As early summer days on Orchard Street draw to a close, sliding doors open, inviting fresh air and neighbors into side-by-side garages.
More patio than parking place or storage for power tools, Mariam Khalaf said her garage is primarily for "chilling purposes" - including smoking, eating and watching TV with family and friends, including next-door neighbors, Muheeb Nabulsy and his wife, Fatima Mkkawi.
Khalaf and Nabulsy say gathering in their east-side garages never invited scrutiny until they installed the sliding doors last year in front of the more traditional electric ones. Now, officials in the Detroit suburb are looking at changing an ordinance on garage use, arguing that as people get a little too comfortable hanging out in the garage, more cars are clogging side streets.
Many who've made the unsanctioned transition are part of Dearborn's nearly 100,000 Arab-American residents, one of the largest such communities outside of the Middle East and a third of the city's population. The garages are a continuation of marathon socializing sessions that started many years ago in their home countries under shady trees, often accompanied by coffee and a water pipe, known as a hookah or argileh.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson
"If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here." - Barack Obama, June 7, 2013
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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Sun Jun 30, 2013 12:02 pm
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