to find an answer to this problem. Our faith teaches us to pray for those who face unfortunate circumstances, but I am afraid that prayer will not be enough. The Assyrian refugees are placed in a distressed situation where they have lost everything: their faith, their homes, their families, and their rights to peace. In essence, our people have been abandoned. Little is being done, and I am most fearful about the current youth and the future generations who are born in America and are ignorant about their native people outside of the United States facing such horrors. It?s discouraging to see that a comedic and ridiculous video can be circulated on the internet with hundreds of thousands of views, but a sincere and heart wrenching story about a displaced and desperate people cannot capture but a small fraction of this audience.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. said that he had a dream. This dream moved people to act, to realize their human rights, to move together towards a common goal. I also have a dream for the Assyrian people. I dream that one day we will all share the same ?Assyrian Dream.?
"We have a dream that one day all Assyrians will have human rights, freedom of speech, the freedom to practice their Christian faith, and the freedom to be emancipated from fear and hardship.
We have a dream that our Assyrian mothers, sisters, and daughters can walk freely without the fear of being abducted, raped, and murdered in their own homeland.
We have a dream that one day all Assyrians will be united as one harmonious nation and will be treated with justice and liberty."
We must not let fear stand in the way of what is humane and right. It is this generation?s job to act in accordance with our common dream: our wish for humanity and justice. Our Assyrian brothers and sisters who are refugees in their countries look to us with fear in their eyes but hope in their hearts. Their hope has been torn away from them, as if they were undeserving animals. We must act to give them the peace and comfort of a home which does not disgrace them or bring fear into their lives. Let us not only share the passion of this dream, but also share in the triumph of making it a reality.
ASHOOR
-------------------------
Assyrian Dream?."Fear Not What One Man Can Do Unto You".
By: Albert Davidoo
Written By: Albert Davidoo and Natalie Badalof
October 7, 2010
Body tense and mind anxious, my feet did not move as fast as my heart would have liked to escape the place which had caused me immeasurable distress and fear. Upon reaching my car, I finally unclenched my hands and felt them tremble in my lap. Not for the first time in the thirty-five years that I have resided in the United States of America, I felt displaced in the only home I am able to call my own.
At twenty-three years old, I emigrated from Iran into this beautiful country with the hopes of finally reaching a place that would accept me by granting me the American promise of freedom, equality, and tolerance. As an Assyrian Christian brought up in an Islamic country, I often felt unwelcome and discriminated against by the masses. In Iran, I overcame whatever prejudices that dictated others? opinions of me and learned to mix with the Muslim people whom I shared a community with. We went to the same schools and I gained many best friends who, undoubtedly opposed to my Christian faith, learned to see past it and accept me as a human being. Within all the turmoil of Iranian society, we somehow endured by reconciling the differences that are the foundation of the barrier separating our two spheres. However, I was ready to find a home where I was not rejected due to my faith, nationality, and race.
I have always believed that the United States of America is the greatest and strongest country on earth that has been fortified by the melting pot of immigrants and natural-born citizens working together on free soil. We are among the most intellectual people in the world with strong industries and the opportunity to advance in our careers and education. We are philanthropists, advocates of human rights, and defenders of freedom. I was visiting Memphis, Tennessee and decided to take a trip to Tunica, Mississippi, which is half an hour away from Memphis. Being a citizen and living in the United States for so many years had given me a sense of being a true American, until I came to doubt what this feeling meant through what I experienced here.
I was in Tunica with my wife. While getting in line for a buffet at a grand hotel, I noticed that VIP members entered a different line than the regular diners. Being a VIP card carrier, I entered the shorter VIP line and awaited my wife?s arrival to the restaurant. A man with a Southern accent from the regular line looked over at me with hostility in his eyes and disgust upon his face. He furiously reprimanded me for cutting in front of him in line, and although I was frustrated by his ignorance of the two separate lines, I moved behind him from the VIP to the regular line to avoid an argument. When my wife arrived, however, she questioned me as to why I was not in the VIP line. In response, the man spoke rude and profane words to us about ?cutting? the line even though they were clearly not VIP members. Among the several cruel racial slurs spoken by this man, he also yelled out, ?You should go back to your ***damn country!? to which I replied, ?This is my country, but since you mean to strip me from the privilege of being an American citizen, I will respond with this: I wish I had a country to go back to.? At this moment, a blonde and blue-eyed woman appeared out of nowhere and began wrongly accusing me that I pushed her. The both of them teamed up in a joint effort to harass me and the man ended up calling security and the police to arrest me after I had walked away. After I explained to the security that this individual was disrespecting my constitutional rights as a US citizen, they accepted the situation as a misunderstanding and walked away.
While I had aggressively defended myself in the situation, the drive back to my hotel was distressing. I had a deep fear that someone could easily put a bullet in my head. Imagine the irony: it was not too far from here, in Memphis, Tennessee that the revolutionary Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated the night after his ?I?ve been to the mountaintop? speech in front of the Mason Temple. The two individuals that publicly insulted me do not represent the country as a whole, but they created a fear in my heart by calling authorities to validate their own wrongful acts. I praise the local authorities for not helping these individuals further attempt to insult me and strip me of my constitutional rights. As I drove past the people of Mississippi on the way to my hotel room, I was as apprehensive towards the faces I passed as I was of the man and woman that had wounded my dignity. The comfort that I should have felt in an American city had been shot down and destroyed because of two racist individuals. The discomfort and fear remained with me in my dreams that night, and did not leave my heart or my mind until I was back in California.
After the incident, I could not help but to think about and somewhat relate to my Assyrian brothers and sisters who are dispersed throughout the world without a homeland, particularly those in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Northern Iraq. They do not have the privilege to feel the comfort of being a part of a nation that supports and defends them. While I had the right as an American citizen to defend myself in the incident in Mississippi, the Assyrian refugees have no laws or police force to protect them, nor means or resources to defend themselves against injustice. Hopeless and displaced, it is no wonder our religious leaders are being kidnapped and killed, our Assyrian sisters and mothers are being abducted, raped, and murdered. Here in our American bubble, we are ignorant to their pain. We do not take action to protect them, save them, or give them a reason to have hope.
I wish for nothing more than to find an answer to this problem. Our faith teaches us to pray for those who face unfortunate circumstances, but I am afraid that prayer will not be enough. The Assyrian refugees are placed in a distressed situation where they have lost everything: their faith, their homes, their families, and their rights to peace. In essence, our people have been abandoned. Little is being done, and I am most fearful about the current youth and the future generations who are born in America and are ignorant about their native people outside of the United States facing such horrors. It?s discouraging to see that a comedic and ridiculous video can be circulated on the internet with hundreds of thousands of views, but a sincere and heart wrenching story about a displaced and desperate people cannot capture but a small fraction of this audience.
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. said that he had a dream. This dream moved people to act, to realize their human rights, to move together towards a common goal. I also have a dream for the Assyrian people. I dream that one day we will all share the same ?Assyrian Dream.?
"We have a dream that one day all Assyrians will have human rights, freedom of speech, the freedom to practice their Christian faith, and the freedom to be emancipated from fear and hardship.
We have a dream that our Assyrian mothers, sisters, and daughters can walk freely without the fear of being abducted, raped, and murdered in their own homeland.
We have a dream that one day all Assyrians will be united as one harmonious nation and will be treated with justice and liberty."
We must not let fear stand in the way of what is humane and right. It is this generation?s job to act in accordance with our common dream: our wish for humanity and justice. Our Assyrian brothers and sisters who are refugees in their countries look to us with fear in their eyes but hope in their hearts. Their hope has been torn away from them, as if they were undeserving animals. We must act to give them the peace and comfort of a home which does not disgrace them or bring fear into their lives. Let us not only share the passion of this dream, but also share in the triumph of making it a reality.
