AL BIRAH, WEST BANK — When Rafik Ismail Hamad last traveled from the West Bank to visit relatives in the United States, he was struck by the pressures one of his nephews was facing.
The younger man, a U.S.-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, spoke to his uncle of ethnic taunts by Army colleagues. A sensitive man, he was haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated as an Army psychiatrist, Hamad recalled, and was overwhelmed by a growing caseload he felt unable to manage.
Late Thursday, Hamad was home in the West Bank town of Al Birah when he heard the news on television: A gunman in Ft. Hood, Texas, had killed at least a dozen people, and his nephew, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was being accused of the horrific attack.
"The whole family is in a state of denial," Hamad said Saturday. "We don't believe he is capable of doing something like that. I was amazed and shocked, because it's not him. He's very quiet, gentle.
"Maybe it built up together -- the harassment, too many patients, the workload, the tragedies his patients brought to him," said the 65-year-old retired real estate broker. "Whatever it was, it must have been big pressure, something terrible he couldn't handle."
Hamad and another West Bank relative, Mohammed Munif Hasan, said they learned recently that Maj. Hasan had consulted a lawyer about securing a discharge from the Army.
Hamad said he had not seen or spoken to his nephew since that visit in the early part of last year, when Maj. Hasan was stationed in Washington. But the West Bank branch of the family had kept up with him through relatives in the United States.
The major's octogenarian maternal grandparents, Salha and Ismail Hamad, live in Al Birah with Rafik Hamad, their son. In an interview outside the family's three-story apartment building, he declined to make his parents available to reporters.
Rafik Hamad, a heavyset man with a trim white beard, described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, his uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby.
The young man became more religious after the death of his parents, who were Muslims but not observant, Hamad said. He noticed the change during the visit last year, when his nephew urged him to accompany him to pray at a mosque.
