Zack Tahhan, Syrian American Hero
By Ayman Hakki
As a Syrian American, when I heard someone had started firing in a New York Metro car, injuring a multitude of passengers, I held my breath. Muslims, like me, living in these United States were afraid the shooter would turn out to be a Muslim. Later when I found out he was not, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Historically, no country had taken as many refugees as Syria has. Circassians fleeing Czarist religious cleansing, Armenians fleeing Ottoman retribution for siding with the Christian West, Palestinians displaced by the formation of the state of Israel, Iraqis fleeing a US led war instigated by a fake premise, and Lebanese seeking refuge from a bloody civil war and an Israeli invasion of the south of Lebanon These, and others, have sought refuge in Syria. When the world turns on us, we have no option other than fleeing.
Syrians today had hoped that the world would treat us as we treated the world. But hope is tricky. Caldwell and Dustin Thomason* once wrote; “Hope, which whispered from Pandora’s box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things.” Having opened Pandora’s box at home we sought to find shelter in other lands, hoping to be treated fairly.
For a decade now Syrians have suffered more than most. Yes, despite ubiquitous old media coverage of the carnage in Ukraine, we had suffered more. As a people we Syrians sympathize most with Ukrainians, because the warplanes bombing them now, have been bombing us since 2016. It is also a fact that the same Russian General who supervised Russia’s campaign to prop up our corrupt regime, is now heading Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
Fleeing our regime, and its Russian and Iranian allies, millions of us are in exile. Few countries that have not taken in Syrian refugees. Turkey took us in by the millions, Germany by the hundreds of thousands, and here in the US we have shamefully taken in only a few thousand of our refugees. Most of our Syrian refugees live in poverty and work hard at survival, though some of us are professionals and doing well.
Syrian and Ukrainian migration has been unequally dealt with. Poland closed its doors to us in contrast with its recent welcoming of Ukrainians. We have all seen the BBC correspondent crying over Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s special Military Operation, and then saying; these are Europeans not Syrians and Afghans! That is a racist comment.
Not only has the world been unwelcoming, the worry of “exporting terror” has been used as an excuse for not welcoming us. Let’s go back to New York and it all becomes clear; we Syria Americans were afraid it was a Syrian who opened fire in that Metro car. Thank God we thought when the old media reported that it was just a sixty-year-old disgruntled Joe who did the shooting.
But here is where fate steps in to teach us all a lesson: Not only was the shooter not a Syrian Muslim, his apprehender was. Zack Tahhan, a teddy bear of a Syrian, a migrant working in New York, saw the shooter walking by, alerted the passer-by, and when they did not respond, he took off and tackled the shooter. So, not only were we not the bad guy…ours was the good guy. Miracles never end.
The mere fact that I have to mention this speaks volumes. Where was the media coverage of this ironic fact? It was reported that the police arrested the shooter. Zack got no immediate mention! In a country built on migrants, this migrant gets no kudos. So here’s to you Zack. We at The White House in Arabic salute you, as did the people in the streets of New York, documented on YouTube.
It’s a shame the old Media did not. It’s a travesty that we learned about your heroism on social media. It seems the old media dropped the ball. But did it? Had you been (as you stated you were presently) from New Jersey maybe they would have and President and Dr. Biden may have invited you to the White House.
* In their novel: The Rule of Four. Published 2004.
