A New Jersey few know: Paterson's thriving Arab community

AAF commentary by Aref Assaf

I enter Paterson over the Broadway hill past Eastside Park, where as a kid I biked on clear days, turning to gaze at the Manhattan skyline a dozen miles away. The park is where I caught fireflies in a jar on hot summer nights and belly-flopped on a sled on cold winter afternoons, where I sold sodas to picnickers on Sundays and once tried out, unsuccessfully, for the high school baseball team.

Just below the park, in the direction of downtown, is Derrom Avenue, whose elegant mansions long advertised the wealth of Paterson's commercial aristocracy. Incongruously, amidst these mansions now stands the Islamic Center, Paterson's principal mosque, symbol of the city's latest transformation.

Paterson, it is widely said, is home to America's second-largest Arab community. Dearborn, Mich., is first. Paterson is also the hub of several hundred thousand Arabs living in northern New Jersey. Yet, growing up, how come I knew no Arabs?

The city, rather handsome and well-kept in those days, was shaped by solidly middle-class Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. Since Alexander Hamilton persuaded George Washington to harness the power of the roaring falls of the Passaic River, its wealth derived from industry, but in the 20th century it also served as a commercial hub for several hundred thousand residents of the North Jersey region.

My grandfather came from Poland in 1900 to work in Paterson's silk mills, the industrial core; my father, after a turn in the mills, found retailing more compatible. The earliest Arab immigrants were Christian Syrians drawn from the textile workshops of Aleppo; Muslims, a second wave that began in the 1920s, preferred to set up small shops.

By the 1940s, Arabs were an identifiable community, but I never saw them. Paterson's ethnic groups were largely strangers to one another, gathered on their own turf around their churches, later their synagogues, then their mosques. Though we lived in neighborhoods that were tightly juxtaposed, only rarely did we cross the lines.

Over history, Paterson had its share of strife, but it was class rather than ethnic. The silk strike of 1913 was a milestone in American industrial history, still discussed over the dinner table when I was a kid; the unions, though multi-ethnic, showed solidarity, but the mill owners, by moving operations out of the city in search of compliant workers, triumphed.

By the Depression, with silk facing a vanishing world market, Paterson's industrial base was already depleted. During World War II, my father worked on an assembly line in a vacated silk mill, building aircraft engines. But when the war ended the factory shut down, and Paterson never succeeded in rebuilding a viable economic foundation.

In the 1960s, my parents, both of them working in suburban clothing shops, quit their "transitional" neighborhood in Paterson to move to a garden apartment on the fringe of a shopping center, built on a golf course beyond the city line. They remained there until they died 20 years ago.

They and the other departing whites in their era left behind real estate bargains that attracted poor blacks and Latinos -- and later Arabs. Few Irish, Italians or Jews remained. The newcomers had less capital and more children. The city's per capita income, along with its tax base, slipped to roughly a third that of the nearby suburbs. Homeownership fell to half the national ratio. To aggravate matters, local government was infected with the New Jersey disease of corruption.

When I returned for the first time after 20 years, I found an impoverished city, suffering from persistent neglect, barely resembling the Paterson I knew. Behind the wheel of my rental car, I drove in a daze that mixed nostalgia with disbelief. I rediscovered the houses in which I lived and the schools I attended. But the Alexander Hamil ton Hotel, a local landmark, had been abandoned, leaving the city without lodging; I checked into a nondescript motel on a passing superhighway.

By then, the two Paterson newspapers I once knew, one of which gave me my first reporter's job, had long closed. Familiar streets now carried the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. The branch library from which I had borrowed books was shuttered. The half-dozen movie theaters where I spent Saturday afternoons (once, Paterson even had a symphony orchestra) were all gone; now it didn't have even one.

The kosher delicatessen, where on special occasions my mother treated me to a hot pastrami on rye with a pickle, was now "The Queen Supermarket." The classic Masonic Temple, where my Uncle Bill attended mysterious meetings, announced in lights, "Love of Jesus Family Outreach Center." The bank where I opened my first ac count was a Laundromat, and the ice cream parlor where I had my first date, after eighth-grade graduation, was the Los Hidalgos Food Emporium.

At the downtown's edge, the Barnert Memorial Temple, a grand Moorish-style synagogue which President William McKinley visited in 1900 soon after its dedication, had vanished. In its place stood a White Castle hamburger stand.

That brings me back to the Islamic Center. When "white flight" struck the Barnert Temple, many of its members were too old to move, so its leaders elected to relo cate temporarily uptown. By then, Derrom Avenue's elite families were disposing of their fine mansions. The temple bought one of them and made it into a religious school, and on the adjacent ex panse of lawn, erected a synagogue, a red brick schoolhouse-style building surrounded by a blacktopped parking lot.

A generation later the temple quit the city entirely, and in 1990 the building became the Islamic Center of Passaic County, acquired with the donations of the swelling Muslim community in Paterson and the nearby towns. Save for concerns over traffic, the neighbors raised no objections to having an Islamic institution in their midst.

 

BUILDING A COMMUNITY

In the early 20th century, Paterson's Arab community had been composed chiefly of Lebanese and Syrian Christians, who joined exist ing churches or established their own. The Muslims who joined them a couple of decades later had different religious requirements, which were met mostly in small private mosques. But a plaque dated 1927 in the King Solomon Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery, shows they had already founded a burial association and acquired land for interments.

 

By the 1930s, the Arab community, Christian and Muslim, had colonized a strip along South Main Street. A few Arab immigrants had settled there at the turn of the century, and successive waves of newcomers, knowing they would be welcomed, fell in behind them. Christians remained preponderant for decades, but after World War II, a turbulent era in the Middle East, migration tipped to Muslims. In time, Palestinians, in flight from wars and military occupation, be came South Paterson's most numerous residents.

Awni Abu-Hadba is considered the mukhtar, the village chief, of South Paterson. He arrived from Palestine in 1971, having graduated from Birzeit University, on the heels of a brother who preceded him by two years. Driven by the American dream, he said, he attended night school to get degrees in accounting and insurance. He also set up a store to sell jewelry and electronic gadgets.

In a cluttered back office, Abu- Hadba advises his neighbors on their tax and insurance needs. A small, rotund man, Awni -- as everyone calls him -- carries himself with the dignity that befits a mukh tar. He seems to know every Arab on the street. On the wall is his photo with Yassir Arafat. In 1976, he returned to Palestine for a wife; he came back with Maysoon, with whom he had five children, all of whom have attended public schools. At home, the family uses both Arabic and English. His oldest son, he said, runs a halal -- the equivalent of kosher -- butcher shop, his two daughters are mar ried to lawyers, and his two youngest sons are preparing to be doctors.

Leaving his back room, Awni and I crossed South Main for lunch. He chose one of the half- dozen Middle Eastern restau rants that are strung out to the right and the left. Among them are two Syrian-owned supermar kets, both fragrant with the spices of traditional souks, offering Arab cheeses, chickpeas and taboula, grape leaves and maluk hia, a leafy vegetable soup. Nearby butcher shops proclaim their halal credentials. The Nab lus Pastry, near the end of the strip, is considered a treasure for its succulent Middle Eastern des serts.

Inside the restaurant, dark- eyed young men crowded around a television set, watching Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah, discuss the recently ended war with Israel. Most of South Paterson's homes have access to Arab television; roof-top satellite dishes bring in the news from Al-Jazeera and other Middle Eastern channels. Joined by some friends, Awni and I ate collegially, Arab fashion, dig ging into dishes of humus, diverse salads, falafel, kebabs, pita and rice. We drank Cokes, since no alcohol was sold. In a scene that would be typical on the West Bank, families came and went, many speaking Arabic, the women in hijabs.

 

STRENGTHENING POLITICAL POWER

Paterson, Awni told me, has about 25,000 Arabs -- a more agreed-upon figure is 15,000, about a tenth of the city's population. But his exaggeration had a political purpose. He was introduced to local politics in 1984, he told me, by Frank Graves, a legendary Irish mayor, who made clear to him that the rewards the community could expect were in ratio to the number of votes it produced. So he started to organize, Awni said, and by the next Election Day had registered 600 voters and had decided to run himself for the city council. Though he came in third, he earned Graves' esteem. It is surely no coincidence that stores on South Main Street carry posters that say: "Organize, Register, Vote. Help Strengthen Arab-American political power."

 

The Arab community, Awni said, is hardworking and prosperous; unemployment is low, homeownership is the norm. Shopkeep ers like himself are its backbone, but it is rich in lawyers and teachers, plumbers and carpenters, small manufacturers and engineers. The area also has more than 300 Arab doctors, including a quarter or more of the physicians at both St. Joseph's and the Barnert, respectively the Catholic and the Jewish hospitals. One day I ran into one of them at the Islamic Center, who recalled that he had cared for my mother at the Barnert during her last days, 20 years ago.

Awni's efforts to promote Arab power through politics came close to collapse last spring. It was when Arabs, already frustrated by the federal decision to cancel a seaport-management contract with an Arab firm from Dubai, learned that the Passaic County Democratic party had summarily dumped one of their community as its nominee for the county governing body, the board of freeholders. Sami Mehri, born in Lebanon 57 years ago, runs a medical supply business with two Jewish partners. He is on the board of two area hospitals and serves as an adviser to the Passaic county sheriff. On 9/11, he lost a godson who worked on the World Trade Center's top floor.

Esteemed though Mehri was, a statement he had made in 2002, quickly provoked a challenge from within the Jewish community. At a dinner he had organized for Congressman Bill Pascrell, he called the 9/11 hijackers "cold-blooded murderers ... crazy fanatics. They're as far from God and Islam as hell itself."

He also condemned violence, "whether it's committed by a person, a group or a state"-- a formu lation in which the final word is seen as Arab code for criticism of Israel. Later, asked whether his condemnation of violence covered Palestinian suicide bombers, he re plied, "I can't see the comparison" with the 9/11 killers. His words reflected the view of most Arabs, who endorse the right to make war against Israel's military occupation of their land. This position is rejected by most Jews.

Democratic Sen. Robert Me nendez, in search of Jewish votes in a close race, immediately called for Mehri's removal from the Democratic ticket, and with the support of Gov. Jon Corzine, he succeeded.

When Mehri countered by an nouncing his candidacy as an independent, Corzine nervously invited him to meet and Menendez issued an apology. The outcome was that Mehri dropped out of the race and, on Election Day, Arab votes swelled Menendez's unexpectedly wide margin of victory. But the ten sions of the Mehri episode did not quickly disappear.

 

SUSPICION AND TRUST

Arabs have no doubt that the Mehri episode was part of the wave of suspicion directed at their community after the 9/11 attack. The same suspicion animated the FBI, and especially its Newark headquarters, whose domain included Paterson and the New York area's three airports.

 

Even before 9/11, John Paige, a senior FBI agent, said he had become a familiar figure at Paterson's Islamic Center. He and his supervi sor, Leslie G. Wiser Jr., the special agent in charge, talked with me in the FBI's Newark headquarters. After 9/11, they told me, the FBI was ordered to change its priority from law enforcement to terrorism prevention, and to this end, Newark shifted its strategy to establishing a bond of mutual trust with Paterson's Muslims.

"We understood we could not count on the community's cooperation by using strong-arm methods," Paige said. "On the day after the attack, we went to them for help. We began interviewing people up and down South Main Street, which was the start of 40,000 interviews that we conducted. That was in addition to following up every tip we received. The Islamic Center and some other mosques provided us with Arabic-speaking interpret ers."

"We also had a long-term goal," Wiser said. "We wanted to neutralize the negative stigma associated in their minds with the FBI and with law enforcement generally. It is not that the Muslim community we encountered was at all hostile. This isn't France, where Muslim kids rioted last summer (2005). The Muslims of Paterson are integrated into the economy and the political system. Their mosques are run by successful people, responsible elders. I think their good experiences in America have discouraged radicalization. We don't delude our selves about the dangers of terrorism, but we considered this a start to better relations."

"We know that Paterson is not a hotbed of extremism," Paige said. He made a point of telling me, however, that 15 of the 19 hijackers had stopped in Paterson in the days be fore 9/11. They apparently chose it, he said, "to hide in plain view." They had drop boxes in Arab shops and acquired IDs and drivers' licenses there, he said. Their presence, he said, was confirmed in library and ATM records, Internet findings and photos taken by secu rity cameras in gas stations and re tail stores.

Curiously, the 9/11 commission, which conducted an exhaustive investigation, says in its report that only "Hanjour, Hazmi (two of the hijackers) and several other operatives moved to Paterson and rented a one-room apartment," in which the landlord "later ... found six men living." Echoing Paige, the commission says in Paterson the men "established new bank ac counts, acquired a mailbox, rented cars and started visiting a gym," though neither its staff nor the FBI could account for the discrepancy in the numbers.

The Arabs in Paterson, however, were skeptical, contending that in a community as tightly knit as theirs, it would have been impossible for substantial numbers of outsiders, whether six or 15, to pass unnoticed. If they saw questionable characters, they say, they'd have reported their presence promptly.

 

A SOCIAL ANCHOR

Hani Khoury, a lawyer specializ ing in citizenship cases, was among several young Arabs who expressed resentment at the suspicion in which the community is held. Speaking in his small law office, he acknowledged that Paterson's Arabs are socially more conservative than they were in the 1970s, when he arrived as a child. Recent refugees, he said, have had a disproportionate influence: Fewer local Arabs drink, and more women cover their hair. They have used religion to promote solidarity, he said. Some of them are radical, ar guing that Muslims should not participate in an infidel society, not even to vote. He called this wave "scary" in its refusal to sacrifice its identity, even for the safety it en joys here. But he had no reason to believe, he said, that their zealotry breeds terrorism.

 

Khoury described Paterson as more "proletarian" than other havens, and so more attractive to most Arabs. Arabs like being able to walk down South Main Street and speak Arabic, he said. They see faces that look familiar and feel they are at home.

Khoury said he and his well-educated contemporaries, he said, want to live their lives in America both ways. They move to the suburbs but keep returning to Paterson, satisfying a longing for a social anchor. He described the city as a quick and easy fix, a way to get to the Middle East without taking a plane. "We love to watch the old men in the coffee houses playing backgammon. We love the restau rants and the music," he said, "Even my wife, who is not Arab, loves them."

Yet, he cautioned that his generation also shares the community's objections to America's Middle East policies. It keeps its re sentment in check, he said, only be cause, as immigrants in an immi grant culture, he and his friends feel truly American. What troubles them since 9/11, however, is how much the equilibrium has shifted.

"What we observe is that the internal dynamics of the country has changed," Khoury said. "We have to be more tight-lipped now, more fearful. We already felt abandoned by George Bush and the Republicans. Then, when the big shots in the New Jersey party threw Sami Mehri under the bus, we felt aban doned by the Democrats, too. It confirmed our growing apprehension that 'they're doing it to us be cause we're Muslim.' The lesson we learned from these changes is that we'll have to stay on our toes, tak ing nothing for granted."

 

A RELIGIOUS HUB

While I was doing research for this article, I visited often at the Islamic Center, the fountainhead of Paterson's Muslim community. Fri days were crowded with men in diverse dress, all shoeless, praying in the sanctuary. Afternoons after school hours, kids played noisily in the vestibule or shot baskets outside on a basketball court. I could read Muslim community papers stacked next to brochures offering pilgrimages to Mecca, or watch white-haired men swinging worry beads as they browsed through religious volumes in the bookstore. Someone usually offered me a coffee or a tea.

 

Mostly, however, the visits gave me an opportunity to have a word with Mohammed El Filali, a bearded 41-year-old ex-biologist from Morocco who, as "outreach director," is the engine of the mosque's relations with the outside world. His goal, he says, is to affirm Islam's membership in American society.

A subject Filali doesn't like to discuss --the Islamic Center has, for now, chosen to play it down -- is the menacing cloud that lurks overhead in a federal deportation order pending against the imam, Sheikh Mohammad Qatanani. A Palestinian with top credentials as an Islamic scholar, Qatanani ar rived with his family from his home in Jordan a decade ago and, having been refused permanent residency, has remained at his post with successive temporary visas. In 2003, however, Homeland Security noti fied him that he would be denied another visa and, declining to say why, would have to leave the coun try.

By now, he had won wide favor in Paterson not only for presiding over improved ties between Mus lims, Christians and Jews but for leading a daring campaign against domestic violence and abuse of women within the local Muslim community. At the same time, he has spoken with a consistent voice against Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, which persuades Arabs the deportation is the product of Middle East politics.

It was between services at the Islamic Center's busiest day of the year, marking the end of Ramadan, that I was able to meet Sheikh Qa tanani in his office off the vestibule. Though too busy for a formal interview, he greeted me warmly and insisted I take a cookie from a jar on his desk. I asked whether he was troubled by the deportation case the government had brought against him. He was more willing than Filali to comment, and answered in English: "We can talk more when we have time, but the government made a mistake in doing this. I'm here to stay, and I think I will stay."

After the service, the Ramadan worshipers congregated gregariously in the center's parking lot. On the perimeter was a falafel stand and a set of soft drink machines, jammed with buyers. Pinned to the brick wall were placards advertising trips to the Middle East, pharmaceuticals and banks "financing the Shari'a way." One of them announced that the Barnert, the Jewish hospital, was "sensitive to the needs of the Islamic community. Halal meat served."

The men in the crowd embraced one another ceremoniously, the women showed off their children and their Islamic finery, most of the teenage girls whipped off the hijabs they had worn at prayer, put on lipstick and let their hair fall. "The dress code for our women is optional," Filali had told me with bemusement.

The scene brought back to me the throngs, of which I was a part, that once gathered on Jewish high holidays in front of Temple Ema nuel, just down the street.

 

THE CITY'S FUTURE

I couldn't leave the city of my birth without paying respects to its mayor, Joe Torres, the first Latino to win the job. I found him in the landmark city hall, a beaux-arts palace with stained-glass windows and sculptured eagles, crowned by a 164-foot clock tower. Paterson's elders, who inaugurated the building in 1896, clearly meant it to convey an optimistic vision for the new century. Yet it would no doubt disappoint the long-departed elders, since, like the city itself, city hall reflects in its shabbiness Paterson's long industrial decline.

 

Paterson now has a master plan, Torres said, and its growth rate is among the fastest in New Jersey. Construction is up, crime is down, six new banks have established offices, private money is coming in. He boasted of the designation of the Passaic Falls and the old mill district -- unkempt as they looked when I saw them -- as a state park, in the running to become a national park. He predicted they would in time make Paterson a major tourist attraction.

Torres acknowledges that Paterson politics is a contest between ethnic groups. "In our city, politics has always been racially driven," he said, though he notes with satisfac tion that in his re-election, he had strong support in every ward and did particularly well among Arab- Americans, the newest emerging political force.

But Arabs, because they are prosperous, are also upwardly mo bile and, in the Paterson tradition, continually leave for the suburbs. "Arabs support me now because I meet their needs," he said. "I talk to their imams and visit their mosques. ... The city's only night life is along South Main Street, and they know I appreciate what they contribute. But they're not yet ready to take over. Demography is against them. Still, politics here is a revolving door, and I know their time will come."

 

 

Milton Viorst has covered the Middle East as a journalist and scholar since the 1960s. He was The New Yorker's Middle East correspondent, and has written six books on the Middle East. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, the poet Judith Viorst.