I telephoned Zenita and we met at her "second home" where my days as a free citizen were numbered.

121 in fact, she said she feels much more at home than her real home - at Halimah’s flat which is the meeting place for Arab and Muslim students in New York. Zenita told me that the Arab Information Centre had recommended Halimah for her acquaintance and that she loves Halimah more than her own mother. Halimah and her husband live in the heart of the Syrian quarter of New York and embraced Islam in 1939 while living in Harlem, after hearing Islam preached on the streets to those crowds of black people willing to listen. Halimah gave Zenita a very warm welcome and then Zenita introduced me to her. At once I felt at home in this old, warm and cosy apartment, the rooms furnished with oriental rugs with Arabic inscriptions from Quran and Hadith decorating the walls. Just before we were ready to eat dinner, a group of very shabbily dressed Palestinian ladies, the older ones with blue tribal tattoos on their sallow faces, came to visit and we all sat down together to enjoy Halimah’s tasty Halal cooking. Before I left, I confided in Halimah and Zenita that I expected to be committed soon to the institution, and they gasped with disbelief: “But I would never suspect THAT!” exclaimed Halimah. “You only seem a bit too nervous …” I begged them that if I must be institutionalized, would they please write to me regularly and not forget me? As I left, they were standing at the door weeping but lest I be overcome, I dared not look back again but ran to the nearest depot to catch the subway to Grand Central Station.

Whenever I feel dejected, I telephone Zenita and we while away the evenings with long conversations. Sometimes I would ask Zenita what she intended to do with her life and she replied: “I like Columbia University better than New York University and as soon as I acquire enough credits, I want to transfer from Columbia to the American University of Beirut. When I take an advanced degree there and know enough Arabic, I want to become Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cairo.”

Yes, Betty, I certainly did read the October 1955 issue of The Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey which Walter gave me the last time I visited you that published the article - “Medicine in the Koran” by Dr. Benjamin Lee-Gordon. I simply can’t understand how supposedly intelligent, responsible people can 122 make such outrageous statements as the following:

“The Arabs were well acquainted with epilepsy, hysteria and psychoses. According to some biographers, the Prophet himself was afflicted with such maladies and he suffered from attacks which lasted from hours to several months at a time. During acute episo-.les, his symptoms included twitches of muscles, movements of the lips and tongue as if he wanted to taste something, rotating of the eye balls and shaking of the head sideways, a stuporous expression, facial pallor, copious perspiration and violent headaches but there was no unconsciousness.

Since there was no impairment of consciousness, this could not have been grand mal. The motor phenomena would seem to rule out petit mal. Perhaps this was a psychomotor epilepsy or an hysterical manifestation. The latter is not inconsistent with the tradition ¹ that during or immediately after his paroxysms, Muhammad dictated portions of the Quran. A thorough evaluation of Muhammad’s behaviour pattern seems to indicate that he was a paranoid individual who had expanding delusions and hallucinations” … (pp. 516-517)

That is the only explanation atheists and materialists can provide for the Divine revelation of the Holy Quran! Mental hospitals throughout the world are jammed packed with thousands of individuals afflicted with expanding delusions and hallucinations and epileptics but has a single one of them ever produced a book like Quran capable of revolutionizing history over vast areas of the globe and winning the devotion unto death of hundreds of millions of believers all over the world for fourteen centuries?

Did I tell you about the course in advanced French conversation at the Berlitz School of Languages where I enrolled in Williams last summer? At first I was very keen on studying Arabic at Berlitz, so I could practice it with Zenita and her friends but when they told me that I would have to go to the central New York branch for that, I settled for the French. The first few weeks the teacher just gave me basic vocabulary drill but after the second month, I grew fluent enough to be able to converse freely. My 123 teacher, a tall slim man, hardly older than I was, didn’t speak a word of English. He had been a recruit in the French army and before being employed by Berlitz, had seen active combat in Algeria. He was a staunch believer in white supremacy and condemned the Arabs, especially in Algeria, as an inferior race which deserved nothing but wholesale extermination. The Algerian Arabs were only filthy, primitive creatures in his eyes and Islam synonomous with immorality, bigotry, backwardness and fanaticism. Even though the rules of the Berlitz school strictly forbid the language teachers to discuss political or religious subjects with their students, since I was shut up alone with him for two hours three times a week in a sound-proof room, nobody else knew the violent arguments that raged between us!

Never, not even during the 1948 Palestine war, has there been more heated excitement in the newspapers, radio and television about the Middle East than now. When King Ibn Saud came here on his special state visit to the United States, all over New York, the Zionists were demonstrating against him. The Zionist organizations in New York went to Mayor Wagner and demanded that King Ibn Saud not be given any hospitality by the city because he is an anti-Semite! Yesterday a big photo on the front page of the New York Times showed a crowd of Zionists picking in front of the Saudi Arabian Consulate with great banners reading: “KING IBN SAUD, SLAVE DRIVER, SLAVE OWNER, ANTI-SEMITE!” To ridicule King Ibn Saud, some young Zionist boys gave a demonstration of a slave market in Mecca. Fortunately for King Ibn Saud, he has a very appealing little son about four or five years old whom he brought to a hospital in New York to be rehabilitated from a mild case of cerebral palsy. Although the little boy is crippled and wears braces on his legs, in his Arab dress, he looked so adorable that even President Eisenhower picked him up in his arms and hugged and kissed him. Without that little son, King Ibn Saud’s visit would be intolerable for him. The Zionists will make sure of that!

The rabbis in New York are making the most terrific fuss about the alleged persecution of Jews in Egypt which is compelling them all to migrate to Israel, but as far as I can gather from the facts and from their photos in The New York Times, the Egyptian m Jews appear very well-fed, well-dressed and much more prosperous than their fellow citizens. Before the Suez affair, they were perfectly happy in Egypt and if they are persecuted now, the Zionists are all to blame for that.

I will never forget the English-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt. On radio and television there has beon a big campaign for the coming presidential elections here where the candidates for the Democratic party have been outdoing themselves in lavish praise for Israel “as the bastion of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.” Representing the Democratic Party, Mr. Adlai Stevenson and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt appeared on a special press interview on T.V. demanding that the U.S. Government wholeheartedly support Israel with arms and American troops to help Britain and France reoccupy the Suez Canal, and force the Arab states to officially recognize Israel and sign peace treaties with her. I admire President Eisenhower more than ever for his courage. Even though the Presidential election was just about ² to take place, he refused to bow to Zionist pressure and openly and boldly condemned the aggressors. And now on the radio in the U.N. General Assembly, the Israeli delegate, Mr. Abba Eban is ranting on and on how the Israeli occupation of Gaza has been welcomed by the Palestinians there, the harbinger of peace, prosperity, freedom and enlightenment! The only public figure here who refuses to be deceived is President Eisenhower. In his speech over the radio, he demands that either Israel quit Gaza and Sinai or America stop all economic assistance. If Eisenhower orders Israel out, Israel will surely get out! Money talks, doesn’t it. That is the only thing the Zionists understand!

Early this morning I crept to the door and grabbed The New York Times. I read it very carefully. On the front page, there were leading articles where the rabbis in New York accused Egypt of persecution of Jews. Another Zionist organization in New York was protesting against King Ibn Saud’s state visit. Still another front page article tried to justify Israel’s permanent claims to Gaza and Sinai and America stop all economic assistance. If Eisenhower… The editorial praised General Moshe Dayan and lauded the Israeli invasion of Egypt as one of the most brilliant military campaigns in history. But way in the back of the paper on the bottom 125 page 9, I found a tiny article hardly anybody but me would notice, reporting how the United Nations officials who had gone to Rafah and Khan Yunis, had found several hundred bodies of Arabs who had been massacred after the Israeli capture of those towns. None of them were soldiers. All were innocent civilians, some of them, women and babies. I ran to the breakfast table and found Mother and Daddy quietly drinking their morning coffee.

“See that?” I shouted. “The Israelis are no better than the Nazis! They are doing everything the Nazis did! I hope the Egyptians defeat them all!”

Daddy shouted back: “You stop that at once! You’re making our lives so intolerable we can’t live here in peace!” After that, I lost all control of myself. What will happen next? I am afraid to think about it.

All my love,

“PEGGY”

126 New York Hospital (Westchester Division) Westchester Avenue

White Plains, New York

Mrs. Walter P. Herz Plainfield, New Jersey

April 1, 1957

Dear Betty,

Now all my fears have come true. But to be truthful, I had long expected this to happen sooner or later. Here is the story:

Last week, Mother and Daddy surprised me by calling for me at Dr. Harper’s office when my therapy session was finished.

I asked them suspiciously why they had taken time off from their work, and they said they had special permission to take a day off. Daddy asked me if I wouldn’t like to go for a nice little drive in the country? I told them I didn’t care the least to go for the drive but only wanted to go home.

When Daddy saw my anxious face, he said in a sugar-coated tone, “Why don’t you worry. We’ll all take good care of you!” Although they weren’t deceiving me, we had scarcely ten minutes to enjoy Westchester’s glorious scenery, when Daddy drove the car up the driveway in front of a big red brick building surrounded by ³ shady trees. When I asked what this meant, Daddy told me that I was to stay here for a few weeks of rest, medical tests and treatments. I blurted out: “You know it won’t be just for a few weeks but for years, if not for life!”

Daddy replied, “It is nothing to feel ashamed of. It is certainly a wonderful place for those who need it!”

I tensed with fury but kept quiet.

To make a long story short, in the admissions office, interviewed by the Director of the hospital, Dr. Wall, I meekly signed papers which made me a “voluntary” inmate although, of course, this is the very last place I would ever go to of my free will.

127 knew if I did not sign those papers myself, Daddy would have done so or court action would have been taken against me. I knew that any resistance was futile. If I had not been docile in coming here and tried to run away, then the police would have brought me.

On their visits to me, whenever I beg them to take me out of this prison, Daddy keeps insisting that they put me here only because they love me, that this is for my own good so that I will get well quickly. Of course they want me to “get well” but mainly they put me here (although they may not even admit this to themselves) because they could no longer tolerate my troublesome behaviour. And then I thought of all the troubles and difficulties I had inflicted upon them during the last five years, the conflicts in our values and life-styles which made our house at times a veritable battlefield. Then Mother and Daddy like to entertain their friends and I always protested every time they wanted to entertain late into the night. Sometimes they would want to hold a big dinner and bridge party for twenty-five or thirty guests and then they would have to use my room and I would go over to sleep at Aunt Helen’s. One time when our relationships were strained nearly to the breaking point, I begged Aunt Helen to allow me to live with her for a while since I wasn’t getting on with Mother and Daddy and she said that her teen-age son liked to hold wild jive parties for all his friends almost every night where they would turn up to the maximum volume, the Elvis Presley recordings for rock ‘n’ roll dancing until two or three in the morning, and make a big uproar. “And how could I keep his friends away from the house, just for you?” she asked. “Cousin Jim would be furious at you for that and it would shatter the peace of our family …”

The declared purpose of this place is “social rehabilitation” and since we are all officially classed as social failures, that is why the nurses and attendants are continually reprimanding us as if we were a bunch of naughty children! What could be more humiliating for a mature adult? “Social rehabilitation” is accomplished through incarceration, dispossession and regimentation regardless of the suffering it may cause to the individual inmate. One of the hardest things for me to accept about the daily routine of this place is that all inmates are expected to be active and ambulatory throughout the day. Even if I could not sleep at all the previous night and no matter how exhausted I may feel, I am not allowed to go to bed and get some desperately needed rest. And nothing could be noisier and less restful than the day room where all twenty-five of us here on the disturbed ward are confined. Nobody is allowed into the dormitories nor are we allowed to rest or lie down on our beds during the daytime! That is why I always laugh at such a bitter joke, every time I hear that relatives have sent their afflicted dear-ones here for “rest”. But any complaints by inmates to staff (and they are numerous) fall on deaf ears because they are only concerned with managing and controlling us with the least trouble to themselves and we submit without any protest.

And Mother and Dad are planning another six-weeks vacation in sunny Trinidad and they’ll go there and have their fun while I am here in this prison. And I shed many tears of self-pity sobbing: “If they really love me, how can they do this?” Then I pulled myself together and tried to think over the whole situation objectively. Suppose I was in their place and my child, a grown-up daughter whom I thought made life at home intolerable, wouldn’t I do the same thing?

But nevertheless, every time Mother and Daddy come to see me, I cry out: “Mother, if you love me as much as you say you do, why did you send me here? Why won’t you take me out and let me go home?” And Daddy always replies: “But Peggy, you can’t live at home with us. The situation would be as impossible for you as it was for us.” Then tears would come to his eyes and he would plead: “Peggy, please, please be cooperative and do what the doctors and nurses say so you’ll get well soon…”

The queerest fact about places like this is that even though the involuntary confinement of the inmate is as rigorous as any prison, even in the worst of prisons, the convict is never expected to sing the praises of his prison. Prisons are for punishment so nobody, not even the warden or guards, are surprised that the prisoner hates their incarceration and curse every moment of their time spent behind bars. Regardless of how rigorous the discipline, no convict will get into trouble simply for complaining because to be about his confinement as this is natural and expected.

129 in this place, unless the inmate is willing to pretend (and how could she do otherwise) to love the place and be so grateful for what it has “done” for her, should the staff feel she harbours any ill-will against the institution, this is considered by the top-ranking staff as “proof” that she is not well enough to be released!

Please believe me as my only sister that there is nothing more humiliating in all the world than to be stigmatized as mentally ill!

All my love,

“PEGGY”