Last night I received an instant message from my friend Andrew Breitbart. I asked him to post about it on here.
Al Qaeda Killed My Friend
On Thursday at 2:30pm PST while not particularly paying attention to the AM talk radio feed that is my background noise, the ABC News reader droned on about the hotel terror bombings that hit Amman, Jordan the day before. I am inured to escalating death count suicide bomb followup news reports.
The man — whose voice is a staple in my life and whose name I now can’t remember — revealed that 59 had died and over 100 were injured. My brain unconsciously processed the information: Statistics from half a world away… Thank God I don’t know anyone over there… Are there any Diet Cokes in the refrigerator?
But in my daily AM-induced trance I was shocked into sharp focus when the newsman reported that the lone American death, at the time, was “34-year old Rima Akkad”. In that instant I knew it was my friend, the beautiful and jovial younger sister of my high school classmate Malek, who I think saved me (at least from something) by getting me over the Mexican border in a wheelbarrow after a drunken night in Tijuana in 1985.
I listened to the end of the report intently yet numb: Rima’s father, Mustapha, the film producer behind and the “The Lion of the Desert” and “Halloween” movies, was critically wounded. [He later died.]
I didn’t know Rima lived in the Middle East until a few months ago when I ran into Malek at a party at a Wilshire Corridor high-rise apartment building and over margaritas I asked how she was. He told me that she is happily married with two kids and living in Lebanon. He said she and her husband met while she was attending graduate school in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University in Beirut.
At that moment it struck me that in all the years I knew Malek, Rima and their older brother Tarik, I never really thought about their family’s obvious ethnic or religious background. I just remember Malek loved Led Zeppelin. Tarik worked the counter at Maria’s Italian Kitchen while I delivered pizza. And Rima was cooler than most of the girls her age and had a most brilliant smile. She even played polo! Who plays polo? At the time, and in retrospect, the Akkads were to Islam what many more of us at Brentwood School were to Judaism, highly secular, typical Americans. And, to say the least, we all got along.
I’m not sure where Rima Akkad Monla stood on the War on Terror, Iraq, the right of the state of Israel to exist, on suicide bombings — the unimaginable way in which she and her father died. Even if we disagreed, I bet we’d have stayed friends. The only sign that good can come from this is that the Jordanian people seem to have taken offense to this senseless attack and are protesting in the streets. It’s a start. Perhaps in Rima’s death the message being sent throughout the entire Islamic world is that instead of cultivating the best of its own Al Qaeda kills them. Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic.
Rima, you will be missed.
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22 Comments
1. byrd:Roger and Andrew: Thank for injecting a human face into the statistics. A needed (if unwelcome) reminder that Stalin’s observation about a million deaths is only true if you let it be true.
You may have ruined my morning.
Nov 11, 2005 - 6:50 am 2. byrd:With two seconds reflection, I’d like to retract that last sentence. It’s a pre-emptive recognition of the persistence of Stalin’s observation.
Nov 11, 2005 - 6:51 am 3. Hovig:Mr Akkad has been working for many years to produce an English-language movie about Saladin from the Arab point of view. The juxtaposition of the recent bombings with the fact of this project are too many and varied for me to consider them all.
Saladin and Other Projects, IslamOnline.net, Aug 9 2004.
Nov 11, 2005 - 7:17 am 4. Martin S:A beautiful girl, and truly tragic. Akkad was very secular in his stance on being American, but his love of Islam was quite strong. As someone whose family is from the region, I’m surprised he allowed his daughter to move back. Hopefully, her children will come here now. A very sad loss.
Nov 11, 2005 - 7:34 am 5. ganzo azul:Crossroads Arabia has a recollection of Mr. Akkad: He also made the earlier film, “The Messenger”…. This film caused an uproar in the Muslim world, with many decrying it as blasphemous. Blasphemy was part of the complaints of a group of American Black-Muslims, the “Hanafi Muslims”. The group undertook a series of simultaneous actions in Washington, DC in 1977, attacking a B’nai Brith headquarters as well as the District Building, the city hall for Washington’s local government. …A seminal horror film producer, Akkad has also had his films manage to be at the center of one of the earliest American experiences of Islamic extremism.
My heart out goes out to this family. Their grief must be unfathomable.
Nov 11, 2005 - 7:49 am 6. JFB:I didn’t know Rima or her siblings, but did know her father and aunt. I’ve written a bit about him, his film career, and its strange relationship with Islamist terror on my blog Crossroads Arabia.
Nov 11, 2005 - 7:50 am 7. PeterEgo:RIP to Rima and Mustapha. Mr. Akkad was a really nice man. I met him as a kid, a childhood friend of mine was related to him and we got to go to a halloween premier or two because of him. seeing that you are from LA as well, perhaps you know my friend? Basil Nazim?
havent talked to him in years and would like to offer my condolences to him as well.
Nov 11, 2005 - 9:42 am 8. Fausta:Heartbreaking.
My heartfelt condolences.
Nov 11, 2005 - 10:43 am 9. Fausta:Heartbreaking.
My heartfelt condolences.
Nov 11, 2005 - 10:45 am 10. Coisty:Hovig’s link has the following quotes from Mustapha al-Akkad:
Nov 11, 2005 - 12:58 pm 11. Kevin P:
Roger:
I feel for his family and any victim of this type of barbarity should get our sincere sympathy. But the absurd logic of trying to lump the Crusades onto modern Christianity is laughable. And yet it is tossed out by many as a rationalazation to defend some of the actions of the Islamo terrorists. And yes, if I was part of a minority religion I may have chosen to live in a Muslim controlled area during the reign of Saladin rather then in some of the European Christian controlled areas. But that was centuries ago. Centuries!
Much of Europe has little real Christian influence. And there is no Muslim country in the world that comes close to America in regards to Religous freedom. Some parts of the Muslim world don’t allow as much religous freedom as saladin did, so as the Christian world has progressed from the era of the Crusades much of the Muslim world has fallen backwards or has made no improvement.
I may have wanted to go to a Muslim doctor rather then a European one during Saladins time. But I wouldn’t try to compare the medicine of that time to modern medicine. This attempt to use the Crusades as a excuse centuries after the fact is silly. My forefathers were chased off their land in Ireland and that was far closer to our present time yet I would not try to present it today as an excuse to go after Britain. If we are going to go back 6,000 years and start trying to settle the ancient grievances get ready for total anarchy. Yet many leftists don’t blink an eye and even repeat the absurdity of using the Crusades as a rational to defend current political attitudes.
Nov 11, 2005 - 5:41 pm 12. Eric Scheie:“The Lion in the Desert” really moved me and will always remain one of my favorite films. My deepest sympathy to Mr. Akkad’s family.
Nov 11, 2005 - 7:23 pm 13. Former CNN Watcher:Maybe Michael Myers will grab a large butcher knife and go nuts thru Zarqawi’s hideout in ‘Halloween VIII: Ritual Slaughter’
Nov 12, 2005 - 1:26 am 14. gene:I went to junior high school with Rima. I ran across news of Rima’s death by sheer accident (on rotten tomatoes, of all places) and I was floored. Your words were very moving; thank you for them.
Nov 15, 2005 - 2:47 pm 15. Basel Nizam:Does anyone have Peter Ego’s email address.
Basel Nizam
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Jan 30, 2009 - 1:08 am 22. Hali:Mustapha akkad’s Ideas where bigger and greater than we could ever imagine. He wanted people to stand up against opression and injustice. He was a threat to anybody who did not want to see middle east shine again. It is a shame and a tradegy that he got murdered in such a cowardly way. I hope the people that are responsible will suffer today. I truly do not belive that the people who did this to him where muslims. Two High ranking Palestinian officials where also murdered in this horrific bombing. Wich good does his death do to the Muslim comunity?? He had not enough funding to make his dream movies…One about Andalus and one about Slaheddine. Now we muslims can sit and cry about his death, when he lived we did not support his movies and did not fund them. SHAME ON US!!! They killed him before he could make our dreams come true. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFZ2q9_L_9c a youtube documentary about his life and sruggels. May Allah rest his soul in Paradise with his beautiful daughter.
Feb 12, 2009 - 12:02 pm