Ten Years After Bombing, Life Goes On for Norma Odeh

By Pat and Samir Twair

In one split second the morning of Nov. 11, 1985, her life was violently altered, and Norma Odeh has never spent a day in the past 10 years in which she didn't ask herself "what if...?"

Her husband Alex had left for his office in Santa Ana where he was West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Norma had gone grocery shopping. When she returned home, there was a message on the answering machine. She heard it telling her a bomb had gone off in Alex's office.

Norma recalls driving toward his office, but two blocks from the building policemen were diverting traffic. "There was glass everywhere in the streets," she recalled. "I knew Alex could never have lived through such a powerful explosion."

She was correct. Her 41-year-old husband had received the full force of a blast triggered when he opened his office door. He died two hours later in surgery.

The fatal booby-trap bombing was described by California media as the first act of Middle East terrorism in the United States. However, FBI agents immediately related it to similar bomb attacks on the East Coast. The name of a member of the Jewish Defense League came up in their comments. Later, he and his wife would be sighted among militant Jewish religious settlers at Kiryat Arba on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. After some years of U.S.-Israeli negotiations, he was jailed in the U.S. on charges that he committed another bombing murder.

Initially, however, fear, confusion and despair numbed the 28-year-old widow. She had three daughters Helena, 7, Samya, 5 and Sansan, 18 months. Alex had not even left a life insurance policy. That is when the Arab-American community stepped in on a nationwide basis. Former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk, the founder of ADC, called to offer comfort. Local ADC activists tried to protect her from the media. In those frantic days, she was asked to travel twice to Washington, D.C. to testify before a House subcommittee. This shy young Palestinian immigrant, whose English wasn't all that good, suddenly had become a visible victim of anti-Arab hatred. She was no public speaker, but as Abourezk once told her before a large audience, "Norma, just pretend all those people looking at you don't have any clothes on and you won't feel so intimidated."

The grief-stricken young woman managed to speak a few eloquent words even in those first public appearances after her husband's murder. In the intervening years, she has become accustomed to being in the public eye. However, it was not the kind of life expected by the 18-year-old Norma Ghattas who married Odeh when he returned from America for a visit to their home town of Jifnah, Palestine. When she arrived as a bride in California, he was working as a waiter and studying for a master's degree at California State University at Fullerton. Norma received her high school diploma in the U.S., but her chief interest was being a homemaker and mother.

After he went to work for ADC, her husband received death threats, but he dismissed them. After his death, Norma says, the first six months were the worst.

"Without the community, I never could have stood on my feet," Odeh recalls. "Their support gave me courage. I probably would have been too hurt, too frightened, to step out the door. But all those people were calling and writing—with so many eyes watching, I couldn't let them down."

But, alone with her thoughts, she wondered who in this still foreign land had killed her husband. Would they come next for her and the children? She was afraid to open her door each morning.

To escape painful memories, she moved within months from the house she and Alex shared to a neighboring community. The Arab-American community nationwide had raised $130,000 for a trust fund for the girls. In the meantime, her mother left Palestine to help her face the challenges of becoming a single parent in California.

Norma Odeh soon realized that Alex had protected her in typical Middle Eastern fashion. She hadn't even known how to write a check when he was killed 10 years ago. Today, she is operations officer for a bank.

When she finally mustered the courage to apply for a job, the rejections were all the same: "You have no job experience, you have no college training," interviewers told her. Finally, a woman bank manager hired her for a teller's position and she's been promoted steadily at the same branch ever since. Recently, Odeh asked the manager why she had been hired when she lacked the qualifications younger applicants had. "I wondered what I would do in your shoes," the manager replied, "and I decided you had a lot of courage and deserved a chance."

Odeh says the dedication in 1994 of a life-size memorial statue of her husband in front of Santa Ana's main library has meant a lot to her and her daughters. "It's probably the best thing that happened in the past 10 years," she muses.

"But," she adds, "the Oklahoma City bombing brought back all the trauma." What made it worse for the Odeh girls was that after the bombing, they noticed students pointing fingers at Middle Eastern students as if they were the culprits.

Ironic, isn't it?

California Archaeologist Seeks Backers For Excavation of Syrian Sites

Do you know any tycoons whose corporations operate in the Middle East? If so, please contact California archaeologist Daniela Buia, who has founded the non-profit Society for Syrian Archeology. She's looking for backers for her forthcoming excavations.

Most archaeologists love a mystery and spend much of their time trying to answer persistent questions about past human behavior. Take Max Mallowan, for instance. The famous British archaeologist tried to find a plausible reason why inhabitants of Tell Brak, a 4th millennium B.C. site in northern Syria, created thousands of eye images ranging from monumental double orbs to miniatures. Mallowan's even more famous wife, mystery writer Agatha Christie, came up with several possibilities: maybe the prehistoric "Brakis" suffered from glaucoma and came to the site to worship an Eye Goddess. Perhaps the objects at the site were amulets to ward off the Evil Eye. Or were they eye idols? And why were there so many of them?

The vivacious Buia has her own theory on the mystery of the ubiquitous eyes of Tell Brak, growing out of her own experiences. She was an artist before she undertook archeological studies at UCLA and she wrote an entertainment column for the City News Service of Los Angeles. In 1975, then-California Governor Jerry Brown appointed her to network state arts programs and reform the California Arts Council.

Buia received her Ph.D. degree in history from UCLA in 1993, with a specialization in Ancient Near East History. Part of the effort that went into earning her degree consisted of archeological field work in Syria during nearly every year since 1983. Investigating ceramics was her forte at the 3rd millennium B.C. site of Terqa on the Euphrates River and at Tell Mozan, which lies between Hasake and Amuda and has been identified as the ancient Hurrian site of Urkish. But it was at Tell Ziyada, near Tell Brak, that Buia unearthed new mysteries and arrived at some solutions of her own when she was field director there for the 1988-89 season.

Buia explains that the stratigraphy at Tell Ziyada begins with extremely ancient transitional Halaf-Ubeid deposits from around 4200 B.C., succeeded by Uruk remains circa 3500 B.C. In between is an ash layer which lacks any signs of human habitation for about 700 years.

While she and her Italian husband, artisan Giuseppe Calcagni, were at Ziyada, they climbed a nearby dormant volcano, Jebel Kaukab.

"I was astonished to look down on the caldera and discover it had a double cone that for all the world resembled those huge double eyes of Tell Brak," she recalled. Stretching her arms outward, Buia offered her own version of what happened in the region's prehistory.

"Sometime at the end of the 5th millennium, I believe the volcano began spewing ash," she explained. "There was time for the people to escape, to create legends and myths about the double-coned volcano."

Buia says the Habur plain was abandoned for about one millennium, during a time when archeological evidence shows continued occupation far to the south in ancient Sumer.

One of the major finds at Ziyada was a 5th millennium transitional Halaf-Ubeid kiln with the only known complete assemblage of pottery. Previously the 570 intact vessels in it had been identified as belonging to separate periods of time.

"We found objects together that shouldn't have been," she remarked. "Why?"

Another mystery began on the final day of excavation in 1989 when Calcagni was clearing a baulk of ash and out popped a gold stud.

"This was during the period of abandonment," Buia exclaimed. "Yet we have evidence that someone visited this site, made a fire, probably cooked something and lost this gold stud. It is, by the way, the oldest known fused [mold-made] work of gold.

"Who was there in that desolate spot? And why? It must have been an important individual to have owned gold...especially at that early date."

Last July, Buia received permission from the Syrian Department of Antiquities to excavate a number of sites threatened with inundation when the Habur Dam is completed south of Hasake and the Tishreen Dam is finished northeast of Aleppo.

Buia hopes to make an exploratory trip to Syria next spring to determine which of the estimated 100 tells destined to be flooded contain the most significant cultural deposits.

In the study of her California home, she unfolds copious maps and charts and gleefully identifies specks and dots that represent whole cultures and centuries of time to her.

Surely there are some philanthropic tycoons out there who would like to help uncover some lost chapters in our common past. If you know of any, call Buia's office at (818) 998-0135.

This Aladdin Needs a Magic Lamp

"Have music degree, will travel" could have been the motto of Aladdin Jafar, who was born in 1925 to an aristocratic Iraqi family and now lives in retirement in the Los Angeles suburb of Irvine. Jafar has composed eight piano sonatas, has conducted symphony orchestras in Prague and Vienna, and holds a master's degree in music from the prestigious Vienna Academy for Music and Acting. But from 1971 until his retirement in 1993, he worked as a janitor at California State University at Fullerton.

Professionally, his life in California has been disappointing, but he still has hopes of connecting with other classically trained musicians and organizing an ensemble. Jafar grew up in Baghdad in the home of his uncle, Dr. Dia Jafar, minister of finance under Prime Minister Nouri al Sa'id during the time of the Iraqi monarchy. Jafar had been only three years old when his father died, and his childhood dreams of studying music and acting were repeatedly dashed by his disapproving uncle, who felt such pursuits were beneath his nephew's station in life.

After completing high school in Beirut, Jafar studied philosophy at the American University of Beirut for two years. Then, in 1948, he headed for Utah to study agriculture, a field of which his uncle approved. Soon, however, Jafar transferred to San Francisco, where he earned a bachelor's degree in music. Then he returned to Iraq to teach, but Iraq was changing and many of the family properties were nationalized.

Jafar left home once more and enrolled in Vienna's Academy for Music and Acting. He earned a master's degree and remained there as a teacher, conducting concerts at least twice a month.

Meanwhile, many of Jafar's relatives had emigrated from Iraq and settled in Fullerton. They convinced him that a man with his European musical training would have no problem getting a teaching job in California. The problem was that although Jafar was proficient in Persian, German and French, his English was poor, and remains so even after a quarter-century of life in California.

Upon arriving in California in 1970, he married a distant cousin, Manal. A daughter, Hajar, was born. His savings were running out and he had a family to feed. Every day he mailed applications to music schools throughout the U.S. and Canada. Finally the patrician artist took the only job he could find, as a custodian at California State University at Fullerton.

Many Arab men of his generation and background might have refused to pick up a broom and do menial work. But Jafar felt his first responsibility was to provide for his family. And besides, he was certain some music academy would soon appreciate his qualifications and hire him.

For the next 22 years, Jafar cleaned the theaters and offices of CSUF's music department. He worked from 4 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. daily. During his breaks he played the grand piano in the campus Performing Arts Center.

A sad story? Perhaps. But Jafar has continued to compose music. He submitted a march to the Palestine Liberation Army two years ago.

He practices daily on an upright piano in his tidy residence, and has performed at wedding receptions. He is happy to perform at community programs and concerts.

Jafar's fondest dream is that someday he'll receive an official invitation from Iraq to create a national orchestra. In the meantime, if you are a program chairman for any Arab organization, or if you need a talented Arabic-speaking piano teacher, or if you would like to assemble a music group, call Jafar at (714) 525-6663.

He'll be waiting.

Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance writers from Southern California.