Dear Hassan CaseHassan jan,A couple more days to your birthday. Twenty-one years old. I don’t have a gift for you this year; what I have is far from it, in fact. But I owe this to you, Hassan, and this debt has been overdue for nearly twenty-one years.
Ali was infertile. I am your biological father.When Sofia died giving birth to Amir, she tore out a part of me and took it with her. For months I searched for something to fill the void with, something that would allow me to love again, but I was unhinged by grief. And in a moment of weakness, I betrayed Sofia and Ali with my unfaithfulness, both you and Amir with my silence, and myself for going against everything that I stood for. 9 months later, I watched with hopeful but apprehensive eyes as you were brought into this world. I watched as you flashed your brilliant smile at a world that did not deserve someone like you. And when I looked into your green eyes, I saw the part of me that was noble and virtuous, the part that had become sullied by my betrayal. I knew that I loved you, though this love was something just out of reach that I could not fully embrace.
I think about the day you left us once in a while. I still don’t fully understand why you and Ali had to leave, and perhaps I never will. I did not believe for a second that you stole the watch; I only asked you if you did because Amir wanted me to punish you for some reason, and I wanted to make it clear that I would do no such thing. Never could I have anticipated that it would go spiraling out of my control from there… Seeing you leave had brought back a sensation that I’d lost touch with- pure, paralyzing fear. The first time I’d felt fear like that was when Ali was diagnosed with polio; I couldn’t sleep for days, I was so afraid of losing him. I would give anything to see you both again, but it was fear that the reason for both of you leaving was that Ali had enough of living a lie that had kept me from seeing you. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore. He had played my games for far too long. And now that I am bed-ridden, it is useless to even hope to see you both.
I live in America now, with Amir. 6 years away from Afghanistan have made me see true courage in a different light. As I look back on the times when I stood up for what I thought was right, I find that they mean nothing to me, for I have failed the ultimate test of bravery: to accept and embrace the fact that you are my son. I wanted to love you openly, I really did, but my pride could not concede. My strength and bravery was all I was to people, and if I had admitted to my infidelity, everything that I’d tried so hard to build would’ve come crashing down. I had the strength to uproot trees and wrestle bears, but when it came to transgressing social boundaries, my strength failed me. Real courage is to be able to live life on your own terms,
Sixty-two percent of the American people know a Muslim and a Jew are Muslims, compared to 63 percent of non-Muslims. That the country is still divided about who should be the next president does not, quite the contrary.
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And so, I hope President Obama’s leadership is on track to have the nation on the right track.
As for what is really happening around the country in the last few months, I’m surprised at the number of Muslim activists, mosques, and Muslims in our country who feel betrayed. That number could more than double every year for one whole year, and in the next few weeks will likely grow as well. Even if there is one million Muslims in today’s Muslim population and that is not even a statistically significant percentage, there is now a large, growing number within the Muslim community. And I think, as I read reports with the White House and as we read the other major news releases, we’ve gotten a sense of how much the country feels under-represented.
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Not that I have any doubts about this. But it makes me believe that there were no such incidents while I was in the U.S. as a result of this election season and that there is a real fear amongst Muslims that this fear will grow even more widespread. And even if those fears will not have been realized, those Muslim-Americans who still want an American dream are feeling the same way. I’m not confident enough in the ability either of those two things to reverse this.
First and foremost, I would have had my head in the sand in January and February with what I have now been able to see firsthand. You’d expect it to be a difficult time for this country where many people are willing to say they are tired of this cycle of violence and who would have ever hope to get anything done about it. But you’d be missing the point. For months now, the people of Arizona have been saying “no” but that has moved the election, with the Obama victories and with his new allies in Washington all but gone.
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Now people across the United States are beginning to ask: Why did it take so long for Trump to get to the nomination? What is wrong with the Republican Party? If the Republican Party is not on track to break free of its historic tradition of supporting the rule and control of white middle class Americans, what has become of the American dream?
Now we have a president-elect who was not elected with the intention to actually do anything about gun violence, whom he has appointed to head the Department of Health and Human Services and the Interior Department, who’s threatened to appoint a White House commission tasked with improving our mental health system, then in fact appointing a group of bureaucrats to do that job. These are folks who have served our