A great many of America's Muslims have been facing systematic racial discrimination since 9/11. Mohamed El-Sayed tells the story of one Egyptian who is determined to secure his rights Like thousands of ambitious Egyptian youth, Sherif, from the Delta city of Shebin Al-Kom, sought better life abroad. Having cut his university studies short in 1995, he obtained an American visa a year later and travelled to the United States. He started his career as a cook with a number of New York restaurants before he managed to get a well-paid job in 1999 in one of Washington DC's most famous, deluxe hotels -- The Ritz- Carlton. The hotel management is highly selective when choosing its staff. And Sherif was among those handpicked for his unique cooking skills, meticulous English and Arabic, his mother tongue, which came in handy with the Ritz- Carlton's rich Arab clientele. Everything went well with Sherif until the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. With the media awash with news about Arab embroilment in the carnage, anti- Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments were running high. The hotel management's policy towards its Arab staffers and clients changed for the worse. "Co-workers and management created a hostile work environment which singled me out for retribution. There were numerous incidents of verbal harassment, threats and physical intimidation," recalled the 30-year-old Sherif. Upon his return from a short vacation in Florida, he was asked by co-workers whether he was "attending a flight school to hijack more planes", referring to the Arab hijackers who allegedly attended flight courses in Florida before attacking targets in Washington and New York. In numerous other incidents he was called "suicide bomber" by his co-workers. The management was indifferent to his plight. Senior Arab officials who used to stay at the hotel were not immune from such racial remarks -- but of course they were said behind their back. "Why do these terrorists come to our hotel?" Sherif heard his managers repeatedly say. Sherif raised several complaints, urging the management to intervene. But his superiors turned a blind eye to his repeated requests for justice. He then contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which, in turn, addressed the hotel to put a stop to Sherif's harassment. His complaints and CAIR's intervention fell on deaf ears. On the contrary, matters took turn for the worse. He was subjected to arbitrary punishments -- Sherif was denied leave of absence, even when it was requested for health reasons. So harsh was the managers' treatment of the Egyptian staffer that he once fainted in the hotel after a quarrel with one of his managers who insulted him using racist words. At the George Washington University Hospital he was diagnosed as suffering a nervous breakdown due to the hostile work environment, and was advised by doctors to find another job. Sherif quit the hotel, but CAIR asked him to file a compensation lawsuit against the hotel management for its hostile conduct -- if not for his own interest, he was told, then "for the sake of all Arabs and Muslims who might face the same racist discrimination in the future." He first raised a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that verified the harassments he experienced, entitling him to file a case in March 2003 against the owner of the hotel, Marriott International, before the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Sherif sought $350,000 in compensatory damages and an additional $350,000 in punitive damages. With his health on the mend, Sherif managed to find another job at the Hilton Hotel in Virginia in January 2003. But before the bitter memories of the Ritz hotel had faded, another distressing misfortune visited him. One evening, while Sherif was on his way home, he was stopped on the street where he lived by eight secret service agents. "Are you Sherif (...)?" one of the eight burly men asked him after bringing him down to the ground. Trembling with fear, Sherif said yes. "What do you know about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? What do you think of Osama Bin Laden? Have you threatened the American president?" they interrogated him. Scared out of his wits, Sherif responded with an emphatic "nothing". Again, Sherif's Arab origins were haunting him. The agents didn't have an arrest warrant, so they let him go. Sherif promptly called his lawyer who said the incident could be "accidental". In the morning, however, while Sherif was driving his car towards the hotel, he was suddenly surrounded by a multitude of secret service and FBI agents who drove him to an unknown destination where he was subject to further interrogation. The same questions he was asked the night before were reiterated. "Cooperate with us, or else you will remain in prison for the rest of your life," one of the investigators threatened. He was then sent to Alexandria Detention Facility, Washington DC. "I spent three days in solitary confinement in utter darkness, before I was allocated a lawyer," Sherif said. To his utter astonishment, he was told that he was charged with "threatening" the American president. After searching his flat, FBI agents found the allegedly conclusive evidence -- an article about the Palestinian Intifada in The Washington Post, another article about the Palestinians by Ibrahim Nafie in the Arabic daily Al-Ahram, a cassette tape of the Holy Quran marked with a sticker, remarks on the calendar, in addition to a map of the mosque in which Sherif had intended to perform the Greater Bairam prayer. Thoroughly amazed, Sherif was unable to utter a word. The lawyer was furious at the Egyptian detainee for his silence, so Sherif wrote a letter to the judge telling him that he wanted another lawyer and that he could defend himself before the court. February 2003, was a hellish month for Sherif. "I went for more than 15 hours a day without food. And with no blanket to protect me from the chilling cold, I had to wrap myself in toilet paper at night," Sherif said, his voice choking with tears. Weeks passed with Sherif knowing nothing about the compensation case he filed against the hotel. Meanwhile, the case was dismissed because Sherif failed to show up before the court -- ironically it was the same court before which he would stand to defend himself against those charges, and which was located a few metres away from the detention camp. "I hired an Arab lawyer instead of the one appointed by the court. A week later, my lawyer was told by the attorney-general that if I admitted the charges levelled against me, they would release and deport me to Egypt. They wanted me to write a confession so that they can find an excuse for deporting me. Otherwise, I had to stand before a 12-member jury at a time when the American troops were waging a war on Iraq." Sherif pointed out that his trial coincided with the American invasion of Iraq. They were able to "trump up a charge against an entire nation," Sherif said. "It would not be difficult for them to bring a false charge against me and imprison me for the rest of my life?" he reasoned. He took his lawyer's advice, and confessed to the charges. "I decided to write the confession because the political atmosphere was tense and anti-Arab -- it was not conducive for an Arab to have a fair trial. Otherwise, I would have been sentenced to five years in prison, and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine." That wasn't, unfortunately, the end of the story. Sherif spent eight more months, from February to October 2003, in six different detention camps awaiting deportation to Egypt. "I was transferred from one camp to another in a cage on a police truck, shackled and hand-cuffed," Sherif recalled with tears welling up in his eyes. "I was put in solitary confinement for a week for asking for an aspirin to soothe a headache." Sherif was finally deported to Egypt in October 2003. He is, however, still determined to seek justice. "I have spent eight months in the detention camp. I was innocent. The charges they levelled against me were trumped up. I will file a compensation lawsuit against the American government to make up for every day I spent in detention. I lost all my savings and belongings which I was not allowed to take back with me. I will also sue the Ritz-Carlton Hotel again," Sherif vows.
