I have a new friend. Her name is Fahid El-Muhammed, and she is in my class. She moved here to America from Saudi Arabia with her family. She is 10 years old, and she is very shy.
For one thing, she is Muslim. Muslims do not believe in Jesus like I do. They believe their god is Allah. Instead of church Muslims go to a mosque, which is like a temple. They also spend a lot of time in prayer. Like a lot of Muslims Fahid wears a scarf to cover her face when out in public because Muslim women (or girls) can't show their faces; to them it's a sin, and they can be punished for showing too much of their faces.
Fahid is also shy because her English isn't that good (but she IS learning). She mainly speaks Saudi and Arabic. Kids tend to pick on her because she talks funny. I keep telling the other kids to stop teasing her because teasing is NOT nice!
And another thing--kids tease her because she is Muslim, and they think she is related to Osama bin Laden, the guy who was behind September 11--they think my friend is a part of his terrorist network (Al Quaeda--spelling?). They throw rocks at her, and they call her awful names. Every day she goes home in tears. It's really sad how they treat her.
I remember the day when America was attacked. I remember looking at Fahid, and she sat there in her seat looking like a scared little rabbit. I felt so sorry for her because she had only joined our class the day before. The other kids looked at her with hate and anger in their eyes, and I looked at her with concern. I knew she wasn't a terrorist or believed that way because she had said so. She said most Muslims were NOT bad; just the extreme ones. Most Muslims do NOT believe in violence or killing innocent people for their religion; to them violence and killing innocent people is a sin. But you couldn't convince the other kids--they were still angry at her--and all because she happened to be a Muslim and was Arabic.
I met Fahid on September 11, and we became friends; but I didn't get to talk to her much because school had been let out early (due to the attacks), and we didn't go back to school until the following Monday. The kids were also telling me not to hang around with her because "she was a terrorist". (I told the other kids to get a life. I told them that my being with Fahid was MY business, NOT theirs.)
By the way, I got into a couple of fights because of this. I was trying to defend Fahid.
We've been friends ever since.
Anyway, Fahid is nice, although quite shy (and who can blame her??). She is short, too, like me, but she isn't as skinny; and she has black hair and eyes and dark-tan skin. She is quite pretty. She has two younger sisters, Fereshteh (8), and Niah (6), and two younger brothers, Ahmed (4) and Ishmael (2). She lives with her parents and brothers and sisters, and she lives a few streets up from me.
I just wish other kids treated Fahid nicer....She deserves to be treated with respect and dignity....she is just like me except she happens to be Arabic--and a Muslim.
I'm just glad she's my friend. And I'm glad she's mine.
Princess Geneveive has a wonderful home, with humans who love her. She and her humans try to talk to each other but Genevierve dosn't speak human and her humans don't speak dog. Genevieve often wishes she had another dog to talk to.
One day in th
