RNA - Amar Samel and his wife, Muna Abdalla, moved their family to Iowa from Sudan in 2010.
Five years later, the couple and their four children became naturalized citizens and moved into a house in Iowa City.
It only took 14 handwritten words — delivered last week on a sheet of paper taped to their front door — to shatter their peace and make the Muslim family wonder how well they know the country they now call home.
“You can all go home now. We don’t want (a racial epithet) and terrorists here. #Trump,” the note said.
Samel, a night custodian at an Iowa City high school, told the Gazette he discovered the note just after midnight Friday after returning home from a family gathering to mourn the death of his father.
“I did not believe what I was seeing,” he told the paper. “I live in a peaceful city, a liberal city that is accepting of diversity.”
“It’s scary, too,” Abdalla added.
Abdalla told the Gazette she was home with her children, who range from ages 8 to 16, when the note appeared. She said she thinks the sheet of paper was placed on the door after she turned off the lights, allowing the perpetrator remain cloaked in darkness.
The incident, which is under investigation, appears to be part of a nationwide wave of racially motivated acts of intimidation, violence and harassment that have swept the country in the days after Donald Trump was elected president.
Samel told the paper he believes the note left at his home started on the campaign trail.
“This is a consequence of what their leader said before the election,” he said, referring to Trump’s rhetoric.
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