I asked my mother last night for the details surrounding the violence related to my biological father and the other Saudi students and how come she never had the opportunity to tell him she was pregnant, and this is what she said had to say (censored for our privacy):
The United States was unhappy with Iran because of the oil prices. I was attending [southern private college]. Actually I was there to party. I didn’t attend class much. It was the first time I was away from home and I was surrounded with other young people. After several weeks of partying I met this group from Saudi Arabia. Your father was somewhat tall and thin. He spoke with a soft voice. We liked each other but it was never love. He came from a very wealthy family. He was an exchange student. Iran was always in the news. He resembled a person from Iran because of his olive skin color, dark black hair, and dark eyes. But he was very gentle. He did not know how to fight.
Anyway, a group of young men, not college students, jumped him and a friend just off campus. They beat him. He was taken to the hospital. I later joined the group there. [MH, your biological father] had massive head injuries. He didn’t speak much English but he had a kind soul. He was learning English that’s why he was here in the States. His friends would not let me see him. They said his family had been notified and they would arrive the next day or so. Several days later I remember being told that Mohammad had been transferred to a hospital in Dallas. When he was strong enough the family would take him back to Saudi Arabia. The family was very upset. I don’t know how the matter was ever settled. I was forced to leave the college a few days later because of poor grades. I never saw or heard from him again.
If this had happened today, I would be outraged. But then I was a mere child. I didn’t know what to do. So I went back to the hell that I swore I would never return to. I hope this helps.
That was 1980. I was born in 1981. I asked because it didn’t line up with the Iran Contra affair that I’d been told factored in, and in fact this did precede that period of time by a hair. Not that that matters.
I had only been told of his friend’s injuries, never that my biological father had been severely beaten and sustained head trauma. I knew some of the boys had been transferred to Texas, thinking they had gone to another school there to escape the violence, and I’d heard that some were called back to Saudi Arabia by their worried parents. And now here’s the rest of it…
This makes me a bit sick, to say the least. It was sickening enough learning long ago that his friend had suffered spinal injuries, but now I learn my father had too been beaten by some of our Southern “good ol’ boys.” How heart-breaking for anyone to have to endure that level of violence…oh god, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana: what is wrong with us?? Christian people, how do they justify such horrendous cruelty to their non-Christian brethren? And all for what? Because of a difference in skin color and nationality.
I’m very shocked and sad right now. Sometimes I wonder who he is and what’s become of him and now it’s not certain if he even survived. I didn’t know. How terrible to be a victim of cruel ignorance…
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wakemenow said
That’s assuming mom speaks the truth though…
Never can tell with that woman.