Stanwood classmates rally around Palestinian teen

Published 10:28 pm Tuesday, August 12, 2008

STANWOOD — As a foreign exchange student at Stanwood High School two years ago, Abdallah Khalifah was asked by classmates more than once if he was a terrorist.

The Palestinian teen didn’t get mad or recoil at their bluntness. Instead, Khalifah would offer an earnest smile and seize the chance to talk about his culture.

“Some of those kids became his friends,” said Robin Ringland, a Stanwood science teacher who had Khalifah in a chemistry class. “He has bridged the gap of ignorance between our people.”

By the time he returned to his Bethlehem home, now a city encased in walls, Khalifah had left a lasting impression on his teachers, fellow students and the Stanwood community. Now, they want to bring him back so he can study this fall at Everett Community College. They’re raising money and trying to help him secure his visa.

Many Stanwood and Camano Island families are pooling their money to help. St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church of Camano Island is serving as a financial sponsor to pay for tuition, books and health insurance. A Camano Island couple has opened their home for him to stay. And his former Stanwood High School classmates also are planning a benefit concert for Friday night to help pay for his travel expenses.

“We know that he comes from a troubled part of our world but he has shown us that he is a person who simply wants a future,” Ringland said.

Khalifah, 18, a math and science whiz, arrived at Stanwood High School wanting to become an engineer, but left with dreams of studying political science and international law to use for humanitarian causes. He calls his year in Stanwood “the greatest event that ever happened to me” and said in a letter to friends that “it has opened my eyes toward the world. I started to look beyond the horizon.”

At Stanwood, Khalifah taught classmates to write their names in Arabic script and handed out candy to teachers and friends after he finished his Ramadan fast. He shared pictures from his homeland and he tirelessly tried to convince others that people from divergent belief systems can get along.

Kevin Cooper, 18, an incoming freshman at Western Washington University, quickly befriended Khalifah in the fall of 2006.

“I went up to introduce myself,” Cooper said. “He obviously didn’t look like he went to Stanwood.”

That year they shared deep conversations about international politics in between bowling with friends and hanging out.

Cooper said he has helped on fundraisers in the past but “not with as much passion as I have for this.”

Nikki Macgregor, who will begin studying business at the University of Washington in the fall, met Khalifah in chemistry class at Stanwood High. He was “super smart” and always willing to help others, she said.

Macgregor wrote Khalifah about local efforts to raise money to help pay for his return. She was struck by how much he appreciated their efforts.

“He was really excited and said ‘thank you’ about 50 times,” she said.

Khalifah, a Muslim, graduated third in his class at Christian High School in Bethlehem last spring, just months after his father died. A wall surrounding the historic city was finished the year Khalifah was studying abroad. It is one more concrete example of tensions in the longstanding Israeli and Palestinian conflict.

If anything, the wall has galvanized his resolve to continue his education, a pursuit he can’t afford on his own, his friends say.

Ringland hopes her community can begin to make that possible.

“Here we are on Camano Island and in Stanwood and we worry about whether we are going to have sun or not,” she said. “And here he is in a part of the world where there is so much tension. When we got to know him as a person, we experienced the walls of ignorance crumble and he brought that to us with such grace.”

Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or e-mail stevick@heraldnet.com.