The ugly side of our city
You’d like to think we live in a tolerant city. But then you talk to Yusra Alaqrah.
She’s 53, a mother of four, a grandmother of three. She works three jobs, owns her own home, grows fava beans in her back yard and lives in Adams Farm, a Greensboro neighborhood with cul-de-sacs, manicured yards and basketball goals out front.
She feels she’s a victim of a hate crime.
She’s a Muslim, a former school teacher who wears the traditional Arabic headdress known as a hijab. And she believes her outward appearance — her face framed by fabric — has introduced her to the ugly side of America.
She hasn’t seen it, just the aftermath. She’s heard it. And to her, it sounds like a bomb. Here’s why:
It all started in November 2005 when she moved into Adams Farm. She’d been living there for a week, on a corner lot, when she heard bottles hitting her concrete patio out back.
Since then, she says, her house has been assaulted with eggs. Lots and lots of eggs.
It happens sporadically, every three weeks, every six months, always after midnight.
She gets startled from her bed by the splat of eggs smashing against her second-floor windows, below the first-floor living room window or against the side of the house.
You can see the outlines of past attacks. Stains on the second-floor windows. Specks below the living-room window sash. Stains on the side of the house, as big as a dinner tray.
She’s cleaned it or paid for it to be cleaned. It’s cost her $175 to $300 each time. Still, you see the shadows of egg whites. And the look on Alaqrah’s face.
“No one knew our name, except this,’’ she says, pulling on her hijab.
Alaqrah has played cop. She’s tried to catch people in the act of egging by sitting in her first-floor computer room and peeking through the blinds with each passing car as the time stretches past midnight.
Nothing. Except pain, stress and no sleep.
Ask her about that stress, and she’ll pull out a medical bill and point to the phrase “shocking sensation,’’ the feeling that shoots through her left leg when she walks.
That’s never happened until the egg onslaught at Adams Farm.
“I’d like to meet them face to face and ask, 'Why do you do this to me?,’’’ Alaqrah said a few days ago. “I want an answer. I don’t hate them. But I love my religion. I am an American. I am a citizen. I belong here like everybody else.”
The last egg attack on her house came April 13. Eight days later, wearing a blue hijab, she told the City Council her story.
She called her neighborhood association, which she pays $135 every year for their services. They referred her to the police. She called the police again, something she says she has done “many times.’’
They have come out twice.
“I felt nobody cares,’’ Alaqrah pleaded to council members. “I have three jobs. Tell me what to do.’’
They have. The city’s Human Relations Department will talk to the neighborhood association, and the police will look into whether the egg incidents are more than just a juvenile prank.
According to Mayor Yvonne Johnson, the police are considering surveillance, and the city’s Human Relations Commission, a council-appointed board, will work to increase understanding and dismantle hate in our city of 100 languages.
The protection of civil rights is a big deal here. It’s seen in our history, taught in our classrooms and celebrated in our monuments from East Market to Old Battleground.
But today, race is active in many major issues our city faces. And some local folks see the ugly sheen of prejudice, racial bias and distrust almost everywhere they look.
Others, of course, disagree. They see our city as that admirable spot on a hill, where everything’s gonna be all right.
Yet, listen to Alaqrah. Everything is not all right.
She’ll show you her medical bills, pull out her police reports and take you on a tour of the egg stains as she tells you about her backyard garden, full of edible memories from her native country of Jordan.
The whole time she talks, she has her arm hooked through the slender arm of Alex, a 13-year-old boy who tip-toes beside her, his head bobbing side to side.
Alex had a brain aneurysm. Caring for him is one of her three jobs. She looks after him every weekday afternoon, between her full-time job as a certified nursing assistant and her part-time job as a caregiver for an 85-year-old woman who lives alone.
“I cry a little bit, I call the police a little bit, and I go to my job so stressed,’’ she says. “I can’t take it anymore.’’
Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com
Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption: Yusra Alaqrah looks at an upstairs window that still shows signs of an egg despite being washed
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