‘It’s Just Your Look, Your Look’

He was just an ordinary guy packing for a flight and trying to find his socks before kissing the kids goodby and racing to the airport.

*

Then a bomb exploded in Oklahoma City.

The traveler was held by police in Chicago.

Because his skin is brown.

And his name is Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan Ahmad.

*

“That’s the sad thing,” he said Wednesday. “I’m sure that hundreds of people left Oklahoma City that day, but I was the only one stopped to be questioned.

“Because of my looks. It doesn’t matter what citizenship you’re carrying. It’s just your look, your look.”

His citizenship, incidentally, is American.

From a love of the country he adopted in 1982, he has Americanized his name to Abraham Ahmad. Forty-eight hours after the bombing, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said Ahmad was never a suspect in the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history.

It didn’t matter.

“After somebody released my name and address, a lot of people came by my house and threw trash, empty cans and napkins and stuff like that,” he said, shortly after leaving a Washington news conference sponsored by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “Some of them were just looking at the house, and when my wife went out . . . they would spit toward her, cussing her, saying nasty words.

“Like ‘Get out of town,’ nasty words, like we are the ones who are really behind all that.”

Therein another blind cruelty.

His wife, Martina, is from Mexico.

*

Ahmad, 32, has worked in restaurants and for a computer manufacturer. He is currently unemployed but hoping to build a business exporting American goods to Jordan, where he was born.

He acknowledges that soon after 9:02 a.m. on April 19, he was coming from precisely the right place at precisely the wrong time. He agrees that he fits an established profile based on previous terrorist attacks: having an Islamic-sounding name, being a male between 20 and 40, and traveling alone to a destination in the Middle East.

“But to stop people just because of their origin, their color, that’s a very good example that something is wrong,” he said. “And it’s not only in America, but in Europe and worldwide that they have this idea.”

Ahmad knew nothing of the bombing when his American Airlines flight from Will Rogers World Airport landed in Chicago. He was stopped by police groping for suspects while walking to his Alitalia jet to Rome, continuing to Amman, Jordan. He was released after FBI questioning, missed that flight, but worked an alternate connection via London aboard British Airways.

Then the FBI thought of more questions. Ahmad was stopped again in London and returned to the United States for further interrogation.

By this time, speculation was around the world. Middle East terrorists were rumored to be responsible for the bombing. And a rumor leaked that bomb-making materials had been found in Ahmad’s luggage.

“They were talking about the wire,” Ahmad explained. “I had a VCR and a telephone fax machine and the wires which go for these things.

“And, yes, I did have a hammer. But what’s a hammer got to do with all this?”

*

Ahmad’s wife and daughters--Sanna, 5, and Nesreen, 2--have all been caught in the tumult.

“They were astonished by this,” he said. “My 5-year-old, the one who can understand what is going on, she has been crying like her mother, and asking why, why there’s a lot of people around the house.

“So I talked to her, separately, and asked her: ‘Why do you think these people watch your father?’ She said she doesn’t know. So I said: ‘They think I am the one who killed 200 people in Oklahoma City.’ She said: ‘Why do they think that? You don’t have a gun, you don’t have a knife.’

“I said: ‘I just don’t know. But don’t worry about it. I’m safe now, you’re safe, and I’ve got nothing to do with all of this stuff.”

Despite a federal declaration of his innocence, Ahmad remains afraid for himself, scared for his family.

“I don’t know if everyone is watching TV to know that I’ve got nothing to do with it,” he said. “I don’t want to be targeted, I don’t want to be under any kind of threat.”

He is not sure he can remain in Oklahoma City.

“Even if just one guy throws something at my house, or bothers me, the first thing I’m going to think about is moving out of the city,” he said.

Ahmad is not relishing his elevation from local nobody to global figure. Especially the momentary infamy of being viewed as one of the world’s deadliest terrorists.

“Why did I have to go through all this?” he asks. “Why did I pick that day to travel? If I’d heard about the bomb before I left Oklahoma City, I probably would cancel my trip.

“Because, definitely, I would have had something in mind that maybe they would stop me and question me.”

But no matter the backlash, no matter the racism, he said he will live with it. The hatred of some Americans will not damage his devotion to all Americans. Nor will it slow his work on obtaining American citizenship for his father.

He feels as millions of immigrants have felt for two centuries: “I love this country. You can make it here and be whoever you want to be.

“It’s freedom, you know. You can express your feelings, you can talk about anything you want, you can say anything you want.”

Even, he added, the things that have been said to him.