War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims

3. Matthew

T H R E E Matthew With God are the keys Of the Unseen, the treasures That none knoweth but He. He knoweth whatever there is On the earth and in the sea. Not a leaf doth fall But with His knowledge: There is not a grain In the darkness (or the depths) Of the earth, nor anything Fresh or dry (green or withered), But is (inscribed) in a Record Clear (to those who can read). —QUR’AN, AL AN’AM (THE CATTLE), : Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; For if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance. —WILLIAM WIRT, FROM JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY, MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM WIRT When I finally sit Matthew down on the couch in the living room for an interview, he already knows way too much about the book. He doesn’t want to do the interview and implores me to just let him answer my questions in writing. I tell him I want his gut reactions, body language, and facial expressions; I tell him I’m not interested in his intellectual analysis. He sighs and sinks into the couch, sipping his steaming cup of Darjeeling. When I first met Matthew, I was in the process of researching the big tobacco lawsuits of the late s for a government class.He tells me now that he had already been admiring me from afar for a couple of months when he saw me in the library that rainy October morning. I had never noticed him before,though.When I got up to leave,I had no idea that he had followed me out. I started walking back to my dorm, and when I had nearly made it, the boy ran up beside me and tried to casually fall into step with me. He looked anything but casual. In fact, he scared the hell out of me, but before I could reach for my pepper spray, he rushed to make his case:“I’ve never done this before, but I’ve noticed you around, and I’m super attracted to you.” By this point,I was thinking,Who is this freak, how could he really think he could lure a girl over the age of twelve using words like “super,” and how stupid does he think I am? But I was too alarmed to say anything or move. He continued:“Where are you from?”Still startled, I blurted,“Ohio,”jetting my eyes across the courtyard to see if maybe there was someone, anyone, I knew who could save me. When I finally looked at his face, he looked perplexed , and I added,“I’m Iranian.” He told me that he thought I was Puerto Rican and that his best friend at school,Roxana,was Iranian as well.This connection suddenly made him far less threatening and gave me reason to back off the pepper spray for the moment. I’m glad I didn’t attack him. For one thing,he introduced me to Roxana,whom I swiftly stole as my own best friend. And for another, I ended up marrying him some five years later. I would never have guessed that a whiteAmerican kid from upstate New York could ever understand, let alone interest me. I always thought that I would end up marrying a first-generation something—whether Iranian or Peruvian or Korean didn’t really matter, but I was sure I’d never end up marrying what I considered to be a standard American white boy. It took knowing Matthew for me to learn,however,that there is no such thing as a standard American anything. We are a nation of anomalies.   Matthew  Matthew grew up some two hours north of NewYork City, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, amid one of the largest Russian Jewish immigrant populations in the country. He was brought up in the Catholic Church and went to Mass on Sundays.He was the quarterback on his junior- and senior-year highschool varsity football teams, a near straight-A student, the star of the track team, and voted“most likely to succeed” by his senior class. To be completely accurate, he was apparently voted both“most athletic” and “most likely to succeed ,” and he was told that he had to pick one: he opted for the latter. I would have absolutely...