Mitchell McPartland

“Last March, a fog took hold in my head and never left. It settled there somewhere between the moment a DHS agent asked me, ‘Are you Mahmoud Khalil?’ and the moment I realized that I would miss the birth of my first child,” writes Khalil. A year ago, the Trump administration unlawfully arrested Khalil at his home and detained him for 104 days. “I walk free now, only after an army of lawyers sued the administration for targeting me because of my pro-Palestine speech. But the government is relentless in targeting me,” he writes. “So when I walk, I watch my back.” “When strangers approach me and ask, ‘Are you Mahmoud Khalil?’ — the same words in the same expectant tone the DHS agent used before the handcuffs — I do not know if they want to shake my hand or spit in my face. I do not know whether they will say, ‘Thank you for what you're doing,’ or follow me through midtown aggressively shouting, ‘Am Yisrael Chai.’ Both have happened. At first glance, I can never tell them apart.” In a new essay, Khalil writes about grappling with these two truths: “That I walk through the city afraid and that the city, in small and persistent ways, tells me I am welcome. That I am watched and that I am seen.” Read it in full: nymag.visitlink.me/tM03B5