Adnan's Story Read online

  An officer from the Baltimore County Police arrived within the hour, began calling Hae’s friends, and, having taken details from the family, opened a missing person’s investigation. One of the people he called that night was Adnan Syed.

  * * *

  Back in the spring of 1998, prom season was quickly approaching. Adnan and Hae were friends, and neither had a date for the junior prom. Adnan was over six feet tall, dark, handsome, played football and ran track, and charmed the girls. Hae was no less popular and ambitious—tall, athletic, outgoing, attractive, warm, and friendly is how her classmates described her. So when a friend suggested that Adnan ask Hae to the prom, he went for it, and Hae said yes.

  For the next ten months Adnan and Hae were deeply, madly in love. Hae chronicled her relationship with Adnan in a diary, begun on April 1, 1998, when she bought a notebook during a French class field trip to a Monet exhibit.

  By the second entry, made the same day, she mentions her plan to go to the prom with Adnan and writes with a smiley face, “I think I just might love him.”

  By April 7th the diary reveals the kind of challenges this new relationship faced from the very beginning. When Hae’s grandmother asked who Hae was going to prom with, she was apparently not happy with the answer.

  4/7/98

  Someone please smack me! What the fuck am I doing?!?! I am pushing Adnan away! Damn my grandma + mother. Shit! I can’t get close, and he can’t get close to me. This is really fucked up! He is way too sweet + all! What is happening? I can’t believe things are about to blow up in my face ‘sigh’ my life’s a bitch

  The challenge wasn’t one-sided, though; on Adnan’s end, any and all romantic relationships (outside of marriage) were a hard and fast cultural no-no.

  I feel comfortable making the claim that all teenagers lie to their parents. All of them. They just lie about different things. When you’re the first-generation child of American Muslims (or South Asians, or Arabs, or Asians in general), you most definitely lie about dating.

  Unfortunately for Adnan, his mother was excellent at catching his lies—and persistent. She had a keen sense of her sons, and she knew this one had an eye for the girls. She would catch him on the phone talking to young women, note the mileage on his car to see if he had traveled farther than the school, and go through his belongings to find some evidence that he had girls in his life.

  Eventually she found out about Hae, but not yet. Adnan and Hae had already planned how they would evade parental detection by getting dressed at their friends’ homes and then meeting up at the prom.

  Adnan was crowned Prom Prince. But his Princess wasn’t Hae that night, it was Stephanie McPherson, a longtime friend of Adnan’s. Stephanie was an athlete and a beauty who had a playful, flirtatious relationship with her close friend Adnan, often sitting in his lap during class despite having a boyfriend. When Adnan and Stephanie were crowned, Hae initially felt jealous, which she notes in her diary, but then Adnan did something remarkable.

  As the K-Ci & JoJo song, “All My Life,” played for the Prince and Princess’s first dance, Adnan began dancing with Stephanie. Hae took a picture of them and went to have a seat next to a friend, feeling a bit bothered but trying to act natural. Just then, Adnan broke off the dance with Stephanie and came to take Hae to the dance floor.

  “10 seconds later guess who danced with me and not w/Stephanie? ADNAN!! Now how can I not fall in love with this guy!” writes Hae. That act of devotion from Adnan pushed them from dating to boyfriend-girlfriend, and later that night at the Baltimore Harbor, outside of a Cheesecake Factory, they had their first kiss. But Hae knew it wouldn’t be an easy path. In the same entry she writes that “I keep on falling deeper and deeper into him. He’s the cutest, sweetest, and coolest guy, and he loves me!!! The bad thing is we have to keep things secret … sigh. But it’s ok because love conquers all!”

  Hae wasn’t the only one falling head over heels in love. This was Adnan’s first serious romantic relationship, and he was truly smitten.

  Everyone knew about Adnan’s deep attachment to Hae; he made no attempts to hide it, giving Hae flowers, gifts, cards, frequently writing poems and letters. They were publicly romantic, holding hands, cuddling, kissing at school, and at the same time supportive of each other’s pursuits and success. If there was a power couple at Woodlawn, it was Adnan and Hae.

  Unfortunately, Hae predicted wrong—love did not conquer all, and Adnan and Hae continued to deal with family members who were deeply unhappy about their relationship. In May 1998 Hae notes in her diary that she “hates” her grandparents but determines they won’t stop her from being with Adnan. Hae was strong-willed and fiercely independent and she refused to give up on the relationship, all the while acknowledging that she had no idea where it would go because of the people “against” them—primarily Adnan’s mother. Adnan was no more willing to give up their love.

  Undated poem written by Adnan for Hae

  Adnan would secretly visit Hae at her home in the middle of the night so her family wouldn’t know. Sneaking out of his house after his parents fell asleep, Adnan would meet Hae at her basement window and talk through it, sometimes for hours, exchanging whispers so no one would hear them. Sometimes they would meet in her grandfather’s car, again hiding from her family. But secrecy isn’t easy to maintain. Hae wrote in her diary about a time that Adnan called her home and the phone rang. “I’m going to be in MAD trouble.” Later in the relationship Hae expresses regrets for having given Adnan five months of her life, not because she didn’t love him, but because she could not be honest with her family about their relationship: “Because I have lost myself … in love, in embrace, and in lies. All the lies I told my mother, my family … its going to haunt me tonight … I love my mother, always have + always will. But … why have I been deceiving her for months?”

  Undated letter from Adnan to Hae, remainder of letter missing from files

  When Hae’s grandparents replace the home’s cordless phone with a corded one to stop her “excessive use” of it, she’s struck by their decision and realizes the lengths they are having to go to because she’s a “troublesome g-child.”

  The stress in their relationship wasn’t limited to family opposition, however. Hae began to feel deep doubt and even guilt about their relationship, pointing to Adnan’s religion and culture repeatedly as the real issue standing between them. She’s confronted by their English teacher who tells her Adnan used to be so religious the previous year, but now he’s changed because of her.

  For a couple of pages Hae writes about her discomfort at being an obstacle between Adnan and his faith.

  And for good reason. Hae was Adnan’s first sexual relationship. They became intimate not long after they began dating. They would have sex in the car in Patapsco State Park. Once school started they found a closer spot to hook up, the rear parking lot of a Best Buy store. At times they would stop there before Hae had to take off to pick up her cousin from elementary school.

  The potential immorality of these things weighed on Hae. Calling for a week-long break to assess the relationship, Hae writes, “It irks me to know I’m against his religion. He called me a devil a few times. I know he was only joking, it’s somewhat true … I hate that. It’s like making him choose between me and his religion.”

  In July Adnan accompanied his father to a Muslim conference in Texas. He called Hae a number of times and Hae cried from missing him. Over the phone he explained how important his faith was, that it meant life to him, and still, he said, he would never leave her. This reassured her for a bit, until weeks later when he said that one day he would have to choose between her and his religion.

  From that point it seems Hae started to mentally prepare herself for the day their relationship would end.

  “And when it comes down to choosing … I’m going to let him go his way. If you have to deny yourself a part of you for love … then that’s not good. I really couldn’t care less since my religion means shit to me. Bu
t to him, his religion guides his life.”

  The internal back-and-forth within Hae persists throughout their relationship—she is almost daily swinging between undying love and doubt in her diary. But whatever her inner struggles were, and however these issues impacted their bond, externally they didn’t come off as any more or less tumultuous and passionate than other teenagers in love. Across the board, classmates and friends described them as deeply affectionate, happy, and loving.

  When their senior year began in September, Hae was positively ecstatic. Having just gotten her driver’s license, about to get her own car and a job, and thrilled in her relationship she says, “Have you ever been so happy that a pin would burst you open??? I have. Oh my goodness … how can I love him more? But the most amazing thing is that I keep on loving him more and more w/each passing moment.”

  That same week she heartbreakingly wrote, “Nothing can go wrong, and nothing ever will.”

  The euphoria was short lived, as Adnan got busier and had less time for Hae. That fall he began playing football and working as an ambulance technician, hoping to one day have a career in medicine. Hae began working at LensCrafters, further cutting into their time together. And then came the now infamous homecoming dance.

  For months Aunty Shamim had been trying to convince her husband that Adnan was in a serious relationship with a girl at school. Uncle either didn’t believe it or, quite frankly, didn’t care. Regardless, he did his best to deflect Aunty’s anxiety by telling her it wasn’t true, that she was worked up over nothing. But word of the homecoming dance got around through the “Aunty grapevine”: Muslim moms in the area warned other moms about the dance.

  Adnan, of course, snuck off anyway. Having rented a tuxedo, he changed at a friend’s house before picking up Hae. Back home, a showdown was happening between his parents.

  Tanveer, Adnan’s brother, remembers coming home and hearing his mother argue with his father. All these months he had dismissed her, but tonight she would prove to him that it wasn’t all in her head. Adnan was with a girl—and at a dance no less. Enough was enough, and now her husband had to take this seriously.

  They bundled eight-year-old Yusuf into the car and headed to the dance. Yusuf remembers staying in the parking lot, trying to hide behind the car in embarrassment as his parents went in.

  Aunty and Uncle asked some students at the entrance to go find their son and tell him his parents wanted to speak to him. Adnan showed up after a few minutes. Aunty Shamim took him by the hand and led him to the car. Hae didn’t come out with Adnan, and according to Aunty, she never saw or spoke to her.

  Not to be outdone by his mother, though, as soon as they returned home Adnan grabbed a bike and took off, in his tuxedo. He biked the mile and a half to school, pedaling as fast as he could because he knew that Hae was there alone, her night ruined.

  Hae doesn’t write about this night in her diary, though many of her friends later attested that she was deeply insulted and upset.

  This event may have been a last straw of sorts for Hae, a clear indication that a relationship with Adnan meant pitting herself against his family and faith, a fight she did not want. Adnan joked about the incident with Saad and other mosque friends, laughing at his parents. Other Muslim kids got it, how crazy parents can be. Under the laughter, though, was embarrassment and regret that the girl he loved had been subjected to all this in front of her friends and teachers, no less. According to a mutual friend and classmate, Krista Meyers, Adnan was mortified about the entire ordeal.

  In November Hae decides enough is enough and calls the relationship off. It wasn’t a painless breakup—a note written at that time from Hae to Adnan suggests he didn’t take it well, that instead of accepting her decision gracefully, he was acting like a child, ignoring and being cold to her.

  She writes, “You know, people break up ALL THE TIME. Your life is NOT going to end. You’ll move on and I’ll move on.”

  Adnan wasn’t angry, but he was hurt, deeply hurt, that Hae decided to end things because of what happened at the homecoming dance. That wasn’t his fault, and he did his best to make it up to her. He came back to the dance, spent the rest of the night with her, apologizing for his parents. He loved Hae. He couldn’t just instantly revert to being friends the way she wanted. He couldn’t believe that she was upset that he was acting cold. She had made a unilateral decision, saying “I really couldn’t give a damn about whatever you wanna say” and he was stuck with that. Her note seems stern and final, but internally Hae was conflicted. She writes, “Who would have thought we would end like this? Who would have imagined the kind of pain that comes with a broken heart? I know I’m doing the right thing … Oh screw it, I still love you. I would give any and everything to be in your arms.”

  Adnan and Hae got back together again briefly after the breakup, giving it one last chance.

  12/3 (12am)

  […] School is pretty ok and all, and most importantly, I love Adnan. To me, it’s so much of a surprise. […] I feel like I can’t love him anymore than I already do. But everytime I see his smile, my heart melt like the day of the Prom, when I knew I was falling in love with him. When I close my eyes, I swear I see his smiling face and see him mouth those three words that sends my heart spining. This is a true + a genuine love filled with caring, warmth, + occational desires J But nothing can turn my heart away from him, cause he has my heart. […] I love you Adnan … and every moment we spend together, closer we are to that day when I’ll wake up in your arms to find myself complete and my life fulfilled. To us … alwayz.

  But a few days later, Hae’s diary shows her heart is wandering. By early December 1998, another young man has caught her eye: Don.

  * * *

  Don Clinedinst had baby-blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and a red Camaro. He was three years older than Hae and worked with her at LensCrafters. Hae and Adnan were still together, but her infatuation began the first time she laid eyes on Don in the break room.

  On December 6th she writes about not being able to get Don out of her mind. She loves Adnan, she insists, but she has a serious crush on Don. She compares the two in her diary, her tall, dark, handsome but immature boyfriend and the polar opposite mature, light-eyed white boy with the crooked smile. She’s torn and confused.

  She writes, “I would have to die twice before I find someone who loves me as much as he does. I love you, Adnan … so much … but why Don?”

  For days and days Hae goes back and forth, naming all the reasons she loves Adnan but longing for Don. She finally tells Adnan and then breaks off their relationship in mid-December. They stay friends, but it’s clear that her romantic focus is now completely on Don. Hae has made her decision.

  The breakup is hard on Adnan, who still loves Hae, the first love of his life. He writes, “I’ve known some of the happiest times with you Hae, and I’ve also known some of the saddest times, the hardest of which I’m going through right now. When this pain will end, I have no idea.”

  A friend and classmate, Ja’uan Gordon, later tells the police that Adnan was upset and teary—it was unexpected because he thought they were through the worst of it, though he knew they had been losing steam since the homecoming dance. At the same time Adnan also knew there wasn’t much of a future for them. He was more ready to move on than he realized—it was all too intense for a high school romance, and after all, they still cared about each other as friends, college was not far off in the distance, and with college came college girls.

  At the end of the month, Adnan and Don come face-to-face when Hae has a minor accident in the snow. Her car skids as she takes an exit ramp, hitting a curb and damaging the car. She calls Adnan, who drives to the mall to take a look. He’s inspecting the car when Don happens to leave the mall, heading to his own car, which is parked nearby. Adnan and Don spend a few minutes in small talk, sizing each other up.

  Hae comes out of the mall, having finished up work, and both Adnan and Don advise her not to drive the car, the damage making
it risky. Don then leaves and Hae gets a ride home with Adnan, which is not odd at all to anyone who knows them. They’re still close, and now tease each other about their respective love lives. Adnan joked to others about checking Don out and feeling better after having seen him. At Christmas Adnan gets Hae a frame that says “best friends” and she gets him a jacket. There is seemingly no animosity between the two; instead there seems to be a sense of relief that they no longer have to fight to stay in a difficult and dead-end relationship.

  For about a month now, Hae has been making her interest known to Don, who says she was the one pursuing him. On December 31, 1998, the relationship finally takes off. Having picked Adnan up from work and then dropped him off, Hae feels a sudden urge to swing by the mall. Don isn’t supposed to be working that day, but she’s happy and surprised to see his car in the lot and him walking toward it. They chat, flirt, he lets her drive his Camaro. But most importantly, they agree to go on their first date.

  That night is equally notable for Adnan, who meets a girl at a New Year’s Eve party. Nisha Tanna is a beautiful Indian-American high school senior from Silver Springs, Maryland, about thirty miles from Baltimore. They dance together, exchange numbers, and plan to meet up sometime soon.

  Hae spends New Year’s Eve at Aisha Pittman’s house, along with a group of friends and classmates. She falls asleep there and rushes to get to work the next day by 9:00 a.m. Don is already there when she arrives.

  After work, Hae and Don drive to Aberdeen, Maryland, over forty miles away, to dine at The Olive Tree, an Italian restaurant. Hae writes about her crab cake dinner and their fun conversation. After dinner they drive back to the mall where her car is parked and sit and talk, while she hopes he’ll kiss her. He doesn’t.

  Hae understands, writing that “he’s too much of a gentleman for that.”