For Mariam Ashour, a 19-year-old Palestinian who waited a year to take advantage of a scholarship at Columbia College, her new life is a stark contrast with one she left behind in Gaza.
Arriving at the college Monday after an interlude with her sponsor family in Virginia, she talked about the difference in terms that might seem cliche to people living in the United States.
But her life in war-torn Palestine has been anything but idyllic since the Hamas faction launched its intifada, or uprising, against the ruling Fatah Party and the Israeli military.
“Freedom feels much different. I appreciate it so much,” Ashour said in an interview after two hours on campus, getting her Columbia College identification card, seeing her room already decorated by fellow students, and eating lunch in the cafeteria.
Fahim Qubain, founder of The Hope Fund, said Ashour was visiting his home recently in Lexington, Va., when an Air Force fighter jet flew low overhead. Her instant reaction, without even thinking about it, was to dive under the table, Qubain said.
“Any simple thing here is better than anything there,” she said. “I don’t feel threatened all the time, and that’s enough.”
Feeling safe is no small thing for Ashour. She missed many days of high school because the shooting in the Gaza streets made it too dangerous to venture out. Once, during her final exams, students were barricaded in the school as a gunbattle raged outside, and one girl was shot to death.
Before Ashour left Gaza, following her year-long delay because of Israeli restrictions, her father, one of just two psychiatrists in Gaza, was kidnapped and imprisoned because he had written a political column under a false name. She left Gaza to travel to the United States not knowing what had happened to him, but learned after she arrived here that he had been released.
She wears a necklace fashioned into the peace symbol, and says advocating peace or free speech in Gaza can be dangerous.
“Journalists have a hard time there,” she said.
She misses her family, but not the chaotic world she left. She longs for the Gaza she knew as a youngster, when the economy and the middle class were growing, people got paid, and there was more tolerance for a variety of political and religious views.
Ashour comes from a multicultural family. Her father, a Palestinian from Gaza, left to be educated in Bulgaria as a psychiatrist. He returned to Gaza a decade later with a Russian wife and 5-year-old Mariam.
The intifada reduced the middle class to paupers. No one was paid for two years. Goods and services were traded until the food ran out. There was no fuel to run the generators for electricity.
Ashour came to the attention of the Hope Fund, a small charitable organization run by Qubain, an 84-year-old retired Middle East studies professor in Lexington, Va. He started the organization “as a retirement activity,” said his daughter Helen Qubain, who escorted Ashour to Columbia.
Helen Qubain said her father sought to help students from the Middle East get a college education in America, on as little money as possible. Rather than apply for million-dollar grants, she said, he finds colleges that will offer a scholarship for one or two students, then raises small sums of money needed for transportation and incidental expenses.
It typically takes about $10,000 of the foundation’s money to get a student through four years of college.
Columbia College president Caroline Whitson heard about the program and offered a scholarship. Ashour will receive free tuition, and the college will raise private funds to pay for her room and board.
Whitson said Ashour was expected on campus last August, but repeated hold-ups in leaving Gaza almost caused her and Qubain to despair that she would ever make it.
“At one time, the Hope Fund said perhaps we should just look at someone else,” Whitson said. “The students from the West Bank were getting out. Those from Gaza were not.”
But Whitson said she did not want to be responsible for Ashour giving up hope. Now, Ashour will begin her college career at age 19 and take her first classes in summer school.
Whitson said a portion of Ashour’s expenses has been pledged by Columbia’s Jewish community, in the spirit of improving cultural understanding.
And Whitson said Ashour’s experience could lead to more Palestinian students coming to Columbia College.
“I hope it will give our other students a glimpse into another culture,” Whitson said.
Tela Witherspoon, a residential coordinator at Columbia College, said she’s looking forward to learning about Ashour’s world.
“She is like a walking textbook for us,” she said.
As she arrived about midday on the north Columbia campus, Ashour was asked if she wanted a break, to rest and freshen up.
“I’m fine,” she beamed to her new hosts. “I’ve been waiting for this for two years.”
Reach Hammond at (803) 771-8474.
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