Meet Ammar. Pictured below, he’s the one to the right of me with his hand on the table, to be sure.
Here we are, in, oh, say, 1989, celebrating my birthday. Look at those crew sweatshirts!
And we were the best of friends. Can’t you tell? Your best friend sits by you when you blow out your birthday candles while you are growing up.
He grew up in Urbana, with four siblings, just down the street from me. His family is Jordanian-Palestinian. His father, Munir, is one of the most decorated and accomplished particle physicists in the world. He works in nanotechnology. His mother is Hutaf, who raised these children right. Without naming names, they are nurses, electrical engineers, computer scientists, graduates of MIT, Stanford, UIUC. They are neighbors. They are parents. They are spouses.
They are Americans.
Here we are again in the summer of 1990. Ammar, along with his brother Osama, and I played on the same Little League team — Busey Bank Sunnycrest. A few years before, my brother played on the same team as their older brother, Hasan. When we weren’t playing hardball, we were playing wiffle ball. Daily.
Literally, this was our “league” photo. That season meant everything to us. We kept stats. We made ourselves baseball cards. Who was Rookie of the Year? It’s still a hot debate.
I grew up in a Messianic Jewish home. For those unfamiliar — and trust me, you most likely are — that means that I am Jewish, but that my parents converted to Christianity and I was raised to believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah.
Ammar was raised in a Muslim home. Which means that, no matter how you slice it, we are supposed to be at odds. We are both of Abrahamic tradition, sure, but we were taught that the fate of our eternal souls was, perhaps, separated by ideology and mythology.
In 1991, when George H.W. Bush invaded Kuwait, Ammar and I were at the peak of our friendship. 6th grade. Same class. Best friends.
Guess which one of us ended up crying at the annual Yankee Ridge Ice Cream Social that year?
The swollen and undereducated electorate that voted Donald J. Trump into office on Tuesday come from areas of this nation where almost no Muslims live. The issue of Race got brought up with frequency over this past election cycle, as it did the past two cycles as well, more than ever.
When it came to Religion, pushing back against Trump’s call to block all Muslims from entering the U.S. seemed like an afterthought for too many Democrats. There’s a reason for that; no matter how you choose to view it, there aren’t enough Muslims or Muslim-allies in America to register a complaint. Not one that is going to sway a politician anyhow.
There are roughly 3.3 million Muslims living in America. Of those, almost 98% of them are living in urban centers. Very few live in rural areas.
The Black vote, the Latino vote, the LGBTQ vote, the Millennial vote, the Rural vote, the Urban vote, the Female vote — all of them got graphics to post on social media, with pundits pointing to exhibit A and point B and qualification C as to the reasons why they were important in electing Trump to office above Hillary.
But not the Muslim vote. They comprise just 1% of the population, and of that, it’s hard to say just how many of them are able to even cast ballots.
And as a result, there is very little humanity between them and the white folks who simply just… don’t know any personally.
By now, they are apparitions, ghosts — just stories, misrepresented through churches and town halls and diners for the past millennia, and now, through the television, radio, and finally, the internet and its social media madness. Sean Hannity gets to hemorrhage. Ann Coulter gets to vomit. And frequently, the same voters who claim Christ as their Savior get to shit all over them, as though they weren’t literally family, going all the way back, as both religions were borne of the same goddamned father, but of different mothers, as the story goes.
Lest you forget, these religions are family.
Here we are again, eating ice cream. Laughing, about who knows what? Ammar was likely high-fiving Albert, or Justin, or whoever after he was asking, “Is Mark Grace the best first basemen ever?”
This past month was a joyful one for me and Ammar. We were die-hard Cubs fans growing up, and we’re die-hard Cubs fans to the day. Every game of the playoffs, we messaged our way through it. We joked about him flying over for a Series game. What’s $5000.00 between friends?
Tense moments, joyful moments, painful moments. When the Cubs dropped two in a row to the Dodgers, we talked each other through the drama, because that is what best friends do. When they went down 3-1 to Cleveland, Ammar just said, “You know, somehow, I’m still not worried.” And I believed him. Because he is my best friend.
When Bryant threw to Rizzo for the final out, we were each other’s first text. You know the kind: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!”
If you voted for Trump on Tuesday, you’d be surprised to learn that I likely do not blame you. I see you as scared as anyone, and ignorant about the kind of fear and mistrust that someone like Ammar and his family must manage on a daily basis.
Your vote does not make me angry. It makes me sad.
It reminds me that you likely did not grow up eating traditional Middle Eastern foods like kufta kababs and falafel from the hands of a woman like Hutaf. Or actually learning about important days for Islam, like Eid al-Fitr, which breaks the fast of Ramadan. You didn’t get to listen to a brilliant Muslim man like Munir plead with you all to go to sleep — ”stop talking, stop talking, stop talking” — yet never raising his voice, in a rich accent. One that can only sound like someone from Palestine. You never got lost with a Muslim kid trying to find the end of a creek, scaring your parents half to death in the dog days of summer, when you both came home well past bedtime. You never stayed up too late with that same Muslim kid, talking about everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to how to watch fuzzy Playboy TV on channel 98 to the discussion wherein you realized that, “Wait… Allah and God are the same thing?”
Ammar now lives in Dubai with his wife and three kids. He commutes to work in Abu Dhabi, an hour or so away, four days a week. He comes back the States to visit once every other year. A trip to Urbana, and a trip to the Bay area, where he and his wife met and started their family.
Here they are, celebrating Eid al-Fitr:
My fears are vast for a Trump presidency. Those fears encompass so many groups of marginalized individuals, that to address them all here and now would take far more words than I am allotted. But all I can do is think of Ammar, and his family, and our friendship.
Will he have to wear identification? A badge? A number? Just like my ancestors once did at Dachau and Auschwitz? Will I get to see him again? Did you really just vote a person into office that campaigned on the idea that he would potentially deny him the right to come back home?
I didn’t. And if you did, you have to sleep with that. Not me.
Ammar is still my best friend, in a lot of ways. My family has plans to visit him in a couple of years, actually. Perhaps we will go in summer, for his 40th.
Your best friend sits by you when you blow out your birthday candles while you are growing up.
I hope to know his children as they grow, as well.
Here is his son. He is a young ballplayer.
After all, his father is an American.
Like you.