The Ali Hindy Story

This is the story of a 12-year-old Syrian Muslim boy who left his troubled homeland in 1894 with two other boys and traveled to Europe and then America in search of two goals: to marry and start a business. The vast majority of immigrants from Syria at that time were Christian. Less than 5 percent were Muslim. Ali Hindy ended up in southern West Virginia, marrying a young Christian woman who had been shunned by her family, starting a general store, movie theater and bathhouse for coal miners. They raised her two illegitimate daughters and had six children, including my father. Ali Hindy befriended Devilance Hatfield, patriarch of the Hatfield clan of the famous Hatfield and McCoy's feud. He also survived an attack by Ku Klux Klanmen who demanded he leave town and forbid the town's only doctor from delivering his sixth child.

In 1980, as an Associated Press correspondent in Beirut, I traveled to Ali Hindy's hometown, Sultan Yaqoub, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, and learned about Ali Hindy's background and the reasons for his adventurous journey to America. Back in America, I connected with long-lost relatives and cobbled together this story of Ali's amazing life.