REVIEW OF "ONCE IN A PROMISED LAND by Laila Halaby
By A. J. Goldsmith
When Islamic rogues crashed airliners into the New York's twin towers and Washington's Pentagon, life changed for all Americans.
Most Americans bounced back from the horror and life continued. For Muslims in America, citizens or not, life did not continue normally.
Salwa Haddad has the good fortune to be born in America when her Palestinian parents were visiting here. She did not know America nor did she envision living there as they were quite at home in Jordan.
At college, Salwa attended a lecture by a Jordanian man, who held a Ph.D. and who worked at a hydrology consulting firm whose clients included Tucson, Arizona's water bureau. They chanced to meet after the lecture and soon after, properly, got married and moved to America.
Twelve years passed, and the childless marriage, moved into boredom. Each morning before work, Jassim swam at his club, where he met a seemingly- friendly, fellow swimmer and flirted with the receptionist. Salwa headed for the bank where she worked. After her bank hours, she worked in as a real estate saleswoman. She was successful at both endeavors.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001 and the pressures that it brought with it heaped upon their fragile marriage, a marriage that increasingly lacked intimacy.
While shopping in a Tucson mall, Jassim was followed by a uniformed security guard because he "looked suspicious."
"In his Ferragamo shoes?" Salwa asked the clerk who had called security.
Salwa was unable to tell her husband that she was pregnant. She was unable to seek his solace when she lost the fetus.
Jassim was unable to tell his wife that he killed a young man who skateboarded into his Mercedes' path.
Salwa got attention from a young man at the bank. Jassim sought attention from women he met.
Unknown to Jassim, his friend at the swim club, alerted the FBI to Jassim and said that he might be a terror suspect especially since his work involved the city's water supply.
A suspicious woman at Jassim's workplace also kept a log of all of his comings and goings as well as his phone calls.
FBI agents question a very, unworldly Jassim who does not recognize that he could be suspected of terrorism. When FBI agents question clients of his employer; they cancel their contracts. Jassim is terminated.;
Salwa's lover tries to kill her, but she escapes.
Author Laila Halaby was born in Beirut, Lebanon, of a Jordanian father and American mother. She came to Tucson at the age of five where she now lives with her husband and two sons. She earned her bachelor's degree at Washington University in St. Louis. She was awarded a master's degree in Arabic language and literature by UCLA and another in counseling from Loyola Marymont.
In her writing Halaby seeks to dispel the widely-held myths and misconceptions about Palestinian, Arabic and Muslim people and have readers see her world from the inside.