At home, she navigates life as an immigrant trying to blend her worlds. Her loving family lives above the grocery store they own and face Islamophobia and settling in together as they each have to find their strength and voice and resilience to drive, stand up to harassment, and for Alina, to love herself. Alina gets the courage to try out for the school play, but when she lands the part of Gus in Cinderella, she has to dig deep to be happy for her friend, forgive a bully, and step in to the spotlight.
Hussain asked me in the late 1990s to translate his biography into English. He was still writing it and it would arrive at my home every other evening with a few more pages. It was a set routine. At the gate, he would ask the guard to secure my dogs, then drive the car into the driveway, walk in barefoot, and come up to my study. There we would sit for hours, discussing his life and works, and I would give him a few pages of my translation. One day, he said we would meet in a few days, and just disappeared. I did not see him for the next six months. The reason why our friendship lasted was that, after this long hiatus, when we did meet, neither did I ask why he had inexplicably disappeared, nor did he offer an explanation. We embraced each other and carried on from where we had left off.
His studio in London was walking distance away from The Nehru Centre. Once he requested my wife Renu and I to spend a few hours over coffee watching him paint. Renu paints herself, and was thrilled at this opportunity. It was a revelation for us to see the ease, surety and effortlessness with which he painted, each brush a masterstroke in itself. No wonder he became a legend in his own lifetime.
It is very sad that in his last years (from 2006) Hussain had to go into self-imposed exile. Some of his paintings of Hindu deities annoyed self-proclaimed vigilantes of Hinduism, and he was hounded by multiple cases and violence. I know personally of his great respect for Hinduism. He could never think of intentionally insulting it. He died at the age of 95 in 2011, dying to come home.
In addition to posting his political thoughts on Facebook, Hussain increased his offline activism. Friends saw him attend more rallies in Birmingham. One EDL rally in Birmingham in July 2013 led to skirmishes when some counter-protestors calling themselves the Muslim Defense League rushed at riot police.46 Hussain was one of the counter-protestors arrested that day for suspicion of violent disorder.47 Another friend told the author48 that Hussain posted a video on Facebook of him running from police. He was released on bail pending further investigation. West Midlands police later decided not to pursue any charges.
Around the time that Hussain made his way to Syria in late 2013, so did52 his bride-to-be, Sally Jones, a British woman 25 years his senior who had converted to Islam. Jones and Hussain started a romantic relationship online while they were both living in the United Kingdom. It is not clear if they ever met in person before arriving in Syria.
Jones had had a turbulent life. She was born in Greenwich, southeast London. Her parents divorced, and her father committed suicide when she was 10 years old.53 She dropped out of school at age 16, worked various jobs, and in the 1990s eventually became a singer and guitarist for an all-female punk rock group called Krunch. She had her first son in 1996 (the father of that child died three years later), and her second son from a subsequent relationship, Jojo, was born in 2004.54 She would eventually move to Chatham, Kent, where she lived in council housing with her two sons. Her then neighbors said that she was unemployed and on welfare.55 Jones would be duped into revealing more of her journey via Twitter and Kik messenger to a Sunday Times journalist who posed as a potential recruit, a fictional 17-year old named Aisha.56 The first of two publications following the interview unmasked Sally Jones to the public.57 During those conversations, Jones said that she converted to Islam in May 2013 after starting an online relationship with Hussain.58 When she came to Syria, she brought Jojo with her. She claimed that it was on her very first day in Syria that she married Hussain and Jojo converted to Islam.59
Jones was not the only pre-existing contact Hussain had when he traveled to Syria. He also had contact with Adbel-Majed Abdel Bary, who had previously been a London-based rap artist known as Lyricist Jinn or L Jinny. Bary would later gain notoriety because of his extensive social media use and speculation in the British press that he was possibly a member of the British Islamic State hostage holding unit dubbed The Beatles,60 even though no credible evidence materialized to support that latter claim. A mutual friend of both Hussain and Bary told the author that they had known each other in the United Kingdom through the music scene.61 In fact, the two men appeared in a music video together filmed in the United Kingdom before they left to Syria.62
Substantive Notes
[a] The interviews were conducted in the United Kingdom in London, Bedford, and Birmingham, and in the United States in Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas from July 2016 to February 2017. Contact with interviewees was made in some cases via cold calling or emailing and in others cases through snowball sampling whereby one verified individual referred others to the research team. When relationships needed verifying, the author requested supporting documents such as message transcripts, photographs, or verification via third parties. All interviews except two were conducted under the condition of anonymity.
"This" happened at about 2 a.m. Sunday, as Halloween weekend revelers from UW-Stout cleared out of the bars on nearby Main Street to head home. Alnahdi, 24, was outside Toppers Pizza when an unknown assailant, described only as a white male about 6 feet tall, attacked him.
Alnahdi, who came to Wisconsin in fall 2015 to study business, died Monday afternoon from his injuries while friends kept vigil at his bedside and family members halfway around the world reeled with shock and grief.
Two separate reward funds totaling $20,000 have been established, and UW-Stout Chancellor Bob Meyer pleaded during Alnahdi's memorial service for anyone with information that could lead to an arrest and conviction to come forward to police.
Alnahdi's brother spoke in perfect English on behalf of his family in a pre-recorded video broadcast on a big screen. Dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, he thanked everyone: "I appreciate and am counting on your support," he said.
He briefly mentioned the violent attack. "Was it a fight? Was it an assault from a group? One guy?... Why, I don't know. We are still shocked. We believe the details of this incident will be announced soon."
"He showed us we are more alike than different," said housemate Tommy Hutson, a senior from Chippewa Falls. "He never cared who you were or where you came from... He taught us that what matters is how we treat each other."
Housemate Ben Collar, a senior from Appleton, recalled a road trip that several of them took together. They laughed all the way and almost got hit by a train as they looked for a good place to eat falafel.
Collar said his fondest memories, though, were of their long, late-night talks when Collar couldn't sleep and went downstairs, usually finding a light on and the sound of Alnahdi's muffled laughter as he watched John Oliver videos on his phone.
Alnahdi had "an overwhelming love for flowers," one friend said, recalling how Alnahdi once pulled three specific flowers out of a flowerbed outside the stadium. When the friend asked, "What the hell are you doing?" and told Alnahdi it wasn't OK, the Saudi just grinned.
The IRP community is profoundly saddened by the passing of S. Perwez Hussain, Ph.D., Senior Investigator in the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He died on November 24, 2023, after living with stage 4 colon cancer for many years.
For over 25 years, Dr. Perwez led translational research that could be brought into clinical trials for patients with pancreatic cancer and he established the pancreatic cancer research program in the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis. He was known as an exceptional scientist, caring mentor, kind colleague and friend to many.
During his postdoctoral training with Curtis C. Harris, M.D., in the Laboratory of Human Carcinogenesis, Dr. Perwez gained extensive experience in translational research, extending molecular findings in the lab into pre-clinical models to understand underlying mechanisms and identify potential therapeutics. He established a highly sensitive mutagenesis assay able to measure the p53 mutational burden in non-cancerous human tissues and significantly contributed to the field of inflammation and cancer using animal cancer models and patient-centered research. He was appointed as a tenure-track investigator in 2009, and as Head of the Pancreatic Cancer Unit, established important cohorts of biospecimens from pancreatic cancer patients with clinical epidemiological profiles. He was later tenured as a senior investigator in 2018.
Throughout his time at the NCI, Dr. Perwez initiated many collaborations, both within the NCI and with extramural scientists and clinicians, and he established the NCI-Pancreatic Cancer Interest Group. He was the founder and organizer of the biannual NCI Pancreatic Cancer Symposium as a forum for leaders in the field to present their newest research and engage in collaborations. He also served as a member of several international committees and editorial boards centered around pancreatic cancer research, including the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Pancreatic Association, and the Union for International Cancer Control Fellows. Perwez was also a dedicated mentor and role model for others, both in his lab and throughout the NCI.
Besides his many research achievements, Dr. Perwez was known to many as a personal friend and somebody with a very warm heart. He frequently brought together people of diverse backgrounds and from all cultures, always engaging in conversation and helping with advice when needed. Many spoke of his infectious optimism, even during times of severe adversity.
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