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GREENSBORO — Last Sunday, in this space, Yusra Alaqrah  talked about having her house egged time and again, always after midnight, for more than three years.

She felt no one was listening, no one cared, and she believed she was hit incessantly because of the folds of fabric that framed her face: her head scarf, her hijab, the wardrobe signature of her religion.

Alaqrah is a Muslim, an American citizen and a Jordanian native. And she felt she was a victim of a hate crime.

Today, Greensboro police say that’s not the case. After an investigation, their verdict: petty vandalism.

“She does have a religion that is different from a lot of ours, but there is nothing to support that her egging was based on her religion,’’ said Greensboro police Lt. Dennis Willoughby.

Let’s break down what we know.

Alaqrah lives in a corner house, an easy target for any after-midnight maliciousness. And she lives on a heavily traveled street that connects Wendover and beyond to Adams Farm, Greensboro’s largest neighborhood.

There were no witnesses and no suspects, except cars crawling by late at night. The only evidence? Just egg shells and stains — the aftermath of what police see as a messy prank.

A collective sigh. At least in Adams Farm. 

“The word 'hate’ is so strong, and of any community in Greensboro, I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t believe Adams Farm,’’ says Troyce Hood, an 11-year resident of Adams Farm. “It was almost like 'Give me a break!’ I didn’t want to believe it.’’

A few weeks back, when Alaqrah told her story to the Greensboro City Council, she told them she lived in Adams Farm.

Not quite. She lives in Pilot’s Ridge, a small neighborhood of a few streets tucked between Adams Farm and Sedgefield Lakes.

The folks in Adams Farm were hot. They felt their 720-acre enclave — a neighborhood of at least 3,000 people and dozens of nationalities — had been maligned.

But think about Alaqrah and the whereabouts of her house.

Walk three minutes and you’ll hit Pilot Elementary, the school that serves Adams Farm. Drive 30 seconds and you’ll see Adams Farm’s first street. Hit a half-mile on your odometer and you’ll find the fleur-de-lis insignia of Adams Farm.

Alaqrah remembers seeing the flier when she bought her  three-bedroom house in the fall of 2005. She remembers the two words she read, the two words that gave her comfort: Adams Farm.

Now, she doesn’t have much comfort. She’s a 53-year-old divorced mother of four, grandmother of three, who has sat up way past midnight, peeking through the blinds, to catch the vandals egging her house.

She has lost sleep, and she went to the doctor for stress. And even with the ruling by the police, she still believes she’s a victim of a hate crime.

“Hateful people throw eggs and hateful people keep doing it and doing it and keep doing it for 3 ½ years,’’ says Alaqrah, a certified nursing assistant who holds down three jobs to help pay the bills. “That is a hate crime.’’

Hate crime, a phrase explosive as a live grenade, brings to mind an ugly chapter of American history — from lynchings to the attack of a gay man who died tied to a split-rail fence in the middle of nowhere.

But a hate crime can be hard to prove and, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, law enforcement officers are often reluctant to classify crimes that way.

It makes you wonder if that could’ve happened with Alaqrah. But talk to the Rev. Mark Sills, executive director of FaithAction International House, a nonprofit that works closely with the city’s growing immigrant population.

He trusts the local police and says they work hard not to let their personal biases interfere with their job. But he says the police culture tends to discount hate crimes because of the paperwork and emotions involved.

“When we say, 'We hate other people and we want to do great harm and damage their property,’ you are saying really negative things about your community,’’ Sills says. “And we want to believe anything unpleasant belongs to someone else. Not us.’’

Whatever you believe, here’s what happened last week.

On Tuesday, a Greensboro police officer stopped by Alaqrah’s house and told her 19-year-old son, Ghassan Ihbais, a GTCC student: “We’re going to take care of you. Say hello to your mom.’’

By Wednesday, the Adams Farm Community Association Board put up a $100 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person — or people — egging Alaqrah’s house.

It’s the right thing to do, members say. She needs to feel safe, too.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com