Adnan's Story Read online

  Before we actually sold our house in Hagerstown and moved, my father had to start his new job in Baltimore. He rented a room down the street from the mosque in the summer of 1995. Saad was fourteen at the time and every so often he would go hang out with him.

  One day during a visit, Saad was shooting hoops in the parking lot of the ISB when a gangly, smiling boy came over and introduced himself.

  “Hi, I’m Adnan. Are you new around here?”

  Saad was wearing a basketball camp T-shirt, which caught thirteen-year-old Adnan’s interest, and they began shooting hoops. Saad explained that he lived in Hagerstown but would soon be moving to Baltimore.

  Not long after, when the family shifted to Ellicott City about ten miles from the ISB, Saad gave Adnan a call as promised.

  “We got together at the Security Mall and Adnan asked me, ‘Ok, how much money do you have?’ I told him I had $15. Adnan said, ‘I have $30 so that means we have $45 together.’” Saad knew right then that this guy had a big heart.

  They were both starting ninth grade that year, though Saad was a year older. A prolonged trip to Pakistan when he was in elementary school had put him back a year. But they attended different schools, and they did most of their hanging out on the weekends at the mosque. They quickly became best friends; Yusuf once remarked that Saad was more of a brother to Adnan than he or Tanveer ever were. Saad’s presence in Adnan’s life made a few of Adnan’s other friends feel left out, though—Yaser Ali and Tayyab Hussein in particular. Yaser, a family friend since childhood, had considered himself Adnan’s best friend; years later he would testify that he was edged out when Saad showed up.

  Adnan and Saad weren’t jocks, but sports were their primary concern. Girls had their place in conversation, but the first couple of years of their friendship neither of them dated.

  “We were late-bloomers in the girls’ department,” Saad recalls.

  It wasn’t until their junior year, when they both had driver’s licenses and access to cars, that the world of dating opened up. Because Saad was a year older he got his third-hand manual BMW before Adnan had a car. It wasn’t unusual for Saad to park at the church across the road from Adnan’s house at night, waiting for him to sneak out after his parents went to sleep so they could hit up a party.

  Sleeping parents have always provided the perfect opportunity for kids to get away with their indiscretions. One of the more extreme stories I’ve heard is about a family of Pakistani-American brothers I know, not even Muslims mind you, who more than once served their loving parents after-dinner tea with a mild sleeping aid mixed in. The parents got the soundest sleep of their lives, waking up refreshed and clueless, while the brothers painted the town red. It was a win-win as far as those guys were concerned.

  Saad and Adnan, along with other friends from the mosque, would usually stake out Indian or Pakistani parties to check out the girls. “Garba” dance parties, an incredibly festive and colorful Gujarati Hindu tradition during the season of Navratri (literally “Nine Nights”), attracted a lot of Muslim desi boys, thanks partly to the girls’ traditional outfits—gorgeously decorated skirts that flared with every turn and beautiful midriff-baring, fitted blouses. During these nine nights, different avatars of the Hindu goddess Durga are worshipped by dancing in flying, concentric, increasingly fast circles around her figure, along with other rituals. This is technically about as “haram” as you can get for strictly monotheistic Muslims, just-say-no-to-idol-worship-101, but as a cultural phenomenon it is no less acceptable than carving up a tandoori-flavored Thanksgiving turkey. This is the cultural hodgepodge that kids, particularly from the South Asian subcontinent, where Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists have been living together for centuries, are accustomed to. Being raised in the West adds one more dimension to an already complicated but very much culturally egalitarian identity.

  Thanks to these parties and events where he met girls from around the state, Saad secretly ended up going to numerous school homecomings, but never to Woodlawn High, and Adnan never went to Saad’s school either. Most of their mutual friends came from the mosque, and many of Adnan’s friends annoyed the hell out of Saad.

  “His problem was he was friends with EVERYBODY. I mean with guys I thought were losers, idiots, dead weights. Even guys I thought were just bad influences, like Tayyab. They’d do dumb stuff like egg houses together. Adnan was better than that, and I told him that. There were times we’d hang out all day with some of his other friends and I wouldn’t even talk to any of them. I’d ask him why the heck was he giving these guys the time of day?! I guess I was kind of the snob or jerk about it. But Adnan gave everyone attention, he just couldn’t say no to people. He was too nice, that was his problem.”

  It was partly Adnan’s failure to be more selective about people that landed him where he is today. If he had followed Saad’s advice, Jay Wilds, the young man who would have such an impact on Adnan’s fate, could never have gotten close enough to hurt him. But then, it was his own bad habits that opened the door to Jay.

  Adnan had taken up occasional pot smoking, and Jay supplied him with the weed. He had an occasional drink too. Saad hadn’t crossed that threshold yet in high school. Those things were easy to stay away from.

  Girls? Not so easy.

  * * *

  “She was Adnan’s girlfriend? Adnan?? Had a girlfriend? Hae was his GIRLFRIEND??!” I yelled in disbelief.

  Saad scowled. Adnan’s dating life was irrelevant.

  It wasn’t that the murder charge didn’t strike me as monumental, it did—it shook me to my core. But it also seemed ludicrous. The cops had clearly made a mistake, and that mistake would soon be remedied.

  But Adnan’s reputation, now that rumors had been spreading at ISB about his recreational activities? I wasn’t so sure it could be rehabilitated.

  In some way, almost every child raised right in front of the community’s eyes, every kid who is seen consistently at the mosque, every young boy or girl who maintains ties to their roots and religion, is a golden child. It wasn’t just Adnan. It was all of us, all the boys and girls who got good grades, showed up dutifully for Sunday school, dressed and behaved properly in front of the grownups—we were all golden. Hiding what we did privately wasn’t considered hypocrisy. It was considered respectful.

  And though much is made of being raised in the United States, in a country and culture where the norm is often anathema to Pakistani or Muslim traditions, the truth is that every generation rebels against their elders, even those raised “back home.”

  One of the many lessons on decorum and parental-child relationships my father has repeated throughout our lives is this: “I never spoke back to my father. I never objected to what he said to me. I always agreed no matter what. If he forbade me from doing something, I said ‘ok.’ But then I did what I wanted to. I just respected him enough not to flaunt it, and to hide it. That’s how you respect your elders.”

  This is the complicated dance of fear, respect, and love that many of us grew up with, a dance that could only be avoided by simply not disobeying your folks.

  Adnan and Saad both danced and mostly got away with it—until Adnan was arrested. Then Adnan’s indiscretions became a lesson between parents and kids.

  “See? This is what happens when you disobey us. This is what happens when you date. This is what happens when you stop acting like a Muslim.”

  The aunties disguised their breathless gossip as concern and sadness.

  “Subhan Allah, so terrible, so terrible for the family that he was doing all these things, and now the entire world knows. I can’t imagine what Shamim must be going through. Should we check on her? Should we ask her if all of this is really true?”

  And this was just about the dating. The pot, the alcohol, the sex, all that would come out later during the trial. It was a small mercy that these other things remained under wraps until then, giving the community enough headspace to rally together and organize for Adnan’s defense.
/>   Bilal Ahmed took the lead in organizing community support. A self-styled youth leader, Bilal was of Pakistani descent, had been raised in Saudi Arabia, and had moved to Maryland to study at the University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, or UMBC. He was a half dozen years or so older than the kids he “mentored” at the local mosque, and as for most of the kids in the community, well, he annoyed the fuck out of us.

  Bilal did himself no favors by refusing to look the other way. He strutted around campus with I’M TOO SEXY buttons on his backpack, keeping an eye on kids in the community and making sure their secrets were not kept.

  One of the best-known stories of that era, a veritable legend, was a stunt Bilal pulled at an Indian and Pakistani student dance party on campus. “Ajooba” was going to be the hottest desi event that year. A party like that didn’t just attract local South Asian college kids, local South Asian high school kids also planned to go—including a number of my little sister’s friends.

  “Everybody found out what happened, and everybody still remembers it,” Rana says, giggling. Rana was one of the “Baltimore girls,” a group of my sister’s friends who grew up around the mosque and attended UMBC together. She was still in high school when it all went down, and so were a number of her friends who attended the party that day.

  Bilal, having heard not just about the party but about the plans of some of the ISB kids to be there, showed up at the dance and planted himself outside the entrance door, a memo pad in hand. He took down the names of all the kids whose parents attended the ISB, even though many of them tried to dodge him once they realized what he was up to. One girl, the daughter of one of ISB’s “pillar” families, was already inside. There was no hiding and no escape. Seated at a table, this girl saw Bilal take his position. She did the only thing she could think of. She dove under the table.

  But it was too late for her, and dozens of others. At the very next Friday prayer service Bilal announced the names of kids who had been at the dance in front of a mortified congregation. Suffice it to say, it was a rough weekend for a lot of the kids. Rana remembers her father coming home from prayers and grilling her about the party. Like most of the elders, he was more irritated and angry at Bilal than he was at the kids who were exposed. A public shaming like that broke the rules of decorum and left the parents fuming.

  But Adnan, again to the chagrin of Saad and others, was friends with Bilal, and Bilal, oddly, didn’t “out” Adnan. In fact, he covered Adnan’s exploits, agreeing to tell his parents Adnan was with him when Adnan would instead be out clubbing or with a girl. When Adnan’s mother failed to get him to break up with Hae, she reached out to Bilal to help guide her son. Little did she know he was enabling Adnan. Years later, when Aunty Shamim learned that the young man she entrusted with guiding her son instead facilitated his hijinx, she was bitter and upset.

  But she had other reasons to find fault with Bilal. As the person who took charge when Adnan was arrested, Bilal not only organized the community fund-raising for legal costs, he also found Adnan an attorney.

  Aunty Shamim blamed Bilal for the most catastrophic decision the family would make when it came to her son’s defense—hiring Cristina Gutierrez.

  Adnan:

  I know that there are many instances in our community where you have tension-filled households due to parents attempting to enforce conservative cultural/religious values. These strict rules would clash with the liberal society their children were exposed to. I have heard of and seen the turbulent atmosphere in homes where the parents were in a constant struggle with a rebellious teen. Witnessing this as I was growing up caused me to appreciate the calm and loving home life that my parents provided for my brothers and me.

  As a child, I spent most of my free time at our local mosque. Most of us kids did. We would ride our bikes there after school and stay late into the evening. During the summer we would spend the whole day there. Prayers and religious classes only took up a fraction of our time. We usually spent most of our days and nights playing.

  A large addition was being built on the property, and for several years we had access to a construction site. We would run around on the beams, climb the scaffolding, and other things. One summer, we stole a bunch of scrap wood, some two-by-fours, a hammer and nails, and we built a bridge across the creek. It was about ten feet long, with a handrail and three-feet-tall support poles we had sunk into the creek bed. My childhood was full of happy days playing with my friends at the mosque.

  Once we all began entering our teenage years, around the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, things began to change. Many of us started dating and going to parties. We also began experimenting with marijuana and alcohol. These were things typical of almost any kid at that age. For us, however, it was different because of the conservative nature of our families. We were doing things that our parents did not approve of, and now a different and new dynamic came into play.

  For some of our friends, life became very stressful. Those with parents who were very strict ended up in extremely difficult situations as they tried to do the things that normal kids did. Their households would become very chaotic as the parents struggled to enforce a strict code of behavior. The friend would rebel, and it would create a very turbulent home life. The sad irony is that it would usually cause the teen to engage in the most reckless behavior of all of us, like drug and alcohol abuse and failing classes. It seemed as if the parents’ attempts to clamp down seemed only to instigate more harmful behavior. Perhaps it was the notion of “I know I’m gonna get in big trouble, so I may as well make it worthwhile.” Whatever the case, I have had friends who grew up in these very strict households, only to end up in a bad way. Witnessing these sad outcomes always caused me to be thankful that I was never in that situation with my family.

  I was very fortunate to have very supportive and loving parents. They were never the type to be strict with us in general. They raised my brothers and me with the religious and cultural values they believed in. More importantly, they taught us that we were free to make our own choices, but that we always had to be prepared to take responsibility for our actions.

  They did both have individual aspects of life they were strict about. For my father it was school. He was someone whose education had earned for him an opportunity to raise himself out of poverty. Owing to that, he never failed to instill in us the importance of doing well in school. Our maintaining high grades was the number-one priority, for him.

  For my mother it was the subject of social interaction. She was more in tune with the problems facing young people. Substance abuse was one of her major concerns, as she had seen several other teens fall victim to it. To her, staying out late and going to parties was the gateway to all of that.

  From a religious standpoint, my mother was also against dating. Our religion has very strict rules about that, essentially that it was not allowed. It was never something that caused her to give us ultimatums, or threaten to kick us out of the house. It was just that she expressed her disapproval and let it be known that she did not want us to have girlfriends.

  It didn’t stop me; however, it did cause me to be very mindful of my behavior. Or rather, work extra hard not to get caught. It wasn’t so much that I was worried about getting in trouble; mainly, it was that I wanted to be respectful to my parents, in a way. I was going to do the things that I wanted, but it was also important to me that I never make them unhappy. I never wanted to disappoint them.

  So as high school began, I did my best to hide the things that I did. I secretly bought a pager, so no girl would have to call the house to get in touch with me. I would wait for my parents to go bed before I went out at night on the weekends. I always made sure my clothes would never smell of perfume, or marijuana, when I returned home.

  At the same time, I worked very hard to achieve the things that would make my parents proud of me. I got good grades in school, I did volunteer work, and I always had some type of job. I did whatever I could to help around the h
ouse. I’ve always had a great deal of love and respect for my parents. Not just because of how hard they worked to provide a good life for us, but also because of the contrast between their parenting styles and that of others. Seeing the stressful situations of my other friends’ home lives caused me to have a greater appreciation for my own.

  I’ll be honest, I hate hearing/reading that portion of my adolescence being described as a “double life.” To me, that phrase implies a negative connotation associated with hypocrisy. It brings to mind someone who calls people to do one thing, but does the opposite in secret. And that is something I never did. I only wanted to live my life the way other kids did, but I also realized that in order to protect my parents from hurt and disappointment, I had to hide things from them. I didn’t hide anything to protect some “righteous” persona I had cultivated …

  From a religious perspective, my friends and I didn’t really feel like it was a big deal. It seemed that we all kind of had the same idea; we would have a good time, do good in school, grow up, get married, and then become more serious about our faith. There really was not a whole lot of self-doubt, or soul-searching. In a way, we felt that being Muslim was more about loving our people than about adhering to the conservative tenets of our faith. Which, to an adult, may seem far-fetched. But to a teenager it made perfect sense. We were all pretty much doing the same thing, and none of us viewed ourselves as being bad Muslims.

  By the time Hae and I began dating I had a relatively scandal-free career. Having never been in a relationship, I never had a reason to go on capers every single day. I could hang out on the weekends with girls and go to parties, but during the week it was pretty much just school or work. Being in a relationship, however, had me talking on the phone with Hae each night, wanting to spend every evening with her after school, going on dates, and so on. I was having to evade suspicion every day. Pretty soon it was impossible not to get caught.