EL PASO, Texas -- On the eve of the second-oldest bowl game in this country in a cold convention center on Christmas Day, 19-year-old Hala Abdel-Jaber took the stage with 11 other Sun Bowl princesses at a Fan Fiesta event. The women were asked to introduce themselves to the sparse crowd in town for the game between Washington State and Miami. Wearing a princess crown atop her hijab, Abdel-Jaber was the third woman to take the mic.
"Hi everyone, I'm Holly," she said to the fans, who seemed to neither notice nor care that she was wearing a traditional headdress associated with the Muslim religion. "And I'm also a junior at UTEP."
Under normal circumstances, Abdel-Jaber introducing herself with an Americanized nickname -- which she says people in her life have variously called her since middle school -- would be unremarkable. But the University of Texas at El Paso student finds herself in the middle of a perfect storm of politics, culture and religion, due to some reticence on the part of Sun Bowl representatives to participate in a feature story before the game. Ahead of Washington State's 20-14 win on Saturday, a Sun Bowl spokesperson denied multiple requests to interview Abdel-Jaber, citing the overall safety of the general public and Abdel-Jaber herself.
"One thing we're being very cautious on is we want the focus to be on football and the game," said Eddie Morelos, director of media relations for the Sun Bowl, "not religion or politics."
I first learned of Abdel-Jaber's story after seeing local affiliate KVIA's interview with her. The crux of the story was her as a Muslim Sun Bowl princess, and in it Abdel-Jaber spoke eloquently about recent Islamaphobia in the U.S., and some of it in El Paso. She said she wants people in the El Paso community to have a positive example of a young Muslim woman who was representing one of the most important local events in this city. She also hoped El Paso -- in spite of her family being scared for her safety after the San Bernadino attacks and anti-Muslim rhetoric by presidential candidates -- would embrace her as a representative of this border town.
"The number one thing when I applied to be a Sun Princess was mainly because I wanted to show that it's OK to be different," she told the station.
Still, the Sun Bowl refused to make her available to espnW before the game, not wanting to create any reasons for their fans, or Abdel-Jaber herself, to be targeted. I was welcome to interview her once the game was over.
"I am concerned that no matter how positive you make the story that someone will be offended," Morelos said. "It takes just one person to say that, and to focus on that, and go not only after her, but anyone around her. I just want to prevent that from happening from anyone around this game. There's a safety thing, a big safety concern on my part. I don't want that opportunity to happen. Whether or not you think it will happen, I think it will happen. And that's how concerned I am about it."
Morelos said there were no threats against Abdel-Jaber, her family or the game, and that the only pushback was his alone. The response by the Sun Bowl is a microcosm of the widespread effects Islamaphobia are having in this country.
But this wasn't how it was supposed to be. This was supposed to be a stage for Abdel-Jaber to showcase her pride of her city, the state she loves and, also, incidentally, her Muslim background.
Hala and her mother, Inaam, didn't agree to talk until Monday evening. Just earlier that day, Inaam said Hala wasn't going to speak to me, citing Hala's exhaustion from the entire week. This followed an off-the-record meeting two days before Christmas, where the two women told me they couldn't participate in this story without permission from the Sun Bowl. But on Monday night, Hala made it clear that it was important for her voice to be heard.
"I feel like it's best for my personal word to be out there as opposed to someone else's word," she said.
The initial resistance by the Sun Bowl mystified community leaders and officials.
"If you have somebody who is representing your organization -- she's representing the Sun Bowl -- why wouldn't you want her story to come out?" said Omar Hernandez, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of El Paso. "Why wouldn't you want her to share her experiences?"
When reached on the phone Monday afternoon, Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke was more succinct: "That doesn't speak for El Paso."
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Nearly 20 years ago, Maggie Asfahani was the same age as Abdel-Jaber, living in El Paso as a Muslim woman, seeing the world around her shift when it came to attitudes about her religion and culture. Just like Abdel-Jaber, Asfahani was born here. She's the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, and as a young child in the states, she had watched the wars in Lebanon and plane bombings in Europe shift public opinion about her culture in the 1980s.
"It wasn't really a good time to be associated with the Middle East," she said.
She had watched the reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing when initial reports wrongly indicated "Arab-looking individuals" as possible suspects. Asfahani's younger brother came home from school one day crying and asked their mother, "Why do Muslims kill people? Why are Arabs all bad?" Asfahani's mother tried to remedy the situation by visiting her son's school with Arabic art, music and literature. She spoke to his class and helped heal the misconceptions the children had about her family and their culture. At the time, Newsweek ran a weekly column called "My Turn," where anyone could submit personal essays. Asfahani wrote about what it was like living in this country as a young Muslim woman and Newsweek ran it in November 1996.
"Something compelled me to write that," she told me. "I felt like I didn't want that to define me or my culture."
Now 20 years later, another young Muslim woman from El Paso is having the same conversations about culture.
"She's a person, she's an American who happens to be Muslim. She's a UTEP student, she's a member of this community, why is there this reluctance for them to take pride in that?"
O'Rourke pointed to the history of El Paso as a progressive community. This spring will be the 50th anniversary of the first all-African-American starting lineup in major-college basketball at Texas Western (as UTEP was then known). This city also is where civil rights activist Thelma White Camack -- who would be represented by the future first African-American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall -- filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Western College for denying black students admission based on race. The state ruled in her favor in 1955.
"No community is perfectly inclusive and no immigrants or persons of minority background -- in this case religious -- live their lives without any incident," said O'Rourke. "But I'd argue El Paso is better than most communities and has really prospered and benefits from all this amazing talent from really all around the world."
Asfahani is a mother now and, after a career spent as a writer, is in the process of opening her own cafe in El Paso. But 20 years ago, she was like Abdel-Jaber: a student at UTEP, navigating Islamaphobia in this country in a very public way.
Had she been in the same position as Abdel-Jaber, who respected the Sun Bowl's request that she not speak until after the game, Asfahani said she would've likely done the same thing.
"I wouldn't have wanted to cause a stir," she said. "I'm [in theory] the face of a large organization that is very, very important to this community. I wouldn't have wanted to do anything that jeopardizes their position or jeopardizes my position. ... There's a lot of pressure."
When Inaam and Hala agreed to meet Monday night, they asked for it to be at the local country club, where Inaam -- a financial adviser in the city -- is a member, but it was closed for a private event. Instead we went to a local café. At one point our conversation turned to her abrupt decision to talk. Hala said both the president and director of the Sun Bowl told her it was OK to speak. She had to go through an extensive application process and in-person interviews for selection, which was over the summer. She said the Sun Bowl court chose her not because of the culture she represents, but on the merits of her as a human. I asked Hala what was important to her to say.
"One of the greatest things that I gained from the Sun Bowl is their acceptance and their embracing of my culture and of my religion," Hala said. "To them it wasn't about being a Muslim Sun Princess -- it was about being a Sun Princess. And they took into consideration that my character is what put me there. And who I am as a person is what put me in the court; it had nothing to do with my religion. That really proved to me that it's not a matter of what culture you represent or what religion you practice -- it's who you are as a person."
Abdel-Jaber refused to criticize the Sun Bowl's decision to keep her from speaking to the media until after Saturday.
"I understand where they're coming from," she said. "They were concerned for my safety."
Hala said that what she said in her initial interview with KVIA about her religion, her culture and the current climate in this country was "said out of humanity." Inaam said she's proud of her daughter and proud of that interview.
"She said what needed to be said,'' Inaam said. "She was very eloquent. I teared up when I saw her interview. I was like, 'This is my girl.'"
We talked about the legacy of her family. Her uncle was as a United Nations ambassador based in Jordan, her grandfather mayor of Jerusalem. Hala, who's been an honor student since she's been in middle school, is a senator of the UTEP student government association representing roughly 2,000 students, working for rights on behalf of her constituency. She spoke about her desire to go to law school, how she's a role model for her four younger siblings, how John F. Kennedy is a role model of hers, as is activist and lawyer Amal Clooney.
"My religion has always been something I've been extremely proud of," Hala said. "I think that it's come to a point where I feel if someone needs for me to be a voice and they're voiceless, I think that I will be. Not because I have to but because I want for people to have a person to look up to."
As we are wrapping up our conversation, I ask her what she's majoring in at school.
"International politics," she said. "Kind of explains everything, right?"
In a previous version of this story, we incorrectly identified Congressman O'Rourke as a former mayor of El Paso.
Amy K. Nelson is a freelance photographer and journalist based in New Orleans. You can follow her on http://www.twitter.com/amyknelson.