Note: We seem to have misplaced a substantial number of amazing pictures we took during this visit, so our sincerest apologies. We will try to find them as soon as possible and post them.
Bassam and I were getting ready to leave New Mexico for an eight hour drive to Arizona, but we took an incredibly worthwhile one hour detour to Abiquiu, New Mexico. The small town is home to Dar al Islam, a divinely radiant mosque made from adobe mud that sits over a mile up in the mountains. We spoke with Benyamin, a woodworker from Holland who lives nearby the mosque. He told us to meet him by his home and he’d take us there. To say Benyamin is good with his hands is putting it lightly. At the bottom of the mountains, he built a mosque that he and his neighbors regularly use for prayer.
Benyamin carved the designs on the door as well. I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life, this man is divinely gifted. May Allah continue blessing him for his talents.
We found Benyamin inside a workshop shed where he was busy working on another door. He used to run a woodwork business for decades but has taken a break from doing it regularly because his health isn’t what it used to be. He told me it varies, but it only takes around a week and a half for him to make one of those intricately designed doors.
Benyamin and his wife regularly have company stay with them in the mountains and the two created a guest house for people to stay over. Below is a yurt, a round traditionally Central Asian tent, that the couple uses to put on concerts and even hold weddings in. They said they love having people come over, so I definitely need to make plans to come back!
Benyamin then took us up the mountain to Dar al Islam. It was built in the early 1980s at a time when there were around 30-40 families that frequented it daily. The mosque has a unique pueblo design and its foundation is made from adobe mud.
The mosque sits on a vast property in the mountains that many movie production companies use for filming such as the flicks City Slickers and Young Guns (one of my fave movies). In fact, that day we saw a production company that was filming Cowboys and Aliens, the upcoming Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig sci-fi movie. Next to the mosque is the Islamic school and inside I found some more doors that Benyamin carved. He told me this one took him a little over a week to do
Sadly, Dar al Islam is only used for special events like conferences and camps. I heard at least a dozen different reasons why it’s not being used regularly, but everyone I spoke to agrees they wish it was. Abdurrauf, a Belgian man who is the caretaker of the mosque, said one of the primary reasons why it’s not being used is lack of funds to run it. Plus many of the board members of the place are getting old and they could use some young new blood to energize the place.
I hope they do find people and funding soon, because this is no doubt one of the best Islamic treasures I have found in this country.
Hakim Archuletta tells me it’s time to break our fast and I pull my smartphone out of my pocket to ascertain if it’s time to do so. He grins and puts his hand on my shoulder and asks me to look at the colossal mountain landscape just a few miles from the house we’re standing outside of.
“You won’t need that phone,” he says to me. “See that mountain? When the sun is setting and it’s no longer visible above the mountain, that’s when it’s time to break our fast.”
As someone who is constantly on the go and shackled to technology, me coming to New Mexico today was the perfect place for a spiritual detox. We pulled into the TaHa Mosque in Santa Fe, a pueblo looking building that a group of about a dozen people use for regular prayers.
Prior to buying this property three years ago, the Muslim community here for around 20 years worshipped at locations all over the city. Oftentimes they’d celebrate the holiday Eid with prayers inside of a carpet store one of the Muslims in the area owned.
I arrived at the mosque completely burned out from the six hour drive and lack of sleep I got the night before. I go inside the prayer room to do my afternoon asr prayer. I’m immediately taken back by the breathtaking view of the shrubs and mountains from a window facing me while praying. I can’t even imagine what it would be like praying here every night. Without even needing a nap, my fatigue slowly starts to fade as I continue to soak in the soothing atmosphere inside the mosque.
Later, Massoud, an active member at the mosque, arrives and tells me a little bit more about the community here. He’s an Iranian man with a salt and pepper beard who speaks in a bouncing cadence everytime he gets excited about something. I ask him what the ethnic makeup of the mosque congregants are and he says he doesn’t know, because the people here don’t even bother to ask.
“No group or person is in charge of this mosque,” he said. “The only person who owns this place is Allah.”
The front door of the mosque is open and we slouch back on couch chairs facing the entrance. As we’re talking, we cut our conversation short to watch a hummingbird whiz by the entrance.
To break our fast, Bassam and I drive about 20 minutes north to eat with Hakim Archuletta and his son Yaseen’s family. Yaseen walks out of his intriguingly funky looking home to greet us with his child.
Hakims are traditional Islamic doctors. Hakim Archuletta is one of the world’s most respected lecturers on Islamic medicine. He embraced Islam in the 1960s and has studied all over the world under some of the most revered scholars in places such as Pakistan, England and North Africa. His practice focuses on spiritual healing and homeopathic medicine.
He’s a relaxed man who flashes his upper teeth every time he smiles. His rests his legs by folding them on his chair as he speaks in depth about his practice. He’s incredibly well read and refreshing to talk to because he doesn’t rub his wisdom in your face.
Yaseen grew up in New Mexico and married his wife Sobia, a Pakistani architect who is a whiz at cooking. For dinner we eat a soup Hakim Archuletta made from Mexican squash and beans, and Sobia made lamb curry, rice and kheema (seasoned ground beef) that was stewed with a variety of peppers.
I’m a huge foodie and I’m caught off guard by how succulent the meats are that Sobia cooked. She and Yaseen tell me they keep sheep and chickens in their backyard that they raise organically and slaughter Islamically on their own. Plus, just about all the vegetables we ate tonight were grown in their backyard. It’s so cool to meet Muslims that practice their religion by harmonizing their lifestyle with the earth.
My phone begins to ring in my pocket but I completely ignore it because all I can do is focus on how good this food is. It was more than just being hungry from fasting. I felt energized after my taste buds began to realize how intrinsically beautiful the food was.
I live my life as both a reporter and a standup comic, so my day relies heavily on my smartphone and laptop catching up with emails, scheduling appointments and spending hours in front of a word processor screen writing stories or jokes. Spending time in New Mexico today made me realize how much I center my stressful life around man-made creations. It’s amazing how much more fulfilled I feel today marveling at God’s creations instead.
Sheikh Abu Omar counted on both of his hands how many times he came close to dying. The 80-year-old man has escaped drowning, political assassinations and even a fatal health diagnosis in the 1970s that remind him how blessed he feels when he wakes up every day.
“Allah has protected me,” he says as he puts his left arm around me and points his right index finger into the air. “He did not want me to die on any of those occasions. If that doesn’t convince you to have faith in God, then I don’t know what does.”
Sheikh Abu Omar Al-Mubarac is a pioneer of the Muslim community in Denver and is still an active volunteer here. He grew up in Iraq and escaped the country in the 1960s when the Baath Party, Saddam Hussein’s ruling group, wanted him dead because he refused to side with them. He’s been living in the Denver area since 1968.
Sheikh Abu Omar was actually an officer for the Iraqi government and said he knew Saddam as he worked his way up the ranks in the Baath Party in the 1960s. But he couldn’t side with what the party was doing, and like many dictators that rise to power, the Baath Party tried to kill him because of his opposition. He escaped and moved to Colorado and got a job working for the state examining workplace safety claims. To this day, he still lobbies the state government on union and workers issues.
His lips pucker every time he smiles and he slaps me on the back with each joke he tells. I ask him what were his reasons for staying in Denver for so long as opposed to anywhere else in the world. He said he loves living here, he just gets irritated with the weather here.
“The weather here is like a woman,” he said. “She never knows how to make up her mind.”
As he said that, in the back of my mind I start thinking about how majestically beautiful the drive into Denver was. We got stunning views of the Rocky Mountains coming into town.
Our plans of where we’re going to sleep fall apart at the last minute and the sheikh is gracious enough to let us sleep at his place overnight. His cozy home is so crammed with files and books from his services center that you have to come up with clever ways to maneuver around the place without stepping on something. There dozens of framed certificates and civic activism signs that cover just about every open space on the wall.
“If you’ll excuse me, it’s night time and I just need to take my medication,” he said while trying to avoid stepping on a box of files in front of the kitchen. “I just need to take my birth control and Viagra, and then I’ll be fine.”
He comes back and sits on the couch as Bassam begins to take pictures of him.
“My face is going to break your camera,” he says with a laugh before sticking out his tongue for a goofy pose.
For an 80-year-old man that’s seen so much in his life, I asked him where he gets his optimism from. He points to the rectangle rug that’s in front of the couch.
“See this? It’s about the size of a grave,” he said. “Whenever my head gets big, I think about my grave. Because when I die, no matter what I have in life, I can’t take my possessions to the grave with me.”
Aman sits inside the Chevy Cobalt as Maghrib, the sunset prayer, hints at her coming.
NOTE: Because many people in Wichita feel that their community has been misrepresented, we would like to offer them a chance to represent themselves. If you grew up in Wichita or live there now and would like to share your experiences in the community please email me, Bassam, at info@30mosques.com. We understand how communities can feel marginalized, and are excited to share a story from someone who has a better grasp of the city and the community than I clearly have. – Bassam Tariq
NOTE 2: I also am changing some of the language. I understand that we haven’t seen all of Wichita, we just explored the areas around the mosque.
Taking pictures outside of the Islamic Society of Wichita, I strike up a small conversation with Ammarah, a journalism student from the local university, Wichita State, who is following us today.
“So, what do you do for fun in Wichita?” I ask.
“Not much. We just eat out,” she shrugs, “but since there are very few halal places, we only go to places that have good fish I guess.”
Hello, Kansas.
We reach the Wichita mosque around 5 PM from Oklahoma City and sit in our car wondering what we’ll talk about today. The communications director of the mosque, Aisha, happily give us a tour around the mosque. Visiting a new mosque everyday and getting similar tours of the facilities has started to make me nauseous since I was fasting, so I cut to the chase and ask her to give me the skinny on Muslims in Kansas.
Ayesha runs down a list of occupations Muslims are doing in Kansas and it’s all very similar to what Muslims are doing in other parts of the country (i.e. doctor’s, engineers, business owners, etc.). What’s fascinating though is that Wichita has the largest airline manufacturing industry in entire world, it’s been fittingly coined “the air capital of the world.” That’s one of the main reasons why tons of Muslim engineers ended up working here for airplane manufacturers such as Boeing, Airbus and Cessna. The local university, Wichita State University, also has a great aerospace engineering program so many Muslim folk who come from abroad end up staying here and working at the research facilities of these companies.
The places we see in Wichita are bare. Still, the clear blue skies cast a tenderness and ease that a place like New York City would never quite understand.
We come back for the break fast and are greeted by Dr. Assem Farhat, our host family for tonight. We eat chicken gravy with salad and pasta while we talk about how relaxed life is in Wichita. Dr. Farhat is Syrian and has spent most of his life globetrotting through Europe. He did his medical schooling in Europe and his specialization in Cardiology in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Farhat has lived in many large cities, but has ended up in Wichita because of work. He has been here for 20-plus years and has no plans on leaving. Dr. Farhat, like a lot of the Muslims we’ve met in Wichita, loves it here.
“Wichita is a great place for living,” he remarks, “just not visiting.”
Before we left Oklahoma City, I told my homegirl Sarah that I’d check out the Islamic School she teaches at, the Mercy School in Edmond, OK. It’s affiliated with the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City mosque that we visited in this community. Pretty awesome place, the new $9 million building opened up at the beginning of Ramadan and is for students grades Kindergarten all the way through High School. Sarah was telling me that this building is the largest Islamic school in the Midwest. That’s a pretty big deal if you think about it.
Sarah and some of the other teachers were insane enough to let me teach a bunch of classes today. I taught 4 classes – Math, Science, Social Studies and a Speech and Debate Class. I talked about 30 Mosques in some of the classes and I was surprised how well traveled a lot of the kids were. Since the kids are fasting during Ramadan, during their lunch period I performed a small stand up routine. Pretty cool kids. I’d definitely come back to visit them in a heartbeat.
I think he was reading too many posts on the 30 Mosques site
My homegirl Sarah Albahadily made all the arrangements for our visit to Oklahoma City today, and she’s just about as Oklahoma as you can get. She proudly blasts country music in her car and often wears cowboy shoes under her long flowing abaya dress. On the 4th of July, her mother puts on a headscarf designed like an American flag.
“A lot of people make fun of Oklahoma for being filled with rednecks” she tells me as we walk around the mosque. “Which is fine, I get it. But what bothers me is when people don’t think that we’re developed. We’ve got a lot going on here.”
Before you say “Wow, there are Muslims in Oklahoma?” think again. Suhaib Webb, probably one of the most sought after scholars on the Islamic speakers circuit today, is from this state. So is Kareem Salama, who’s got crazy buzz right now as being a Muslim country music artist.
I’ve noticed a lot of Muslims that live in smaller towns unfortunately are either embarrassed to live where they live or anxious to jump on the first opportunity to move somewhere else. But what’s relieving about this community is how content and proud people are about living here. I asked Sarah about some of the things she liked to do for fun as a kid and her eyes lit up as she talked about all the rodeos and country music concerts she used to go to. I try my hardest to downplay my secret love for country music, but I can’t resisnt once she started talking about Rascal Flatts and Garth Brooks.
Sarah grew up attending the place we visited today, the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City. It’s a cozy mosque with radiant architecture that her father helped build. I know it’s incredibly cliche and hokey to point out the diversity inside a mosque, but it was definitely a melting pot in there. I stood outside the mosque’s parking lot as I saw a group of Hispanic Muslims arrive to prayer on motorcycles. Next to them a group of Iranians I overheard talking about a NASCAR race coming up. I found an air hockey table in the mosque’s second floor, which is all the convincing I’d need to come back here again.
We head back outside the building and Sarah nervously smirks as Bassam takes photograph after photograph of her in the parking lot.
“I don’t really like being the center of attention,” she said. “Very rarely will you see me have my picture taken.”
My background in reporting often makes me a little too inquisitive at times, so I decided to ease off my questions for her and just hang out with everyone for the rest of the night. To break our fast, Sarah arranged for a group of about 20 people to hang out with us at ZamZam, an Arab restaurant down the road that’s a popular hangout for many Muslims here.
I’ve been burned out a lot on this trip from all the traveling, media interviews and just keeping up with the 30 Mosques site in general. So it was an incredible breath of fresh air to just hang out with a bunch of people and goof off while eating some awesome food. For the two hours at the restaurant we were there, it was great to just forget about all the stress and just have a good time among all my newly made friends.
Afterwards, the Oklahoma crew took us downtown to check out the memorial for the infamous 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. Chills went up and down my arms as I realized I was standing in front of the place where 15 years ago, two white Christian men, orchestrated the bombing of a federal building that ended up killing over 100 people.
But if you think these issues define what Muslims in Oklahoma City are like, think again dude. When I think of Oklahoma, I think of Sarah’s cowboy boots tucked under her abaya or people talking smack about who is a better NASCAR driver. I think we as Muslims need to get out of this dumb two-dimensional mold where we’re only seen to the outside world as people that are victims of hate crimes, have airport security problems, or these days are dealing with opposition to mosques. Sure those are important issues, but why have we allowed those issues to define us?
I dunno about you, but I’d rather talk about Garth Brooks than share with someone what my dumb take is on the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
In Atlanta, we visited the Mohammed Schools where we highlighted the Lady Caliphs, the high school girls basketball team that made it to the state championships a few years ago.
Here is a short video I shot of them playing a scrimmage against each other, while fasting.
Abdulahed Farooqi stands next to Synott Mosque. Inspired by our project last year, Abdulahed is visiting 30 mosques in 30 days in Houston.
Synott isn’t the name of the mosque we visited tonight, but that doesn’t matter because in the past ten years I’ve been frequenting it I’ve called the mosque nothing else.
This is your hometown mosque, that mosque where you learned about Islam, ran into your first Muslim crush, where you volunteered at the Sunday school and picked a fight or two when you didn’t have to. It’s that mosque where when you come back after such a long time, you still know you will be breaking your fast with a plate of biryani and yogurt. This is Synott.
Our family started frequenting Synott when we made the big move from inner city Houston to the suburbs. Before Synott, I never knew what a mosque community was like. We only went to mosques on Fridays in these small hole in the wall places near Pakistani restaurants. It was also odd to see people my age hanging out there and not at home.
Another reason why we attended Synott was because the gas station we ran was right next to it. My father would open the gates of the mosque for the morning prayer, Fajr, first and then the doors of our gas station. It was a tough place to be in for our family because we were selling alcohol with one hand and then helping to run the mosque with the other.
Friday prayers were always a little awkward because many of the congregants would end up at our store to fill up gas and buy some candy for their children. As the congregants would be coming in to buy lollipops or pay for gas, many of the day laborers would be cashing in their weekly checks and buying alcohol. The importance of Friday took on a complicated gray meaning.
Of course, we weren’t alone in this. This may as well be the Achilles heel of the South Asian Muslim community in Houston. Running a gas station is a lucrative business and many observant Muslims are guilty of running them. Some have come to terms with their business dealings others are trying to get out. In the beginning, our family was naive enough to think that most of the revenue generated from a gas station comes from the gas. Turns out, you only make 1 cent per liter, which really amounts to nothing. Beer, cigarrettes and lottery become the cornerstone of your business.
****
We enter Houston from I-10 heading towards 59 South. I see the mildly interesting skyline of Houston and am in awe. I can feel the smog rushing through our windows, the truck drivers trying to overtake us and the XXX Emporium’s neon lights hoping to blind us in midday. There is no place like home.
O Houston
Aman and I reach Synott mosque right before sundown and are greeted by old friends. I never liked the TV show Cheers but right about now, that theme song “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” seems so fitting.
The following photos are an homage to some of the mosque members that I’ve been seeing as I was a kid, the regulars.
Ismail Baker, the relentless volunteer. One day he will be directing traffic, the next day he will be making your Rooh Afza with milk. Token Uncle sahib Rashid, one of the mosque caretakers that has singlehandedly kept up the maintenance of the mosque. Shahid Uncle, my dad’s only friend. Mohammad Sarwar Tariq, the pops.
After breaking our fast and praying, Aman and I step outside of the mosque and plot our next move.
Ever since we planned on going to Houston, Aman has been adamant on making some contact with Hakeem Olajuwon, the legendary Houston Rockets basketball player who won the NBA MVP in 1994. Unfortuntately, Hakeem is in Jordan for Ramadan so it didn’t look like we’d run into him. But we decide to visit this strong Nigerian community that’s connected with him.
On the drive over to the Nigerian Mosque, Aman points at a gas station and wonders if that was the one my family ran. It was. I pull into the parking lot and step outside.
When we had the gas station, it was a red Conoco with shiny lights. My father opened it with the hopes of leaving his dead end job and moving forward as a self employed entrepreneur. It was a tough business to run, being open from 5 AM to 12 AM is no joke. It took us five years to get out of the business and when we did, we promised to not look back. The dilemma of course is that without this gas station we probably would still be in the inner city living in our cramped apartment. Running a gas station isn’t as black and white as you think, it’s complicated.
Aman asks me if I want to go inside to see how things are now. I think about it for a second, get back in the car and drive forward.
AbdulRahman Zeitoun is an iconic American Muslim. But if you tell him this, he will shrug and change the subject. He doesn’t talk much about the book written about him or the animated movie that is in the works (directed by Oscar winner Jonathan Demme). He’d rather talk about his painting company or the masjid that he helps run.
For those who are not familiar with Zeitoun, I strongly recommend picking up the book about his life before and after Hurricane Katrina – Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Zeitoun stayed in New Orleans during the vicious hurricane and rode out the storm. After the levees broke and chaos ensued, he was arrested and held in maximum security prison for three weeks. I read the book last Ramadan during our New York City trek and was surprised at how much the book reminded me of God and his countenance.
I met him yesterday at Masjid Rehma near Tulane University and followed him as he visited his job sites and broke his fast at the mosque.
Zeitoun examines a paint job with a client. Zeitoun visits six to seven paint job sites at lease three times during the day. Zeitoun drives as Aman fields a radio interview. Zeitoun is a quiet man. He shared only small anecdotes about him and his wife. He recollected the story of him stalking his wife outside of the furniture store she worked at before proposing to her. Zeitoun holds unripe tomatoes he has grown on one of his properties. Zeitoun loves to grow fruit and vegetables. He took us to the backyard of one of the houses that he has leased. When I asked if we should ask permission before going in the back, Zeitoun responded, “Why? This is my house.” He then proceeded to open the backyard gate. Zetioun with his son, Ahmad, eats a meal at Masjid Rehma after breaking his fast. Ahmad is the youngest of Zeitoun’s children and was born after Hurricane Katrina. “This child has brought so much life into our house.” Kathy, Zeitoun’s wife, tells me. AbdulRahman and Kathy Zeitoun stand outside of their house. Zeitoun’s quietness is made up for by the outward, bubbly personality of his wife, Kathy. Her sincerity and generosity in the novel and real life will steal your heart. “I talk a lot when I get nervous,” she tells me, “hope it’s not weird or anything.”
There are millions of people in New Orleans that can tell you stories about how they’re struggling to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
But a different kind of story here hits close to home for me because it’s about my brother Salman. He’s a resident physician and moved to New Orleans for a job shortly after Katrina in midst of going through a severed marriage. As he was getting adjusted to his career in this city, he started his new life here alone.
“Sometimes it felt like a hurricane was going through my own life,” he said.
The details of what happened to him, frankly, are irrelevant. Because when relationship issues take their toll, there are no winners and losers. But living here among other people struggling to rebuild in this city helped my brother put the pieces back together in his own life.
“I remember working at the hospital and hearing stories about people swimming home after the flooding to find their children dead,” he said. “It puts everything in perspective for me. I know my child is safe.”
My four brothers and I are very close, but we’re also fiercely independent and prefer to cope with problems on our own. I can’t even imagine what these three years living here in New Orleans alone have been like for him and the journey he’s gone through to be at peace with the life he lives now.
When his situation first happened, I remember him telling me he’d sometimes come to tears when he’d see a father smile and embrace a child patient inside the hospital. But my brother isn’t the kind of person that will let that intense pain bring him down.
“I could have packed up shop and moved back home to Mom and Dad and cried about it,” he said. “But the people that truly love me, my friends and family, don’t want me to quit. The people that love me want me to be the best doctor I can be.”
He said coming home to an empty apartment is a feeling he’s never gotten used to, but training to be a doctor helps him cope.
“We’re taught in medicine to treat our patients as if they are family members,” he said. “So taking care of other patients at the hospital has been therapeutic for me. It’s love by proxy.”
My parents were in town to visit my brother too so spending time with all three of them was probably the first time I’ve felt fully relaxed on this trip. Together, we broke our fast at Masjid Abu Bakr. It was one of the only mosques in the New Orleans area that wasn’t hit hard by Hurricane Katrina.
Before the storm, the Muslim community here was very segmented. Like many communities across the country, the Arabs would frequent one particular mosque, the South Asians would frequent another, etc. etc. etc. But after the storm, Masjid Abu Bakr became a rallying place to bring people together, because frankly it was one of the only places where people could worship.
My brother has lived in multiple cities across the U.S. and said what makes New Orleans Muslims special is their resilience.
“There’s a welcoming spirit here that people don’t complain,” he said. “If there’s a problem, people say ‘We got through Katrina, we can get through this.’ That’s always the trump card.”
He added just being in the presence of these welcoming Muslims helped him cope with his own problems.
“I don’t really like talking about this stuff, but it was a comforting thing knowing I could with people here,” he said.
I love teasing my brother about how big of a medical dork he his. He carries hand sanitizer wherever he goes and keeps Lysol in just about every room of his place. But I’ve always looked up to him for his undying love for helping others. It’s that relentless drive that defines him, not the problems that he’s encountered in his lifetime. But one thing is for certain, no matter how tough life will get for him, he’ll always have his family to help him weather the storm.
Last night in the Jacksonville mosque, Aman and I decided to change today’s route from Birmingham, Alabama to Mobile, Alabama. The cause for the change of heart – word of mouth said that Muslims own about 95% of the car dealerships in Mobile, and at that time, it sounded like a nice phenomena to cover.
We enter Mobile, Alabama around 6:30 p.m. and see a wide array of car dealerships surrounding the interstate. There were used cars and new cars. Rows of shiny Sedans, SUVs and Hybrids. The dealerships looked like, well, dealerships. And suddenly, the idea of visiting a car lot seemed incredibly underwhelming. We decide to can the car dealership idea and head over to the mosque earlier than planned in hopes of finding a good lead to a great story.
The mosque is a small house with a lot of land. There is an adjacent playground with a shed attached to it. There are only two cars parked in the lot. Slowly, we all begin to exit the car. The CNN guys, Wayne and Robert, stretch their legs since they’ve been cramped in the back of our modest Cobalt for the last seven hours.
“So can we take pictures of you praying, right?” Robert, the photographer, asks.
“Umm…” I say with hesitation.
A sign outside of the mosque gives strict guidelines on what to wear and how to wear it for both men and women.
“Yeah, lets just be quick with the photos.” I decide.
All four of us enter the mosque and prepare for our shoot. A stoic man with a stunning white beard appears and introduces himself as the Imam of the mosque.
“What are you guys doing?” He asks.
I introduce myself and Aman and then point back at our CNN friends.
“These guys, they are from CNN,” I said.
Robert smiles at the Imam hoping to soften him up.
The Imam looks right at the CNN guys and points to the door.
“Please leave.”
Within seconds, our CNN friends were out the door. Which left just Aman and I with the Imam. An awkward silence takes over the room and then he continues.
“Why didn’t you guys contact us before coming?” he said.
We apologize for the last minute visit we planned but tell him we tried to get in touch with the mosque but no one picked up.
The Imam stayed quiet.
“Is it okay if we pray here?” I ask.
“Ha, of course,” he says. “This is the house of Allah. I can’t stop you from praying.”
I quickly wash up and pray. We meet up with the CNN guys, Wayne and Robert, standing around in the parking lot. I apologize to them about getting kicked out and we head out of the mosque.
“Damn.” I say as we pull out of the parking lot.
“What happened?” Aman asks.
“How are we going to show that we were here if we can’t take pictures of the mosque?”
It took less than 30 seconds to come up with an idea on how to depict the mosque. I’ve been itching to do this for a while, so without further ado, here are some drawings that will help tell the story.
Our night ends with us dropping off the CNN guys at a rental car joint. We embrace each other and take photos before we part ways. Who would’ve thought that within two days of traveling Aman and I would feel such a deep connection with CNN reporters?
Aman looks at his watch and realizes that it’s time for us to hit the road towards New Orleans, our next stop on the trip.
Tonight marks the first time we are traveling during the night from state to state. We have avoided doing it for many reasons: drunk drivers, huge trucks, and cops. We decide to drive tonight because we have a lot to do in New Orleans and wanted to get there as early as possible.
Aman drives and sings along to Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be In My Heart,” while I type up today’s blog entry.
“CRAP!” Aman says hitting the brakes of the car. “I just sped passed a cop.”
I keep an eye in the rearview mirror on the cop’s headlights. As we move forward in the distance his lights aren’t fading, they are getting closer. Soon enough, the police SUV is tailing us.
Fitteen minutes pass and the SUV is still behind us. Not sure what to do, Aman merges into the next lane to see what move the cop will make.
Right after pulling into the right lane, the cop’s lights turn on. We pull over to the side and hear the footsteps of the cop approaching our car.
“Hello sir.” He says, shining the flashlight in my eyes and looking around our small Cobalt. We wait to hear at what speed he clocked us.
“Well, I pulled you over because you swerved carelessly into the right lane.”
Huh? Aman and I look at each other not sure what he means.
“Officer, I thought I made a legal merge.” Aman nicely refutes.
The officer stays quiet and looks at Aman’s license.
“Sir, this is a State ID. Do you have a license?”
“That is my driver’s license.”
On Aman’s card, I can read ‘Driver’s License’ in big letters.
“Aman sir, can you please step out of the car?” the officer asks.
This is not normal.
I stay put in the passenger seat watching Aman get questioned in the rear view mirror. Not sure what the cop’s asking, I decide to keep the laptop on and have our recent CNN interview ready for play.
The cop walks towards me and asks, “So where are you guys going today?”
“We’re on our way to New Orleans…” I reply.
“So what are you guys doing in New Orleans?”
Clearly, these string of questions have already been asked to Aman and now it’s my turn to see if they add up.
“Visiting Aman’s brother. And, well…” I said.
I wasn’t sure if Aman told him about our 30 mosques project.
“…And?” the officer asks.
“So we’re visiting 30 mosques in 30 days in 30 states. So we’ll be visiting a mosque in New Orleans.”
“Oh, so there’s a mosque in New Orleans!?”
“Uh yeah.” I’m not sure if this a rhetorical question.
The man looks straight into my eyes. I notice his thick southern accent, blue eyes and crew cut blonde hair. I realize that he was serious about his question about mosques in New Orleans, so I turn my laptop towards him and show him our CNN interview.
“See, we were just on CNN.”
I point at Aman and myself sitting with the CNN anchor Kyra Phillips.
The cop pulls his flash light at my laptop screen and watches intently.
“Cool.” he says, “So tell me.”
“Yes?”
“What do you think about that Ground Zero Mosque?”
What the heck? At this point, it is clear that our southern Biloxi, Mississippi cop is fishing for some dirt.
“Well…” I finally reply thinking of the conservative talking points I’ve been reading, “For them to build it by Ground Zero is very insensitive.”
He nods his head, so I continue.
“I mean come on, it’s been less than 10 years and we’re still healing from the attack. Isn’t it just a slap in the face?”
“Yeah!” the cop exclaims, “I mean, I’m not pro-religion or anything. But that’s just wrong for them to build it there.”
The cop takes another look inside the car with his flashlight and smiles.
“Thanks for your cooperation.”
Lights from the police offer. Photo taken with the iPhone.
Minutes later, Aman jumps back in the car without a ticket in his hand and gives a sigh of relief. He turns the car on and we move forward. One step away from Alabama and another closer to New Orleans, thank heavens.
Wayne Drash and Robert Johnson are blogging about us on CNN.com
We hit the road in Atlanta to start our six-hour drive down to Florida and I turn on the radio. The song from the Rocky movies “Eye of the Tiger” comes on and immediately I begin belting out the song while I drum my hands against the steering wheel. Today is going to be a good day, I say to myself.
My singing continues a few minutes later when Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” comes on the radio. Then I realize it’s Ramadan and this is probably the last song I want to be singing right now while I’m fasting.
Driving through southern Georgia, we pass by sequential billboard patterns of porn shops and churches.
Then on the opposite side of the highway in Chula, Georgia I see a colossal confederate flag waving over 100 feet in the air.
Confederate flag. Welcome to the south.
Everyone in the car mutually agrees the flag is too racistly awesome to pass up without posing for a photo next to it. The flag off the highway exit stands next to a Confederate souvenir shop by a mosquito ridden pond. Three men sitting at a bunch in front of the shop begin staring at us as we pull into the place’s gravel parking lot.
“Let’s not go in,” Robert says, afraid of what might happen if two brown guys walk inside a Confederate shop.
Anyone who knows me knows when someone tells me not to do something, it just makes me want to do it even more. It’s the reason why my mother blames me for all her gray hair.
“I’m going in,” I said laughing at everyone else’s hesitation.
“Welcome!” said one of the men sitting at the bench to our surprise. “Great weather today, ain’t it?”
The name of the store is Lollygaggers. I walk inside and meet the owner, Robert. He’s a tall man that’s big on hospitality and apparently not as big on visiting a dentist.
Robert, owner of Lollygaggers off I-75 in southern Georgia
I ask him where the name of the store came from.
“You don’t know what lollygaggin is?” he asks with bewilderment. “When you sittin around havin a good time and you aint doin sh*t, you be lollygaggin!”
To our surprise, Robert was incredibly friendly. He talks in detail about how he’s frustrated with how Confederate flags get a bad rap and how he condemns all the racist connotations people associate with the flag. He said everyone is welcome in his shop regardless of where they come from. The guys at the shop turned out to be some of the friendliest people I’ve met on this journey. I expected them to be all prejudiced towards me, and here I was being prejudiced towards them.
We get into Jacksonville shortly after 5 p.m. About a mile from the mosque I see a sign for this fast food restaurant, which we all once again agree is too hilariously racist to pass up for photos.
“We HAVE to go inside,” I say as I dodge oncoming traffic and U-Turn into the restaurant’s parking lot.
Wayne isn’t fasting so he decides to go inside and order this place’s infamous Camel Rider sandwich. He walks outside showing me what’s the sandwich: ham, salami, and American cheese.
“I think this is probably the most American sandwich that you could possibly eat,” Wayne says.
Wayne Drash, taking a bite out of racism
The place has pretty much nothing but ham and sausage on the menu, making me laugh because apparently the owner of the place is Palestinian (he wasn’t there).
Robert the photographer is hungry too and asks me what he should order, since he’s a conservative Christian that doesn’t eat pork. Our conversation is interrupted by a guy who pulls into the parking lot in a rusty white BMW.
“You guys wanna come to my party?” he asks as a woman walks out of the car and adjusts her pants as she walks into the restaurant. Robert and I walk up to the guy in the car and he hands me a CD-R with “Chokehold Records” written on it in a Sharpie marker.
Chokehold Records for life.
I take a look past the man’s stained wife beater and survey the gutted interior of his car filled with crumpled papers, Cheetos wrappers and a Marshall Field’s shopping bag (because thugs like pleated khaki pants on clearance).
He invites Robert and I to an album launch party at the arcade center Dave and Busters. Because when you’re releasing a thug rap record, make sure it’s at a place where you can play Dance Dance Revolution.
I then notice the man is repeatedly drinking shot glass rounds of vodka. Nothing is classier than getting tipsy parked outside of a fast food restaurant in the mid afternoon.
Bassam then walks up with his camera and begins snapping pictures furiously at him. The man is alarmed about why he’s taking pictures and gets slightly irritated.
“Oh God, we’re gonna get shot,” I think to myself.
Bassam and Robert calm him down after explaining we’re on a road trip and the photos are for our blog. He then explains he got caught off guard because he thought we were reporters and the last thing he wanted to see were headlines saying “Rapper gets caught drinking and driving.”
He agrees to photos and scornfully tells the woman with him to strike a seductive pose for Bassam.
“She’s one of my rappers,” he said while trying to bring back up the subject of his Dave and Buster’s party.
He says to get into the party, I need to get on his guest list. His guess list was a tattered binder he pulled out from under his seat that had crumpled up coffee stained pages in it. He hands me a pen and asks me to sign my name. I’m allowed to bring two people.
Are you on his guest list?
I have no interest whatsoever to attend the party, but I decide to sign it anyway. I sign using the name “Armando Valenzuela,” the standard alias I used to use as a kid when doing prank calls. I’m allowed to bring two people to the party, and the man says Robert and Bassam are allowed to come.
He then tries charging me $10 for his “Chokehold Records” CD. I politely say no and he tells me I can’t get into his party unless I buy the CD. We decide not to and walk away.
I see Wayne standing nearby with an angry look at his face.
“What, you won’t let me come to the pimp’s party?” Wayne said. “I see how it is, the white guy isn’t invited? What am I, chopped liver?”
We all laugh and head over to the mosque. Immediately we’re taken back by how beautiful the building is as the sun begins to set.
I look up and see the building’s minaret, the tall towers attached to the the mosque’s building. Immediately I ask someone there if we can climb to the top, so Bassam can get a photo of me doing the “King of the World” pose from the movie Titanic.
A Bosnian man and his son walk up to me asking if I’m the guy who wants to climb to the top of the minaret. The son walks with me telling me how dangerous it is to get up there.
I look at the 10 rungs of the minaret’s ladder and laugh thinking it’s no big deal to get up to the top. “You think that’s it?” the son says while trying to taunt me.
He said the at the top of the ladder is a hatch that I have to push open to unveil about 100 feet worth of more ladder rungs to climb. Never willing to back down to a challenge. I begin climbing with no hesitation. The kid begins mocking my lanky chicken legs going up the ladder’s rungs.
Thank Allah I have a good health insurance plan
“Wow, you climb like that and you expect to get to the top?” the kid says with another taunting laugh. I want to confront this kid, but I cant deny the fact that I’m intimidated by this ladder climb. I try heaving the hatch open but I don’t have enough strength to push it all the way back.
“Come on man, just push it open!” the kid says continuing his taunt.
At this point, I give up. It’s time to break my fast anyway. The Islamic Center of Northeast Florida is incredibly diverse. I look around and see a mix of Arabs, South Asians, Bosnians and African Americans sitting together and feasting on tonight’s meal.
After dinner, I then meet Shauib (pronounced Shoe-aib), He’s in charge of the mosque’s security and talks about the how someone tried to throw a firebomb at the mosque in May. It was all over the news if you didn’t hear about it. He then shows me what the damage looked like in a photo he took with his camera phone while standing at the top of the minaret.
“You’ve been to the top???” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s easy to get up there,” he said. “I’ve done it in my chappal (sandals).”
Now I feel like even more of a sissy. I need to go up there. Now.
“Want me to take you?” he said.
I grab Wayne and Shauib takes us to the base of the minaret. He climbs up the ladder and shoves open the hatch and guides us to the top.
The climb is tough but a lot more manageable than that Bosnian kid tried to make it out to be. I stand at the top to check out a breath taking view of the mosque. I see Bassam hundreds of feet below me and I shout for him to come over and snap some pictures of me.
Echoing through my head as Bassam is taking pictures is that “Eye of the Tiger” song I was singing earlier today. I felt like a champion.
Growing up in the public school system, I’ve always been curious on what a full-time Islamic school looks like from the inside. I decided to do a small photo essay on the Mohammed Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. The Mohammed Schools consists of an elementary, middle, and high school. It is said that 100% of the seniors from the school go to college after graduation to prestigious institutions like Harvard. The girls basketball team, the Lady Caliphs, has made it to the state championships and was featured on ESPN not too long ago.
Sister Jamillah Bouchta leads her first grade Arabic class in Quran recitation and translation. Girls in middle school look up difficult words in dictionaries. After the midday prayer, dhuhr, high school girls come out to play a short game of basketball. The Lady Caliphs basketball at the Mohammed School made it to the state finals two years ago. The story was covered beautifully by ESPN.Safiyyah Shahid, the high school principal, watches the Lady Caliphs basketball team warming up. Pictures of Shareef Abdur-Rahim, a former NBA player for the Sacromento Kings, plasters the walls of the gymnasium. Abdur-Rahim donated the money to build the gymansium for the school. He is also a graduate of the Mohammed Schools. Seniors discuss the Park 51 mosque in their “Quranic Thinking” class. Led by the former Imam of the mosque, Plemon T El-Amin, students are being taught how to engage in a constructive discourse on this sensitive issue. The Mohammad Schools building is in close proximity to the Atlanta Masjid. Though the school is its own entity, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Atlanta Masjid. Students kill time before iftaar, break fast, watching YouTube clips on an iPad in the lobby of Atlanta Masjid. Today’s clip: “Charlie bit my finger.” A sudent sends a Facebook message to a friend on his iPad. The message reads,”Are u coming to iftaar…Need some stuff on my iPad….Like movies and songs…Nd sum apps.” A family plays a game of trouble before iftaar, the break fast, at the neighboring fish restaurant. Like most mosques, the Atlanta Masjid community breaks their fast with dates and water. Two boys prostrate in the mosque during salaah, the Islamic ritual prayer that is performed five times a day. Prostration during salaah is considered to be the moment that one is closest to God. A boy takes a shot at the basketball court. Students regularly play basketball after the break fast dinner.
Xavier is ten years old and attends KIP elementary. He devours a watermelon slice sitting next to me and talks about his school. “I’m in fifth grade.” he says, “the school I go to is called Knowledege is P…” He pauses and realizes he doesn’t know what the P stands for, but swears it’s not Power.
Xavier and I are sitting together breaking our fast at Masjid Mohammad, but Xavier isn’t fasting today. “I didn’t feel like it.” He said to me earlier when I first ran into him, “but I did fast yesterday.”
Xavier and I met outside of a corner store near the mosque. These two boys were posing for the camera in front of Masjid Muhammad and I followed them here to this store. Most of the kids that loiter around the mosque aren’t Muslim. Some of them were buying gatorade, others were just sitting by the curb. One kid with a water gun began spraying some of the older girls.
“You like taking pictures don’t you?” One of the girls who got squirted with water gun said to me. She was irritated by me snapping away as she drenched in water.
Xavier was probably the youngest of the crowd, he saw me with the camera and started barraging me with questions.
“Are you Muslim?” He first asked.
“Yep.” I reply.
“Then why aren’t you wearing a kufi?”
I began to laugh and knew that I had struck gold with this kid. The time had arrived for us to break our fast and made sure little Xzavier came along with me back towards the mosque. And that’s where we sit now.
“Give me a minute.” I tell him.
I get out of the seat and walk to the corner of the cafetorium. Al Jazeera is back today and the reporter is ready with a few pointed questions. I’m in a daze and a little tired by the interviews. Aman Ali is the interview guy. He looks better on camera and gives news guys succinct sound bites that are easy to chew. I, on the other hand, ramble, don’t stay on topic, and sometimes make off color comments – and Al-Jazeera today is no exception.
The reporter sees me looking back and wonders what I’m looking for. Before walking back to the mosque with Xavier to break our fast, I told all the neighborhood kids to come to the mosque. They all said they would be there. And, now, as I’m being interviewed, I constantly glance at the door hoping that the kids will show up. The reporter asks for my attention, smiles and continues with the questions. I joke with him saying that this would be a lot easier if we didn’t bring any cameras with him.
The interview finally ends and I lose sight of Xavier. I sit down to finally eat some food and meet with the Imam of the mosque, Tariq Najiullah. Tariq is twice my height and wears a nice suit. If he wasn’t as hospitable as he was, I’d be intimidated by him. But since he is a nice guy, I cut straight to the chase.
“Why aren’t any of the kids that loiter around the mosque here to break their fast?”
“Many of them just hang around the area,” he says, “they don’t come inside much.”
A lot of the kids in the neighborhood have accepted Islam on their own. According to Tariq, kids under the age of 15 seem to be coming through the mosque by the dozens to embrace Islam, for a myriad of reasons.
Masjid Muhammad has a fascinating history. The community was founded by the late Elijah Muhammad and carried on by his son the late Warith Deen Muhammad. Imam Warith Deen helped transition a large portion of the Nation of Islam towards mainstream Sunni Islam after his father passed away. A lot of the mosques around the Northeast used to be temples for the Nation of Islam, but as the congregants slowly began to transition to mainstream Islam so did the temples.
(UPDATE: Thanks to Z, one of our readers, for correcting our originally written info that the mosque was founded by Imam W.D. Muhammad)
A little while later, I see Xavier walking around the cafeteria.
“Where’d you go?” I ask him.
He shrugs.
“So where are your friends?”
“They are outside.”
“Are they not coming here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But they said they would come.”
He shrugs again.
“Well, then lets get to them.”
Xavier and I leave the cafeteria together. As I walk out of Masjid Muhammad, two of my friends who live around the area join us on the quest to find the elusive neighborhood kids.
“Hey dude, didn’t your bike get robbed here?” My one friend asks the other.
“Yeah, it was in broad daylight. And these kids were trying to steal my bike.”
“Oh, did it happen over there?” Xavier asks pointing at one of the corners of the street.
“Uh, yeah.” My friend who had his bike robbed says.
“Oh yeah. I was there.” Xavier says laughing.
“Really?”
“But I wasn’t stealing the bike. I was just standing on the side and laughing. I didn’t want to get in trouble with the police.”
Thankfully, my friend ran out with a bat in his hand and scared the kids off. It was broad daylight after all.
Xavier takes us four blocks away from the mosque.
“So where are these guys?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, this is where they usually hang out.”
We wait a while in the silence, kicking the dirt and playing with our plastic cups. Out of nowhere, the kids finally appear on bikes.
“Hey guys!” I scream.
They ignore me and continue biking forward.
“Whats wrong? I thought I’d see you at the mosque for break fast?”
“Man, you just love taking snaps with your camera.” One of the kids says laughing as he bikes passed us.
I stand still watching them fade into the distance. A lot of the questions I had for these kids will be left unanswered.
“They are headed out to Q street. That’s the projects.” Xavier says.
I turn around and start walking back towards the mosque.
“Will you come back?” Xavier asks.
I nod. Next time it will probably be without a camera.
I looked at Feroz Mahal, a tall and burly Punjabi man with an “I Love Canada” lanyard around his neck, from across the room and slowly gravitated towards him.
He drove a tractor trailer thousands of miles from Vancouver, Canada and somehow wound up here in the mosque to be among the congregants of Masjid Ash-Shaheed, a predominantly African American mosque that is so inviting to anyone that comes inside that the hospitality is practically intoxicating.
Feroz, 35, is a jolly guy that spends his days driving trucks, oftentimes alone on the road for days, to provide a stable life for his wife and three children – two boys, 10 and 4, and a girl, 7.
“I miss them, but I do this because I’m able to provide for them a good education and a good house,” he says as he takes off his baseball cap to scratch his head. “Plus how else am I going to afford the Cadillac in my driveway?”
Masjid Ash-Shaheed is nestled on a huge parcel of land in a quiet part of Charlotte. The mosque follows the teachings of the late Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and everyone is eager to make you feel at home the moment you step inside. But as I was sitting at the table enjoying my dinner among the mosque’s congregants, I paused to look across the room again to see Mahal cracking jokes with people he was sitting next to.
Feroz has been in the trucking business for over 15 years. He was driving his truck from Canada all the way down to North Carolina, when the trailer he was hauling filled with electronics broke down right outside of Charlotte. There aren’t many Muslims in his line of work but he met one at a highway truck stop who told him about Masjid Ash-Shaheed a few highway exits over.
Speaking to Feroz made me constantly think about my father. My father for many years worked as a sales manager for a baking company, and would often be on the road 5-6 days a week traveling to meet with clients across the country. He never enjoyed a single minute being away from us, but my brothers and I always knew he was making that struggle so we didn’t have to.
I had to ask Feroz more about his lifestyle, because echoing in my mind was the daily grind my father put himself through to provide for me and my four brothers growing up. Mahal said what gets him through his job is his loving family. His wife and kids are incredibly supportive of what he does, and sometimes they tag along with him on his long ventures across Canada and the United States. I begin to think about the times I would spend my summer vacations as a kid sitting shotgun next to my dad as we explored the countryside and played dumb word games along the way.
Feroz said being away from his family is always tough, but the perks of his job validate the sacrifice. In a given month, he can rack up anywhere between $12,000-15,000. Plus, he typically will spend 7-10 days on the road, followed by a week or two where he’s at home doing nothing, but spending time with his family. In a given year, he probably spends 8 months on the road and 4 months at home.
After prayer, Bassam and I asked if we can check out his truck, which was parked outside of the hotel he was staying at near the mosque. He invites us inside the rig as he starts the truck’s engine that roars in the empty parking lot. I open the door and grab onto a rail to pull myself up inside to chat with Feroz some more.
Feroz gives me the “MTV Cribs presentation” of his truck as he pulls open a curtain behind his driver’s seat to showcase a bunk bed inside. Typical trucks he drives can come equipped with bathrooms, full size kitchens and televisions to pass the time on those long grueling hauls on the road.
I sit on the bottom portion of the bunkbed as Bassam sits shotgun snapping pics of Mahal as he talks about his truck. He’s a little camera shy, but quickly warmed up to the photos. His eyes quietly lit up when I asked him more and more about his truck.
Mahal seems like a man at peace with his own lifestyle. When you love your family, he told me, you are willing to do anything to give them a better life. I paused again to think about my dad, because the life that blessed me with this opportunity to chat with Feroz during this road trip, was in more ways than one facilitated by my dad.
