On Facebook two weeks ago, an Alabamian told me to “get out now.”

He left the comment under an Arab in Alabama post about my lighthearted column, “The Internet Asked Me If I Was Human. I Got It Wrong, Twice.”

I’m not sure whether he wants me to leave Alabama or humanity altogether. Having lived in this state for four decades, I have an idea.

After all, some folks in Alabama have called me a terrorist more times than I can count, along with that insult’s cousins: camel jockey, towelhead, sand n‑word, Jew nose, jihadi, and a few others I’ll spare you.

I bleed a little every time, from a wound that will not heal. A wound that has stayed red and raw. But for some reason, this one, the “get out now,” as mild as it may appear, hurt more than usual.

I have been trying to figure out why. Terrorist is worse. So are its cousins. But after four decades, I have grown a callus over the spot where those words land. They are about what someone imagines I am. I know what I am. I can shrug at a stranger’s imagination.

“Get out now” is different. It is not about what I am. It is about where I belong. And that is the one question an immigrant never fully stops asking himself, no matter how thick his Southern “y’all” has become.

I left my home in Damascus, Syria, in 1984, at the age of 18, seeking the freedom many risk their lives to attain. My father was a respected poet, and I grew up in a country where a line of poetry could earn you applause in one room and a visit from the secret police in another. So I learned early that words have weight, and that the wrong ones, in the wrong ears, could cost you everything.

I came to America with that lesson in my pocket. I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Tennessee. Then Alabama became home, and I stayed.

I stayed for four decades.

In that time, I made lifelong friends. I loved and was loved. I raised three children into productive adults. I worked and accomplished and lost and laughed and cried. I nearly lost my life to a brain aneurysm, and by some miracle, and the hands of Alabama doctors and nurses, I survived. Most of all, I have cherished every moment in this state.

That is what “get out now” asks me to hand back. Four decades of Alabama returned at the counter, like a sweater that never fit.

And while I kiss the Alabama soil every day, metaphorically, for my freedom, for my children never having to run from bombs, for the fact that I can say and write anything I want and no one will come after me, I still have a problem with someone saying “get out now” on Facebook.

Someone I don’t know. Someone who, I suspect, never even read the column.

He saw the words “Arab in Alabama,” did not like them, and decided to chime in.

Three words in a comment box. It took him maybe four seconds. He probably went on to check the football scores, or look at pictures of his grandkids, or argue with somebody about barbecue. He has likely forgotten he wrote it.

I haven’t.

That’s the thing about hurtful words. The person who throws them walks away light. The person they land on carries them home, sets them on the kitchen table, and looks at them over supper.

One of my best friends wrote back to the stranger, firmly and without a single insult. The stranger never replied. This friend is a Jewish Alabamian. I am a Muslim Alabamian. That alone says more than anything I could write here.

I know I am giving the stranger satisfaction by acknowledging his comment. My friends tell me to ignore it. Don’t feed the trolls, they say. Scroll past. Block and move on.

But I am my father’s son. I believe words have weight. And if his three words get to sit on my kitchen table, then I am going to answer them with a few of my own.

So here is my answer to the stranger on Facebook.

No.

No, I will not get out. Not now, not later. Alabama is where I taught my children to ride their bikes with no training wheels, in that empty lot in Homewood where I live. It’s where I buried friends and toasted weddings and stood in line at Publix. It’s where I have been welcomed far more often than I have been cursed. For every person who has told me to leave, a hundred have handed me a casserole, a biscuit, a hug.

Those hundred are Alabama too. And I would argue they are the real Alabama.

Dear stranger: if you are ever in Birmingham, my door is open. Come have coffee. Arabic coffee, strong enough to stand a spoon in. I will pour it for you, and you can tell me why you want me gone, and I will tell you what I love about Alabama. That’s what we do where I come from. We feed the stranger, even the one who insulted us.

It is also, last time I checked, what we do in Alabama.

Because here is the deal. If we do not accept each other regardless of meaningless labels, humanity itself will kick us out.