Posted on 09/11/2002 9:24:05 PM PDT by Conagher
It was impossible not to notice the new cadet.
A week after terrorists turned airliners into missiles a year ago, the Junior Marines ROTC unit assembled in the Hickman Mills High School gymnasium before hundreds of students, teachers and parents.
Everyone saw her.
She wore her head scarf -- her hijab -- which showed she was a Muslim woman.
Oh, God, Aliyah Shallo thought to herself. The high school junior had been stared at before -- but nothing quite like this.
What is she doing here? Chris Hankins remembers thinking. He and the other teen-age cadets watched her step into line, wearing the camouflage uniform of a U.S. military unit sponsored by the Marines.
Everyone was learning hasty lessons about themselves and each other in those tense days a year ago -- classmates, teachers, friends, Muslims, non-Muslims.
"I think there were almost racist feelings in the beginning," Hankins said. But now "she's just as American as I am in my eyes."
Shallo says she never doubted herself. She wanted to join the ROTC because she had been intrigued with the idea of students leading students in exercising discipline.
She was not going to back out because of what happened Sept. 11.
It didn't matter that the voices of disbelief were still fresh in her mind -- the voices of her mother, her Muslim friends, her guidance counselor, her ROTC commander -- asking her over and over, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Classmate Riyad Jawhari -- also Muslim -- had tried to talk her out of it.
"He said: `Do you realize what could happen? Do you realize how many people don't want you there?' "
The truth was, Jawhari had also wanted to join the ROTC but let his concerns keep him at a distance. Within days after Shallo enrolled, Jawhari joined, too. Then Shallo's brother, Mohamed, joined.
"Friends asked me, `Aren't you guys against America?"' Jawhari said. "But I love this country."
Jawhari, a Palestinian who was born in Saudi Arabia, came to Kansas City with his family when he was about 6.
"Don't you know I'd rather be here than anywhere else?" he said.
Like many students across the country, Jawhari was in a classroom, watching the news unfold on television a year ago.
Before the identities of the attackers became known, he pleaded silently, Please don't be Arabs. Please don't be Arabs.
Shallo left school at the end of the day, sensing that suspicious classmates and teachers were staring at her. When she got home, her mother was watching TV and crying. And she cried with her.
Shallo and her brother were born in Kenya and lived in several places before their mother moved the family to Kansas City six years ago.
"I just wanted to make my place and be accepted," said Shallo, who described herself as a tomboy who always tested the limits of what was expected of Muslim girls.
So she joined the ROTC, not knowing what her soon-to-be fellow cadets would make of it.
Hankins, a senior who admits being perturbed at first that she joined, is now a close friend of Shallo's, along with many other cadets in the ROTC "family," he said.
It didn't seem possible to senior cadet Ebony White that Muslims could join the ROTC -- as if military rules or Muslim beliefs would not allow it.
White remembers some name-calling and misunderstanding circulating through the school in the days after Sept. 11, but "Aliyah set the example," she said, "of showing there was no difference between her and us."
And then, even though they had frequent conflicts at first, Shallo and her student commander a year ago -- Timothy Meehan -- also came to understand each other. Seriously.
They were married July 9.
Meehan graduated last spring from Hickman Mills and is now in Marine boot camp in San Diego. His wife is now a senior at Hickman Mills and still in ROTC.
The students accepted each other more quickly than any of the adult leaders imagined they would, said the ROTC commander, Capt. Kenneth Gipson. The Muslim students taught their commanders, as well as their classmates, about Islam.
"I've got to tell you," Gipson said, "when she (Shallo) started talking, I was really getting an education."
A year ago, Shallo said, "I know they were thinking, `What is this Muslim doing in my platoon?' I looked like the enemy."
Now, several new friendships later, the ROTC cadets agree when she says that hers "is the face of an American."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.