A Room He Couldn’t Enter

My stepdad didn’t give me my name. But after 9/11, he made it seem like something I should be afraid to carry.

I converted to Islam shortly before the attacks. I was studying Arabic and the Quran, wearing kufis, and exploring a faith I’d chosen for myself. The language interested me. So did discovering that the name I’d answered to my entire life held a meaning I was only beginning to understand.

Then came the suggestion that I should be careful walking around like that.

I understood what was happening in America. I also understood what had happened inside our home. The most violence I’d experienced had come at the hands of Christians, mainly him. Yet my kufi, my reading, and my Arabic name were being treated as the things that might put me in danger.

I couldn’t say all of that aloud then.

I can now.

Here was a man with beautiful Black skin. Strong. Powerful. When he entered a room, his presence commanded authority. He had the kind of strength that could have made a boy feel safe. But behind closed doors, he was the devil in our home, spreading hate and envy where there should have been love. He knew how to command a room, but not how to care for the people inside his own house. What a waste.

My Mom and Dad named me Rashad. That name carried something that they believed would protect me. That’s why I love my sister’s name, Semirra. It sounds like someone who will save your life.

I felt pride where my stepdad wanted me to feel concern. I recognized another attempt to make me question myself, another way of reaching into something that belonged to me. A thief in the day and night. Exhausting.

That is why I carry my name with pride. It was mine before he tried to make me fear it. I stand before him in name, in body, in spirit—in every sense of the word. He could command a room, but he could never decide who I was. He didn’t give me my name. He will not define it.

He didn’t understand everything happening inside the boy he was trying to break. I was reading. Watching. Forming judgments I couldn’t safely announce.

I was moving chess pieces on a board he didn’t know existed.

He was a master of manipulation. I’ll give him that. But he mistook my performance for belief. I let him think I was on his side, that he was my hero. I smiled. I laughed. Those things became a kind of safety. He saw loyalty. I was protecting myself.

That doesn’t mean he left me whole. There were shattered pieces. Scattered thoughts. But my mind was never a place he could break completely. I gathered what I could and built a room he couldn’t enter. He had no idea how much of me was alive behind that door.

I knew I had to leave. My name was mine. My body was sacred. This temple was mine, too. I couldn’t protect it by staying. I had to get away from him physically, and I had to get away spiritually. When I turned 18, I left.

And there was the irony: I was being recruited for a Navy CTI path, to train in Arabic. The same language he had warned me about was becoming part of the life I was choosing beyond him.

I’ve questioned my beliefs many times since then. I’m still questioning them. But I remember the importance of being allowed to search, especially when the people claiming authority over you have given you reasons to look elsewhere.

Returning to Arabic meant returning to that curiosity, too.

There was a young man who wanted to understand.

I gave him room to continue.