Sisters harassed on Woodmere street

Twice in the past two months, members of the Elkoulily family of Woodmere say, they have been the victims of verbal ethnic attacks.

Layla and Lina Elkoulily, 16 and 15, who are Muslim, were walking home from Hewlett High School along Hewlett Neck Road in Woodmere, not far from their home, on May 24 at 4:30 p.m., when a woman in a gold-colored Lexus sedan stopped and said she was lost, and asked Layla for directions, Lamiaa Elkoulily, the girls’ mother, recounted.

“My daughter took her headphones off and asked her if she could help,” Lamiaa said. “My daughter said the woman saw her hijab” — both girls were wearing head scarves — “and said, ‘I hate you and all Muslims. Go back to your country.’”

With tears in her eyes and her sister standing there, her mother said, Layla responded: “I was born and raised in this country, I live here in this neighborhood and I’m sorry for your ignorance.”

The woman also said, “You look like you belong in the seventh century,” Lamiaa said.

According to Lamiaa, this was the second time someone had verbally assailed them. “About a month ago, my husband and I were driving to one of the [high school’s] awards ceremonies and there was another incident with a garbage truck blocking the road,” she said. “I said, ‘You are blocking the road,’ and they didn’t move. My husband got out of the car and asked them to move, and one of the men called him a terrorist.”

Lamiaa said she did not file a police report after that incident, but after the incident involving her daughters, she filed a report, and Nassau County police spoke to the girls and served as a calming influence, she said. The police are investigating the incident.

“I told her that she shouldn’t engage with people like that, but Layla said she felt bad for the lady and thought she could correct her ignorance,” said Lamiaa, who added that it was Layla who argued with her parents that she wanted to wear the hijab. “I was so angry,” her mother said of her daughters’ confrontation with the woman. “I fear for my kids more than myself that they are treated this way. They shouldn’t be rejected from their community or country.”

Both girls were born in the U.S., and Lamiaa, 40, and her husband, Ahmed, 50, who are native Egyptians, have lived here for more than 25 years. Ahmed is a doctor and Lamiaa is in the medical billing business.

Layla, a junior at Hewlett High, is a National Honor Society member and has been highlighted on the Hewlett-Woodmere school district’s Facebook page for representing the school at the Congress of Future Medical Leaders in Boston last October. Students are nominated to be delegates by their teachers, counselors and principals based on their academic standing — with a minimum required grade point average of 3.5 — and their interest in the medical field.

Lina is a Hewlett High sophomore. Lamiaa said that the school district has been supportive of her daughters. “When any unfortunate situation occurs off campus involving our students,” Superintendent Ralph Marino Jr. said, “we encourage them to inform the school, as well as their parents and the Police Department. It is important that we all work together and remain vigilant in the protection of children.”