On an afternoon this week in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge, Zein Rimawi sat alone in the back of a community center he established for the neighborhood’s Palestinian community. As the board chair of the Arab American Federation and founder of several local institutions, Rimawi has a reputation in the area.
His desk is decorated with a tissue box covered with a knitted Palestinian flag, a bejeweled camel, and a journal with the landscape of Jerusalem on the cover. Behind him is a framed Quranic verse about refuge called “Surah Al-Falaq”.
