Lives of Worry, Sadness, 'Why?'

This is on the morning after Sept. 11, 2001. The man's name is Khader Musa Hamide. A Palestinian, he has lived in the United States for 30 years. He is a coffee bean wholesaler, an Internet day trader and the father of three boys. He is also, as he puts it, a "quote-unquote suspected terrorist."

For many years now, Hamide has fought off attempts by the United States government to deport him for activities related to his visible, vocal advocacy of Palestinian causes. He was arrested in early 1987, along with his Kenyan wife and six other Palestinian immigrants.

They initially appeared destined for rapid deportation to the Middle East. The proceedings stalled on legal challenges, however, and the L.A. 8, as they came to be called, were allowed to carry on with their lives as best they could while they waited for the litigation to run its course. They are waiting still.

On this grim morning, the man at the front window barely resembles the dashing young organizer captured years earlier in FBI surveillance photographs. He attributes his aging more to his troubles than to the passage of time. He has lost his hair. He has lost friends. And he has lost his sense of trust: Behind every new face, he sees a potential FBI undercover agent.

More than anything, though, he has lost his political voice, which, certain government documents suggest, was precisely the point of the investigation in the first place. This is a man who once demonstrated defiantly in front of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, who once exhorted hundreds at a 1986 Glendale fundraiser to reach into their wallets, telling them, "People, the revolution will not continue, and the march to Palestine will not go on, with words alone."

Now he tries to keep his political views to himself. His weekends are filled not with rallies for the revolution, but with suburban errands, ferrying kids to basketball practice in his van. He worries that his neighbors might discover he's a principal in a terrorism case. One man up the block, in fact, did piece it together, and his children haven't come to play since.