When video went viral of a racist attack on a Muslim street food vendor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilians wondered gloomily: had their country also been swept up in a global wave of xenophobia?
The answer — a flood of love transforming the humble vendor into a folk hero and, on Thursday, the recipient of a city award — was a heartwarming no.
But the truth may be a little more complicated.
It all began August 3 when Mohamed Ali Abdelmoatty Kenawy, 33, was manning the cart from which he sells Arab-style meat pies and hummus in the thronging center of Copacabana.
Suddenly a thick-set, bald man carrying two sticks appeared, screaming at Kenawy, who came to Brazil three years ago and has since become universally known as “the Syrian refugee.”
“Get out of my country!” yelled the assailant. “I’m a Brazilian and my country is being invaded by these miserable human bombs who kill children!”
Thin, with neat dark hair and glasses, Kenawy did not attempt to fight back, merely picking up food that had been spilled when his cart came under attack.
The incident might have got even uglier, except that among the growing number of bystanders was 19-year-old Beatriz Bastos de Souza, who intervened, and then began filming on her mobile phone.
“The man started to kick the cart and then started to kick and punch Mohamed,” she said Thursday. “There were three or four of them, not just one, and I went into the middle saying, ‘Please stop.’”
Deeply depressed, Kenawy avoided work for the next two days. “That man didn’t break my cart,” he told AFP. “He broke my happiness.”
Bastos de Souza, however, left determined to do something. After Kenawy refused her pleas for him to file a police complaint, she showed officers her video of the fracas. “They said, ‘Delete it, nothing will come of it,’” she explained.
So Bastos de Souza, who works in a travel agency, sent the video to Brazil’s biggest news organisation, Globo.
They also didn’t respond. But the video made it to a smaller news outfit and all of a sudden, “my video was everywhere,” she said. The effect was extraordinary.
Soon Kenawy was doing a sit-down interview on Globo. Thousands of people organised on Facebook to buy his pies and Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella personally handed him a hard-to-get vendors’ license. On Thursday, the city legislature voted to make Kenawy an honourary citizen of Rio.
“I knew Brazilians were kind, but after this, wow,” Kenawy said in amazement. “I can’t express my feelings.”
Kenawy has now become a byword in the Brazilian media for tolerance — the Syrian war survivor who, when confronted with violence, declined to strike back.
