Personal Narrative

Although I have been influenced by many events throughout the course of my 16 years upon this great green earth, none of my many experiences have had such a profound impact on who I am and who I would become as this singular experience did. 

To understand this story, one must first understand the time period in which I grew up in. I grew up in a nation at war, a nation in which it was commonplace to see disfigured men and women walking the streets of our great cities, and common place for us children to hear of soldiers fighting and dying in strange lands far away from our sheltered suburban homes.  In Sixth grade we were boys and girls slowly making our way into the world of men and women, and we began reading and observing our world with our newfound adult eyes.  What we saw shocked us.  All that we saw was war, and hatred.  We began questioning, “Why did people hate us for being American?” and the answers that were received from the adults who were supposed to educate us, and guide us to becoming proper citizens were always a variation of “It’s because their Islamic faith tells them to hate and kill Americans.”  The witch hunt was on and we began to see it as our duty to get rid of the “Islamic threat”. 
As a boy with brown skin, I was one of the first to be accused of being Muslim, one of the first to be accused of hating America, and one of the first to be accused of wanting to kill my fellow Americans.  As a result of this, when I would walk down the halls of my school, I would hear things like “look at that dirty rag head” and “Bet you twenty bucks his Ipod has nothing but bomb making instructions”.  For a while, I resisted their taunts, and I refused to let their cruel words affect me.  However, as any bullied child knows, the façade of strength, can only temporarily withstand the destructive capabilities that a single cruel word can have on a person’s self-image and sense of self-worth.  I was no different.  Under a barrage of cruel words that were designed to hurt me and make me feel bad about myself, I began to see myself as an American hating terrorist.  But the most disturbing part was that I had begun to hate myself.  In that moment, I swore that I would end the daily torture that I endured every day in school and I began looking for another target.  Someone to take the attention away from me. 

As the days wore on, the barrage of insult seemed to never slacken, and for every happy moment, there were a hundred sad ones.  I grew more and more desperate, as I searched for another person who would be the target of the cruel words that I was now suffering.  On that fateful day, I strolled into school happy knowing that my suffering was at an end.  I had finally found someone who would be the new target of the racist bigots who had so mercilessly tormented me.  I had settled on the new kid, a boy named Mohammed, who was a devout turban wearing Sikh.  With the conclusion of the morning announcements, the day began and so to did the insults, and today was no different as I was subjected to the same insults day in and day out “Dirty terrorist”, “mud face”, “Rag head”, were just a few of the many names that were hurled in my direction.  With my heart pounding to the tempo of unseen and unheard war drums, I suddenly yelled while pointing at Mohammed, “He’s the terrorist not me!”.  A deathly silence fell over the class and as I stared at Mohammed, the boy who would take my place as the class outcast, I felt a strange sense of euphoria overtake me; I was happy someone else would suffer instead of me, and I realized that I was finally free.  No longer, would I be the one suffering under my classmates cruel words, and Mohammed would know how I felt.  My sick sense of happiness grew, as the bullies one by one began to harass Mohammed, and one by one began to leave me alone.  As the volume of taunts grew, one of the bigger bullies a boy named James, stood up and took Mohammed’s turban.  That simple yet unimaginably cruel action stunned me, and as I saw the tears well up in his eyes, I began to feel a pang of guilt over what I had done, and in that moment, a quote from history class sprung into my mind, “If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, then and only then will truth, prevail over fanaticism.”  For some reason that singular quote by the great Thomas Jefferson had sprung to the forefront of my mind, and all of a sudden an earth shaking revelation hit me.  It was a simple revelation but a momentous one none the less.  Because of my actions, a boy who had done nothing wrong was now condemned to suffer a fate worse than death, and I knew that what I had done was wrong. 

Still standing, I slowly collapsed into my chair as feelings of guilt and sorrow began to overwhelm my conscience.  As I held back tears, I silently swore to myself in a voice so low yet so full of conviction that the very heavens shook as I silently swore that never again would I allow someone to suffer, while I was able to help, and never again, would I condemn someone to suffer because of my weaknesses.  As Winston Churchill so eloquently said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  In this case my lie had traveled faster than the speed of light, and the truth had never gotten its pants on, and one month later Mohammed disappeared from the halls of my school. In a cruel twist of fate, my plan to free myself of the vicious taunts that I had suffered for so long, was the same plan that would now condemn me to suffer the vicious taunts all over again. 

But this time their taunts did not work.  I remembered the  promise I had made, and I suffered their taunts in silence, taking solace in the fact that while I was suffering someone else was not, and that simple fact gave me the motivation to hold my head high, and to not let their words change how I saw or felt about myself.

Now, as I go through the battlefield that is high school, I remember the pain that I felt as I was bullied, and more importantly, I remember the promise that I made all those years ago to never let someone suffer in silence, and to never let someone suffer because of my weakness.  I use that pain that I felt, and those promises that I made as my motivation to ensure that no one suffers from taunts that are designed to reduce them to feelings self-hatred, and that everyone who is being or has been bullied, has someone who is willing to fight for them.