Long Term

Bismillah,

I have come to the realization that even though this project of creating an autobiography is original and turning out better than I thought, it is a very long term project, one that will require me to get a little older and wiser, along with all the other things that come with growing up, before I actually finish it.

This is why I’ve decided to cease writing here until a few more major events occur in my life.

In the meantime, I’ve also realized that I could be writing a fictional novel which would not restrict me in any limitations whatsoever, I would be able to write it and publish it as well. Thus I have decided to do this instead in my free time.

Parts of the story will be available at http://iamadam.wordpress.com soon.

I will also be posting regularly on a new blog at http://siraatullah.wordpress.com

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Chapter 3 – Friendship

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. – Elisabeth Foley

To be a friend is to be caring. A certain force draws you to a person because of a common reason or a mutual purpose.

Our friends are there for us to learn from, smile at, and laugh with.  Without them, the problems we face in our lives would be catastrophic to deal with on our own.

We need someone there to share our stories with, to pour our souls out of the lockbox we cramp ourselves into.

We need someone to listen when all ears are deafened, and someone to laugh with when all voices are silenced.

Whether they be best friends or casual acquaintances, any person can become inseparable with another, regardless of race, creed, gender, or age.

We need someone to tell our deepest and darkest secrets to. We need someone we can fully trust with our lives, someone who knows us better than ourselves, and yet still loves us for who we are and not who we think we are.

Friendship is a necessity within life.

These are the people who can guide you to victory or defeat. They can empower you  and escalate you to greatness, or wield you in the palm of their hand and leave you in the depths of the abyss.

They are the ones who cause you to believe as they believe, and influence your actions in such a way that relates to their own, literally turning you into someone else without even realizing it.

They can be the primary compound in the elixir of your success, or one of the ingredients in the poison of your failure.

So then the question remains, children of Adam.

Which drink will you choose?

Seventh grade had finally arrived. This was the first time I had ever had eight classes in one schedule. I was deathly afraid my first day, believe me. How could a person go to eight classes in a day? I thought to myself.

Numbness overcame me on the first day of school, already getting lost in the crowds of new students trying to find their way around.

In my homeroom I was given a map to the school as well as all the other junk you had to get signed by your parents, but there was also another paper which seemed strange to me.

I asked my homeroom teacher what it was. She explained that it was a form for a physical in case people wanted to get into sports at school.

An ambitious smile came over my face. I had always wanted to play football for a school since I was little. My father helped feed me the passion every year with his crazy Super Bowl parties and excessive cheering. He would literally jump out of his seat at the sign of a remarkable pass or touchdown, completely immersing himself in the love for the game.

Both my parents were encouraging when it came to playing Football, and so I signed up for the team.

I still remember my number, 22. They put me as wide receiver and tight end in the games we played. It was here, in this very football team, that I met one of the most influential and life-changing friends I had ever known.

Jack was originally born in Europe. He moved to the States when he was in 5th grade. I was surprised to find out that he was actually in my homeroom class as well. After a few practices I remembered seeing his face somewhere, and the next morning I asked him about the Football team.

From then on we were inseparable. We learned that we even had the same classes which was almost freaky.

Jack was a real joker. He would talk about the most ridiculous things, make fun of the most random people, and bring me along for the ride.

But besides all of these things, Jack was a hardcore student when it came to school. He studied like no other for tests, he made sure he got the highest grades possible. Heck he even used to study in the mornings during homeroom.

School was still a breeze for me, I barely had to try to get good grades.

Jack and I had a lot of good memories in 7th grade. We made fun of a foreign student who couldn’t talk correctly in our Geography class, made gloves out of PlayDoh and punched each others hands with it, and even screwed around when we dissected frogs in our Science class.

For some reason, a foreign student who couldn’t say the name of the city “Corpus Christi” and pronounced it “Copus Cwispy” was hilarious beyond compare to us. We laughed the entire hour and a half that day just from those words alone, our faces becoming as red as tomatoes while the foreign student thought he was being funny, not knowing we were laughing at him, not with him.

Jack would play an important part later on, in my high school years, but for now he just remained a good friend.

My parents also decided to enroll me into Sunday School on the weekends, along with a Qur’anic class that met Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays after school for an hour and a half.

It was here I learned all my Arabic letters, and slowly started to memorize small chapters of the Qur’an. It was also where I learned how to pray correctly and recite Qur’an properly. This place would almost become my second home.

Sunday School was another big change. Having tested out the other Sunday Schools around the local area, my parents came to the conclusion that we had to go to a Sunday School about half an hour ways away. My parents trusted this Sunday School because many of their family friends kids went there as well.

This was where I met the group of people who would shape my life into what it is today, though it took many, many years for me to fully grow.

My first day at this Sunday School was interesting to say the least. They had it set up like a regular school, with four different classes we had to go to throughout the day.

My first class was with a young guy who also taught us some arabic. Though it was boring, I got to mingle with many of the other kids in the class.

The second class was one of the most memorable, one that I will never forget. They say you never forget first impressions, and this was certainly one of those times.

Sitting in the classroom expecting some guy who had no idea what he was doing, we were all shocked when our teacher walked in. Sporting a pair of yellow tinted glasses you only see snowboarders wear, a leather jacket, and a beard about 2 inches long, this guy surpassed all of my expectations.

I even remember that the topic was about looking at the world through the “Islamic Sunglasses,” which is why he was wearing those sunglasses in the first place.

Though I was pretty young at the time, that one class stuck in my head the rest of the day, and I ended up going home and telling my parents about it. I could tell they were glad I was enjoying myself at the new Sunday School.

Praying five times a day was still nowhere near embedded into my head at this point. At the most I probably thought there were only about three times we prayed, and I couldn’t really distinguish between any of them except the one in the evening (Maghrib).

I knew when I went to Sunday School I would have to pray at noon (Dhuhr), but that was it. Just a one time, one day a week ritual.

Of course, throughout the time I spent in both Sunday School and the Qur’an classes I learned all the proper movements in praying, as well as what to say in my prayers. But one thing for sure was the fact that I had no idea why I was doing it.

No one had ever actually explained the concept of praying to me. It was just taken for granted that I would somehow know what it meant to pray. Without this fundamental knowledge, it was more like I was doing yoga than praying.

After a while it began to seem redundant. Since I had no idea what the purpose of praying was, I didn’t really want to do it anymore.

Wudu (Abulution) was another entirely different concept I couldn’t grasp. I made wudu maybe once or twice in my entire life up until that point, and I had never done wudu ever again after that. I didn’t even know how to do it and I was already thirteen years old.

My parents would ask me if I had prayed at home, and I would automatically just answer yes. They would trust me on my word and leave me to whatever I was doing, never doubting my promises. For countless days, months, even to a couple of years, I would pray without doing wudu.

It was the easiest thing to get away with as well, because no one was actually going to check if you had wudu in the first place. How would they? I don’t think anyone would actually come up to you and swipe your face to see if it was wet. Plus even if someone did do that I could just say I had wudu from before and it wouldn’t be a problem.

This logic buried itself in the deep crevices of my mind for years.

Sunday School gradually became more of a fun place to go and meet friends rather than a place to learn. The only reason I would actually want to go to Sunday School was for the reason of seeing my friends and playing basketball or football with them. You could have probably asked any other kid the same question and he would give you the same answer.

Sadly, that is probably the same case today.

The friends I had at Sunday School were of a completely different breed from any people I had ever met before. They had different interests, some of which were similar to my own, but still different.

For example, they loved video games. Any kind of game, whether it was on a console, on a computer, or even just an arcade game, they loved it. These were true gamers, and I had never been in presence of these kinds of people before.

They talked about weird games I had never even heard of, used terminology that was alien to the human language. I felt like I was on another planet when I would listen to them sometimes.

It wasn’t until one of them invited me over to his house that I began to fall in love with these games as well.

I wasn’t much of a gamer earlier in life, I was raised to go play outside with the kids in the my neighborhood and play sports, not sit in front of a screen and play virtual games. But it was then that I discovered how addicting and fun these games actually were.

After the first few hours of playing, even though I sucked incredibly, I was hooked. I wanted to go back to my friends’ houses and play every Sunday. Sometimes they even brought their console games to Sunday School and we played on one of the TV’s the school had in storage.

I began to spend more and more of my time in front of computers rather than outside. My parents saw this change and immediately found it repulsive. They wanted me to go out and be active. Little did they know how active I was with a keyboard and a mouse.

And thus, it was in this moment of time where my interests changed, simply because of friends who I could relate to much better than in school. At school I had friends like Jack, but I didn’t feel any relationship with them other than being a student just like me.

At Sunday School it was different. There was this mental identity, something that made me realize I was a part of these people, that I belonged with them. I could trust them a lot more than others, and they were the nicest people I had ever met. To add to that, they also prayed next to me, learned with me, and read Qur’an with me.

I knew who my best friends were.

But it was a shame they lived so far from me. The only way I would ever be able to see them would be at Sunday School. The other alternative would be family parties, but that rarely ever happened anyways. I was stuck.

And then it happened. The biggest incident known to hit the nation to this day. An incident which would distinguish and separate people by religion and race. A day where a turning point was made in my life. An external influence forcing me to bow down to propaganda and become like every other pawn in the game.

September 11th, 2001.

Chapter 2 – Emotions

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Carl W. Buechner

Day in and day out, we are dominated by our emotions. Sometimes we feel joy, other times anguish. Happiness at some points in our life, and despair in others. Emotions are those indescribable beings which are born from our souls.

We are taught love and compassion from our mothers. Sadness comes from the acknowledgment of things we cannot have. Anger can be seen as a reaction to something being hurt deep within us.

What does it mean to feel? To draw breath and understand emotion in its true essence?

Where does that pain come from? The pain in our stomachs when we feel as though our entire world has been destroyed. The pain in our chests when we become heart broken?

Love, misery, animosity, livelihood. All of these aspects of our soul take place a number of times throughout existence. It is a blessing to even have these emotions. Where would the world be without it?

The drive would be gone. Willingness to accomplish feats, overcome adversities, strive for success. All would be meaningless without the passion, the desire to fulfill what an individual felt as necessary.

Human potential would never be able to reach where it has today, all because of emotion. A simple component of the soul which is neither given attention nor relevance. Neither thanked for nor appreciated.

Emotions have become victims of abuse, time and time again. Greed plays with the minds of mankind, permitting them to chase whatever follies they may dream of achieving. Rage can intensify to points of no end, resulting in utter chaos. Hate brings out some of the darkest atmosphere one could never even imagine, and the outcomes have produced mass murder repeatedly within the confines of history.

Without discipline or self-control, man becomes lost within the feverish alternate reality. Constructs of the soul attempting to feed itself more and more darkness. However, no matter how dark a substance may become, cleansing is always possible.

Light will inevitably prevail over darkness. Even in the very depths of shadow, hope will always remain. The only deciding factor between which will devour the other, is control.

Now that you know some background information, it will be easier to understand the many things that happened over the course of my life, simply because of the environment in which I was brought up in.

The real journey begins in 6th grade.

By the time I had made the jump from Elementary School to Intermediate, I was starting to get the hang of American culture. If anyone named a T.V. show, I knew about it. Famous popstars became common knowledge, and everyone’s favorite movie easily became my own.

I only attended Intermediate School for one year. The school district I was enrolled in had decided to build a new school which just happened to open the year I graduated from 5th grade. It was also the very first year I began to ride in a school bus.

Ever since my early years, I had despised the school bus. My parents would drop me off to school and pick me up every single day for 5 long years when I was in Elementary School. It was something I hated with all my heart. Why did I have to ride a bus to get to school? It felt like I had stooped down to a different class of people, as if I had become like the norm of school kids.

The first day, my mother came with me to the bus stop. Most of the kids from my block were there, waiting just like I was, except none of them had come with their parents. I instantly felt embarrassed, like the weak kid. I never understood why my mother would go to such lengths just for me to get on the bus, and yet she did it every day until I actually told her I was fine, only then did she stop.

She still looked out the window from the second floor of our house though. I would always see her looking out towards the crossroads between streets, waiting until the bus actually left her sight to move away from the window. The idea of over-protective parents started to enter my mind here as well.

In school, things were different as always. I met some of my closest friends here, a few of which I would know for years to come, even until present day. As usual, the learning process continued to unfold, adding new curse words to my vocabulary here and there, and learning more and more about girls, which ended up turning fatal at the end of the school year.

My closest friends became my lifeblood. The very reason I actually went to school. Education was easy enough, and I would completely ace everything teachers sent my way. The only value in going to school was to spend quality time with my friends. As a result, this started to take a toll on my family life.

The communication level I had with my parents began to gradually decrease as time went by. Discussions about school simply didn’t exist anymore, and since I did well in my classes, my parents didn’t have a problem with anything. They let me do whatever I wished as long as I kept my grades up.

As for my friends, the bonds just kept tightening. We talked about anything and everything, guys and girls alike. Many of the elective classes they had in school just helped us become even closer. School became the best part of our lives because it was where all the fun happened. At home, there would only be work and sleep. At least at school there were people who had interest in the same things as you, and were the same age so they could relate to you. It was hard not to be friends with your classmates.

All the meanwhile, my parents continued to keep an over-protective hold on me. I couldn’t understand some of their reasons for not allowing me to do things. For example, I wasn’t allowed to leave my street when playing outside with friends. This rule was never changed for years. Another rule was that I was never to go into anyone’s house without permission, even my closest friends who were neighbors.

I couldn’t handle rules. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to do things, but what’s weirder is that I couldn’t understand why my parents were like this. I tried many times to ask permission for a number of things, each being turned down one by one, forcing me to peaks of anger I’d never experienced in my life.

Having to abide by a rulebook wasn’t going to cut it for me. My friends couldn’t understand it either, their parents let them do whatever they wanted, they couldn’t see it the way my parents did, and since I was more identifiable with my friends, I saw it their way as well.

I remember distinctly the first time I ever disobeyed my parents rules. My friend had asked me if I wanted to come over to his house and play some games. At first, I knew the answer was most likely going to be a no, but then something happened. I took initiative. I completely ignored the rules, and agreed with my friend, as if nothing was wrong.

A few hours later I came home to a scolding I had never received in my entire life up until that point. My parents obviously knew, especially my mother, who would look out the window every few minutes just to see where I was outside. So when I disappeared for that long, she freaked. I remember her telling me she had walked out in the middle of the street and looked for me, calling my name.

I was devastated, but also enraged. Why couldn’t I have this one moment of freedom? Why couldn’t I just bend the rules this once? What was the danger? Of course, my parents felt I was too young to even understand at that age. And though I was scolded, I continued to break the rules knowingly, because I wouldn’t let myself come to accept the limitations. I wanted to be like everyone else, I wanted to have that freedom. I wanted my parents to be like everyone else.

And thus the parent-child relationship grew even wider.

Around the end of the year, many of my friends started to have their own girlfriends. The idea of having a girlfriend to me was never very appealing, especially since it all still seemed kind of gross. But all of that changed when I met Leila.

It wasn’t so much as meeting her as just seeing her. No doubt she was one of the prettiest girls in school. She was of hispanic ethnicity, a little shorter than me, with big black eyes and shoulder-length curly hair. I literally stared when I first saw her in school, and I instantly fell into infatuation.

I felt so awkward around her it was mind numbing. I had never even spoken to her nor looked her straight in the eye. I only knew two things at that point. First off, I would never have a chance with one of the most sought after girls in the school, and two, I wasn’t able to control this feeling of obsession inside of me.

I had no idea where it came from or how it struck, but it was like a jolt of lightning to my heart, pounding it away like a thief running from the cops. I became mesmerized by the thought of her. For days she became the only thing worth thinking about, infiltrating my mind in every possible way, shape, and form.

My thoughts began to control me, pouring out my desire into conversations with my friends about her, all the while keeping them in the dark as to who it was. The feeling came to a point where it was unbearable, and that’s when it slipped. Word got out that I liked Leila.

At first I felt crushed at the fact that she may find out, but also a small ray of hope glimmered inside me. What if she liked me in return? What would happen? I had never been in a relationship before, what would I have to do? Would I have to kiss her? Would I have to call her and talk to her all the time? Am I supposed to hold her hand?

An alternate world became my playing field, and I played hard, thinking about it all the time. Finally, I came to know that she knew about it. I was so eager to find out what had happened and what her reaction had been. I couldn’t bear the wait of an answer. And it was here my first heart was forever broken.

It was said that she made a face of disgust when finding out, and literally said “The sight of him makes me throw up.” Apparently, it was made clear that I would never have a chance with her for all eternity. Recalling that memory now makes me laugh out of stupidity, but 8 years ago it was a different story. Hearing this was like a shock wave traveling through my body, piercing flesh and bone, right into the very depths of my soul where it ripped my spirit in two. In those few moments, I had never felt so much pain and depression within the span of my entire life. It was worse than physical affliction, this was something which tainted the soul.

Ironically, I felt like throwing up. My stomach had so many knots I felt it would just blow up from the pressure. I was empty. Void of feeling and all that encompassed my life force. Hope drowned away in the never ending ocean of despair. However despite all of this, I laughed and shrugged it off externally, leaving me alone to carry my emotions for days on end.

I knew if my parents found out about this there would be hell to pay for, so I never said a word. I remained completely detached from school when I came home, my two face personality starting to take form into it’s early stages. I remained an entire mystery to my parents in the sense of my life at school. They still had the idea that I went to school, did my work, got good grades, and came back home. According to their view of my life, everything was going as planned.

In fact, it was entirely contradictory to their outlook. The fact that I never told them anything only helped my fake life become even more aloof. How can you blame them though? Who would ever expect a 6th grader, an 11 year old child, to ever be going through these things at this point in his life? It would seem like non-sense if anything. That’s probably what my parents were thinking, which is why they enrolled me into a weekday Islamic school and an Islamic school on Sunday the following year to prepare me for my retaliation against American culture. Little did they know that it had already spread through me like the plague, and was only going to get worse over time.

Chapter 1 – Existence

“Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

-Helen Keller

What does it mean to exist? To be alive? To breathe?

How strange is it that we are all just, here. In the midst of current world strife, agony, destruction, and pain. Our lives seem to mean so much, when in fact it all seems so meaningless.

We wake up every day going through the same routine, over and over again. We take showers, brush our teeth, do our hair, eat cereal, grab that coffee, and head out the door to our jobs, our schools, and our lives.

We argue with one another, fight with one another, and cry with one another on a small blue planet that is made perfectly habitable for our survival.

We’re in the middle of nowhere. In a desolate plane of matter, we are the only ones within hundreds of thousands of miles within this place we call the universe.

The sad part is, we already know this. The thought has crossed our minds once or twice during our lives, yet we continue to argue with one another, fight with one another, and cry with one another.

The problem is in our heads. We chase desire rather than purpose. We let our feelings overtake us and numb our thought process. We battle each other for recognition, fame, and power. We strive for the very evil we condemn.

And at the end of it all, at the end of all things, we are left only with ourselves, alone. We are dropped six feet in the ground, only leaving behind the memory of our existence in minds of the people and our contributions to the world.

In this life, we start out as a consciousness, and end as a memory. Plain and simple.

So then, why exist? Why breathe? Why struggle? Why continue to wither away day by day? Why fight? Why learn? Why understand? Why comprehend? Why become angry? Why become sad? Why hate? Why love?

Why?

Wake up. Death is staring you in the face, yet you’ve become too blind to see it.

Do you really believe you were created without reason? Without purpose? Is all the struggle for nothing? If death is guaranteed for us all, is there even a meaning to life?

Open your eyes.

I don’t remember anything from my first years in this world. Apparently my parents didn’t even have a video camera, so I don’t have any videos I could have watched of myself as a baby.

Obviously no one remembers the details of how they were born or what happened when they were a few months old. The only reason we know those things is either because we’ve seen it via pictures or some type of visual media, or we’ve been told how we used to be.

For example, my parents told me that when I was born, the doctors thought I was a girl because of my eyelashes. Funny and scary at the same time. I’m glad they didn’t label me as a female on my birth certificate, or I would have had some serious issues.

I was born Raheel Nusratullah. The middle name, Syed, was never legally on my birth certificate, but it does run through my family. My very blood can be traced back through the depths of time as being directly related to the Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him), a great honor. I even have a family tree in my house naming all the ancestors before me, all the way back through the bloodline.

The name Raheel Nusratullah can be translated into two different ways. “Raheel” literally means “journey.” Some other interpretations I’ve heard are “to depart,” or “one who shows the way.” It can also be translated as “fearless” or “brave.” Nusratullah has two parts combined into one word. “Nusrat” goes back to the root of “Nasr” which means help, and “Ullah” literally means “of Allah” or “of God.” So in this sense, Nusratullah means “the help of God.”

While my parents chose my first name with the latter interpretation of “one who shows the way,” sometimes I like to joke around and use the alternate meaning. In that case, my name would literally mean “to depart from the help of God,” which wouldn’t be a very wise name, now would it?

I was born on June 27, 1989 at 10:15 PM in Houston, Texas. I was born of Pakistani origin, where both of my parents originated from. Three of my grandparents were from Pakistan and India, while my grandmother on my father’s side was Iranian. My mother’s grandparents were one of the first doctors to have a clinic in Karachi, Pakistan. They traveled around the world getting education from many different institutions. It is for this reason my mother was actually born in Tabuk in Saudi Arabia, where my grandparents stayed for a few years before moving back to Pakistan.

My father’s parents owned some kind of farm or ranch in Pakistan, where he lived out most of his young life. It surprised me a bit when I first learned that there were actually farms in Pakistan. To this day, I have never visited the country my parents were from, so my understanding of the culture was not very strong. My grandparents had a total of 7 children. 4 of which were girls, and 3 of which were boys, whom included my father. All 7 siblings are all spread out in the United States now, each with their own families, which is why I have an extreme amount of cousins.

My parents tell me I was a trouble making kid, and I would always want to get myself into some form of danger. I would never listen to my parents, throw around random objects, refuse to do things, and just be a little jerk. Little did I know that would get me into some bad positions later in life. As I passed through my first years into pre-teen life, I started to shape into the person I would eventually become.

Public school was where everything began.

I remember in 1st grade I had learned about sticking up the middle finger from somewhere. Of course I was a child at the time so I had no idea what it meant or what it represented. It was recess and a small girl who I sat in front of in my class was playing on one of those wooden contraptions they have on the playground. For one reason or another, I decided it’d be a great idea to try out the finger at that specific point in time, so I gave her a double helping of both my middle fingers, straight up at her, jumping up and down, laughing hysterically as I did it.

I laugh even now just thinking about it and how hilarious it must have looked to a random passerby, but my victim thought otherwise. Her eyes widened and she eventually ran like a rabbit on crack to our teacher, who called me over and asked me if I knew what sticking up the middle finger meant. I said I had no idea, and she sent me to time out for the entire recess.

As a kid I was pissed. Who wouldn’t be? It was then I learned that the middle finger must have meant something bad. Why would I get time out for a finger? I never understood it, but it felt strange. It actually felt kind of fun. I sat in timeout staring at my hands and sticking my middle finger out over and over for the next 20 minutes, trying to understand the concept.

I had the entire curse word dictionary memorized by the end of the 3rd grade, and it became a very frequent alternative. Classmates would always discuss the different kinds of curse words and what they meant, trying to decipher their meanings. The opposite sex started to become an issue as well. “Cooties” became a phenomenon throughout the 3rd and 4th graders. I still felt that girls were stupid and that it was retarded even having the thought of liking them.

Sex was also attempted to be deciphered in 4th grade. Many kids, specifically males (as usual) spent entire class days trying to figure out what it was, and I was just an innocent little boy being influenced by it all. Some of their theories went from just kissing, which was seen as completely disgusting in my eyes, to just hugging, which was even more putrid. I never contemplated much on girls as the other boys did, it seemed to me like they watched too many bad shows or something and that’s all they could think about. Even though we all hated girls, it was obvious most of us were genuinely curious during that age. It is human instinct after all.

In 5th grade, I even accused one of my classmates for raping his girlfriend. I had no idea what the word rape meant, I only knew it was bad, so I might as well use it. I learned it the exact same day a few hours before when random class talk would go around. At first I thought the word was pronounced “rake,” so I passed that around until someone actually told me I was saying it wrong. Of course, once again this was all within the circle of boys in the class. If any of the girls found out about it, it would be obvious they would hate the living guts of the person who mentioned it.

And so me, being the smart two-faced kid I was, decided to ask the accused girl’s best friend about it. Just as before, this girl’s eyes widened as well and of course, she went to the teacher. My teacher called me over privately and asked me if I knew what it meant. I cunningly denied any sort of knowledge. She explained to me not to ever use it again, and that was the end of that.

So the cycle continued, and I became a master in the art of using bad words to their extremes without care. My parents would never find out, I would be sure of that much. At home everything was a completely different world. I would do my schoolwork, watch T.V. sparingly, and sleep on time. Disney movies were my supreme entertainment at that time period. Hits like “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” were my favorites. I would watch them continuously every day, rewinding them over and over just to watch them again. I had memorized the lines of almost every popular Disney movie out at the time. It was one of the biggest obsessions during my youth. That, and Power Rangers.

Another obsession was music. My parents were fans of a Pakistani band at the time named “Vital Signs.” In case some people don’t know, it is how the singer (and now very religious) Junaid Jamshed became famous. We owned almost all of their CD’s and would constantly play their songs throughout the house. Even to this day, I can probably sing the melodies of every one of their songs. I used to sing and dance around the house to the CD’s almost every day. Even my cousins still remember which songs were my favorite, and how I would pretend I was a singer on stage while belting my annoying voice as loud as possible, doing the most ridiculous dance moves ever invented.

I had begun to pray only Maghrib (the evening prayer) out of the 5 daily prayers with my father. I had no idea what I was doing, but I sure had fun falling to the floor on my face whenever I had to go into prostration. My parents felt that as a kid, if I continued with one prayer, the rest of the four would follow in time. Prayer was seldom on my mind, it was never looked upon by me as something I should have been doing.

The word “Allah” was almost everywhere in my home in some form of calligraphy, along with different words in Arabic on carpets and rugs. There were paintings my mother had done when she was in college, and even different pictures of hieroglyphics and Egyptian art around the house. Though these things were all around me, I still never quite understood them, they just became background objects, never really getting any of my attention.

My parents and teachers thought of me as a good kid. I would never get bad behavior marks, never have any problems with grades, and never posed a threat to the goodwill of my class. Little did they know, deep inside, I was different. A chain of events in slowly learning this new American culture had already begun, and it led me to wanting more and more of it. I had never had an identity before in my life. I didn’t know that I was born Muslim at all. I didn’t know what or who “Allah” was, I didn’t really understand why I prayed, and I didn’t know what Islam was.

All I cared about was going to school, doing my work, watching cartoons, Disney movies, and learning all of these new ideas and concepts, bad words being one of them. My parents had no idea what really happened in school, it was all a part of going to school in itself. The idea of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas became implemented into school. School’s priority was obviously to educate primarily, but the biggest thing that was taken out of it for me was the social experience, which is a huge part in a child’s early life.

Since I knew these things were bad, I never questioned my parents about them at all. When my parents asked me what happened at school, the usual answer became “nothing,” as I dragged myself into the living room to switch on the television.

The spark started to ignite after all the proper ingredients had been added. My friends at school who I could identify with, the cartoons on T.V. and the movies I would watch, all subconsciously melding my mind into what would become acceptable and what kind of person I should be.

It was fun being bad until you got caught. I learned that early on, and I knew if I wanted to say a bad word in school I’d have to watch my back, and even watch out for some of the kids who would betray me and turn me in. Even then, I knew how to get away with it by playing the nice boy externally. I’d learned the system like it was written on the back of my hand. I had already created a duel personality within myself at such a young age as well; a personality that would grow and blossom in my upcoming years.

Many of the things I had begun to learn would serve as the backdrop for my metamorphosis. A combination of these experiences and many more began to form me into the entity. The persona I would live out until the end of my high school life.

But it wasn’t until I discovered the feeling of love; that warmth inside, the passion, the romance, the energy that draws souls together, that I began to crumble.

Bismillah

In the Name of Allah I begin.