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must go into the world without fear and do what is right, required, and necessary.
    The last thing he told me the last time I saw him was “Son, no matter what, take care of your mother and your sister. Guard them and their honor. Protect them with your life.”
    My family came to America not because we loved it and thought it was a better place and the land of opportunity.
    We came to America without our influence and abundant riches, to lay low, to go underground, to go slow, to rebuild, to regroup, to regain our strength, position, plan, and purpose, to come again.

3
THE THREE PIGS
    My beautiful mother and I arrived in the U.S. on October 31, 1979. I was seven years young.
    We were greeted by three American customs officers who were all wearing pink pig snouts and pink pig ears. We had never heard of Halloween. We don’t celebrate the devil in our country. I gripped my mother’s hand and heard my father’s voice in my mind. “Son, there are unreasonable men on this earth.”
    I watched closely as the officers searched through our few things. I was confident that they would not discover my three three-carat diamonds in the hollowed-out sole of my right shoe.
    “Three wishes,” my father called the diamonds when he dropped them into my palm. “Three wishes when everything and everyone else around you fails or when you feel trapped. If you never have the need to use them, then don’t. Pass them along to your son, and him to his son.”
    One of the officers seemed to have a problem with me watching him. He asked me, “What’s a matter, kid? No one ever told you the story of the three pigs?”
    My twenty-six-years-young mother, a five foot seven, golden-skinned, Arabic speaking, lean, shapely, and beautiful African woman with big dark eyes and a dimple in her chin, was wrapped up from head to toe as Islamic women do. She peeked through her veil and looked down at me for anunderstanding, a translation of the customs officer’s English. I looked back up to her and said in Arabic, “It is a silly game they are playing.”
    “How old is the boy?” one officer asked my mother. I answered, “Seven.” The three of them shot looks at each other and snickered. “Hey, Johnny, have you ever seen a seven-year-old kid this size in your son’s second-grade class? What the hell were they feeding ya?” he asked, looking toward me with coffee-stained teeth and a crooked smile.
    I didn’t say nothing in response to his stupid comments. I was more than half of his short size. I figured that was his problem.
    “Remove the veil and head scarf,” the American customs officers demanded.
    This order was considered an offense and insult to us. Where we come from, a woman is never asked to reveal herself in the presence of any man who is not her father, husband, brother, or son.
    I looked at their weapons hanging on their hips. One officer’s eyes followed mine as I checked out the mirrors in the corners of the ceiling, the cameras aimed down at us. So I translated to my mother.
    She removed her
hijab
and
niqab
, very reluctantly, hearing the authority in the tone of their foreign voices and feeling the threat of the moment. The customs men watched every move of her hands, scanning and admiring the unfamiliar and beautifully drawn henna designs she wore on each of her fingers and on the palms of her hands.
    Her thick, long and pretty brown hair now uncovered dropped down to her back. Immediately, they reacted to her revealed beauty with gasps, long lusty stares, and three dirty smirks.
    She kept her gaze on the floor and asked me in Arabic if they were finished.
    I asked them in English, “Are you finished?”
    Still smiling, one of the officers nodded.
    The other waved his hand and said, “Yeah, head to the next line over there.” I checked them watching her so closely as she wrapped back into her
hijab
and reattached her
niqab
to cover her face, all but her eyes. We walked away.
    I heard one of them say to the other,