My America: Confronting Islamophobia as a Medical Doctor
There it was — draped across the chair right next to the bed in his hospital room. It was newly printed and didn’t have a visible crease in sight.
It laid there, imploring me to keep America great. And it was stealing my attention away from the very important matter at hand.
Sam* was sick, very sick. His new cells meant to destroy his leukemia had decided to attack his own body. These devious cells had set up shop in his gut, and they were taking no prisoners. His eyes gleamed neon, a result of his malfunctioning liver. His abdomen was full and taut, which laid in sharp contrast to the gauntness of the rest of his body. He looked up at me while I examined his abdomen, silently reminding me to keep America great.
Sam was 19. He was from the heartland of America. He brought a makeshift cow built from PVC piping that he practiced lasso with during admissions for chemotherapy. He could tell you about his hundreds of cows back at the farm. How he missed Kansas. How there was nothing in the Twin Cities that excited him. He wanted his treatment, he wanted the cancer gone, and he wanted to go back home. And to be left alone there.
I still remember the first time I met his family; his Mom stared straight at me without saying a single word. He looked at me with suspicion and distrust in his eyes. I chalked it up to awkward introductions and cheerfully stated I would see them again. It wasn’t until later that I realized just why this encounter was so jarring for them. I happened to see him in clinic one day for a follow-up, a visit routine enough to forget. I would later learn from a colleague that he had asked about me. Sam wanted to know where the “towel-head” doctor was.
Fortunately — or unfortunately — the Islamophobic slur did not faze me. I was born and raised in a country where some people are profoundly disturbed that I dare to wear a cloth around my head.
How dare I look different or worse yet… be different! Didn’t I know that to show one ounce of heterogeneity in a porcelain world was blasphemy?
In the immediate moment that I learned Sam had uttered such an antiquated and unoriginal slur, I wasn’t surprised. Although he was old enough to enlist in the army, vote, and even own a gun (which he did and proudly reminded us of), he was not old enough, wise enough, or lived enough to know the weight of slagging such a word. I couldn’t fault him for his naivete. I thought perhaps he had heard his grandfather say it, and because he had never seen a real life towel-head in his small town, he wanted to practice saying it too. After all, I wasn’t the one dying. Who was I to feel offended that a dying boy wanted to practice a word he likely heard his elders speak? The word itself didn’t bother me so much as what the word was a trojan horse for. If all racists ever did was fling around colorful and lazy slurs, we could all rejoice in their simplicity.
Sam didn’t just think I was a towel-head — he believed I was nothing more than a towel-head. Sam’s rejection of me as a human being underneath my headscarf was what hurt. I felt betrayed.
Sam died not long after I became overtly aware of his personal worldviews. Knowing how he felt about me tied him inexplicably to me. It didn’t change the fact that I wanted him desperately cured. It didn’t change my conviction to the Hippocratic Oath. Sam was still a suffering young man ravaged by a cancer that didn’t care about his ethnicity, citizenship status, or political leanings. It wanted to destroy his body at all costs, and I wanted to save him at all costs. When he died, I wanted to extra grieve for him. I wanted to prove to him that death makes mere and literal mortals of us all and that all of this hate and misunderstanding didn’t matter. Death is the great equalizer that takes racists and non-racists with it.
I waited for Sam’s obituary to be posted and read and re-read it. I pondered what his funeral was like. Did he feel peace resting in the earth, back in his native Kansas, breathing a sigh with the soil above him? I hoped Sam felt peace after he died, but I hoped more that he found peace while he was here with us on this earth.
Living is hard. Dying is harder. The transition is impossible. Sowing divisions during that process is cruel.
What I learned from Sam is that we all need to see love and humanity in each other. We all meet the same fate, and we must all support each other as we do it.
When I chose to pursue a field in pediatric oncology, it was to help society’s most vulnerable individuals, and I will not allow the hateful rhetoric of our time to mar my worldview. I am a physician, mother, sister, wife — but I am a human first.
*Name and other details changed to protect privacy
Asmaa Ferdjallah is a pediatric bone marrow transplant fellow at the University of Minnesota. She holds a masters in public health and is passionate about social justice and the pediatrician's role in serving that cause. She is a proud Muslim woman who works hard to tear down stereotypes and hopes to serve as a role model to other young Muslimahs who have big goals! She is ecstatic to get the chance to publish this work on Islamophobia and its subtle forms in the workplace. As we awaken to the reality of a system that has unrecognized the pervasiveness of systemic racism, she hopes that all ethnic and religious minorities can work together to create a peaceful and fair world for all.