Editor's Note: Former USF instructor Sameeh Hammoudeh was incarcerated for three years as a co-defendant in the Al-Arian terrorism case and acquitted last December on all counts. Despite an agreement that he was to be deported in connection with unrelated fraud charges, the U.S. government held him in custody till this past spring. In May he joined his wife and children, who had already been deported, in the West Bank.
Sameeh Hammoudeh is 10 minutes late pulling up to the curb in his shiny blue compact, but considering the bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic in Ramallah, that's not so bad. It's Thursday afternoon, and as Friday is the first day of the weekend in the Arab culture, the main drag is packed.
Three and a half years ago, Hammoudeh had plans to come back to Ramallah for a couple of months to shop around for a job. But that plan went awry, says Hammoudeh, because "George Bush wouldn't allow it." It's the first of many references Hammoudeh makes to his legal battles with the U.S. government, which have forever altered the lives of Hammoudeh, his family and the Muslim community in Tampa. It's the shorthand version of why he's now giving me a mini-tour of the "capital" of the West Bank.
"Life here is very complicated," says Hammoudeh as we pull up to a 4-story white stone apartment building. His extended family has lived here, in several apartments, since before he and his wife left Ramallah with their three children in 1992, and it was where they expected to live again someday, once Hammoudeh earned his doctorate in applied anthropology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. "Had I left [Florida] on my own decision, maybe it [would be] easier to adapt," he says. "But the way it happened is just hurting."
Hammoudeh's youngest son Muhammad greets his father at the door with jumping-bean hugs, followed by shy silence in the company of guests.
"He insists that he's an American," says Hammoudeh of his 5-year-old. "He speaks English."
Before being deported earlier this year, the Hammoudehs hadn't been to Palestine since 1996; their three youngest children had never been there until they were forced to leave the U.S. with their parents.
Hammoudeh's wife, Nadia, is next, followed by his 8-year-old daughter, Alaa.
"She defines herself as Arab-American," says Hammoudeh. It seems that the older the children (there are six in all), the less they identify with the U.S.
I ask Hammoudeh how his life has changed in the past six months; his answer comes quickly and with a smile.
"Freedom is good," he responds. In the living room, 16-year-old Hanan is sitting on the couch, watching the just-launched English language Al Jazeera TV station.
"They go to the store by themselves and to the supermarket," adds his wife, smiling from under her white hijab.
Ramallah has some of the benefits of a small town, but being forcibly transplanted from the strip malls of Temple Terrace to a war zone on the West Bank has been far from easy. While Tampa Bay traffic can be a serious headache, it's a cakewalk compared to the checkpoint-laden trip from Ramallah to Jenin, normally a 45-minute drive that Hammoudeh says now takes four hours.
"Lets eat!" says Nadia, leading us out of the book-filled sitting room. I realized one day earlier that today was Thanksgiving in the U.S., but the Hammoudehs don't celebrate Thanksgiving anymore. We enter the dining room to a platter of beef-flavored rice and chicken, eggplant dip and sweet pickles.
No discussion in Palestine can go very long before the topic of Israel comes up. Over dinner, Sameeh recommends I visit Jerusalem, while noting that he's not allowed to go there himself. At this time, Palestinians are only allowed into the holy city during Ramadan, and even then, only men over 45. "Although international law gives us the right to worship there, the Israelis are not implementing it," says Sameeh.
After dinner, Nadia brews tea in the kitchen. For the past four years, she has been the rock of the family. Balancing the demands of raising her children with frequent trips to the federal courthouse in downtown Tampa was exhausting; she didn't attend the trial much of the time. "Sometimes I couldn't handle it," she says. "I couldn't handle the lying and talking about him."
As we return to the sitting room to eat her homemade cake, Nadia says she had a lot of support, both from Tampa's Muslim community and from her neighbors who knew her husband and didn't believe the charges. But that support could only go so far.
"I was scared. … I used to think about the kids. 'What's going to happen?' What if they keep him in jail?' 'How will we be able to leave him here?'"
Sameeh looks down at the floor as his wife continues.
"I didn't have a guarantee of what was going to happen. But always Sameeh would say, 'Don't worry, everything will be fine; they have nothing on us.' But still I felt more …"
"Threatened," interjects Sameeh.
Nadia nods before talking about how after Sameeh was acquitted, there was a celebration at the local mosque in Tampa, at which she told friends he would be released in a matter of days — before Sameeh's six months in limbo at the Bradenton Detention Center.
Sameeh finally made it back to his home in the West Bank May 25 after a grueling battle with U.S. immigration authorities, who promised several times to release him from Florida and broke that promise repeatedly. The rest of the family arrived in Palestine in February; after being stood up at Tampa International Airport by ICE officials who said they were bringing Sameeh to meet them, Nadia and her children flew to Amman, Jordan. Following an unsuccessful week working the phones from Amman, trying to get Sameeh released, Nadia decided to go to Palestine and get on with the family's new life while simultaneously advocating for her husband from halfway around the world.
Sameeh is currently working part-time teaching two university classes, one titled "The Arab World and International Affairs," and another about Palestinian cultural change. He says his students at Birzeit University, located just outside of Ramallah, trust him when he says there are good people in the U.S., because he speaks from experience.
"Many people like to see things as black and white. I try to explain to them that that is not the way; there are so many colors," he says. "Although I went through a very difficult experience with the American government, I don't feel that the American people are an enemy for me. I still keep the same feelings for the people, because they do understand. And I believe that had it not been for the jury, I would have been convicted by the judges, because it was very clear what their bias was from the very beginning of the case."
See also:
Views from the West Bank, more of Sameeh Hammoudeh's thoughts.
This article appears in Dec 13-19, 2006.