Alright, I can finally admit it to myself. I am a Muslim. I used to be one of those people who felt a strong dislike of Muslims, until I fell in love with one. It's funny how these things happen, huh? My name is Solomon Kingsley Henderson, although many of my friends have taken to calling me "King Suleiman" in recent times. It's my Muslim name, though it's not on my passport or anything. My wife Khadija Abdullah certainly likes it. She's a lovely lady of Somali descent who saved my life back in the City of Buffalo, New York. We're the proud parents of two sons, Alexander Khaled Henderson and George Ishmail Henderson. We live in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York. Just another all-American family in the City.
Anyhow, I got a story to share with you. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1984. The son of an Irish-American father and African-American mother. My father Cullen Henderson is an atheist and my mother Janice Brown Henderson is a lapsed Catholic who turned to Agnosticism. Yeah, those are my parents. They met as students at Northeastern University in the mid-1980s, got married and had little old me. Growing up as a biracial man in Boston wasn't easy, even though it's a progressive town.
The City of Boston has a long history of progressivism. Deval Patrick, the first Black man elected Governor of Massachusetts is a resident of Boston, and a Harvard University graduate, come to think of it. I endured taunts and jeers from both Blacks and whites because of my skin color, and mixed parentage. To the Blacks, I was too white and to the whites I was too Black. Enduring these torments and overcoming them helped make me strong. I graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Boston with a Bachelor's degree in business administration in 2004, and afterwards, I decided to join the United States Marine Corps.
After 9/11, I found myself filled with anger at the Arab world for this cowardly attack on American soil. I remember watching videos shot around various countries in the Muslim world, from Pakistan to Lebanon, from Kuwait to Indonesia, showing Muslims cheering for the terrorists who killed thousands of Americans when they destroyed the Twin Towers. No lie, I was mad as hell, that's why I joined the U.S. armed forces. I wanted revenge for the deaths of innocent Americans. I served in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2008, then in Iraq from 2009 to 2010. I wasn't raised in any particular religion but in my mind, I saw myself as one of the Crusaders of olden times, venturing to the Middle East to defend Christianity, Western civilization along with truth, peace and the American way of life.
When I returned to the United States of America in the summer of 2010, I was a changed man. You see, every war is different and every war is the same. I lost friends in the Middle East, and I also saw some things which I shall never forget. Once, during an ambush in Baghdad, I almost got killed by a Taliban fighter. Guess who saved my life? The one person in my platoon whom I treated like shit. Antoine Hussein, a Lebanese-American Christian guy whom I didn't trust because of his Arab origins. I'm ashamed to say that back in those days, I distrusted anything Arab, and anything Muslim. It wouldn't matter to me if the Arab person standing before me was Christian, Muslim or even atheist, I didn't trust simply because they were Arab. Yeah, I was a racist in those days. Well, what Hussein had done changed how I looked at the Arab world, and how I looked at my fellow human beings.
I returned to the United States of America a changed man, like I said before, but I was a shell of my former self. Before I went to war, I was a six-foot-three, 250-pound, light-skinned Black man with emerald eyes, curly hair and honey-colored skin. When I returned, I was a battle-scarred and extremely bitter man. Losing friends will do that to you. Also, seeing innocent men and women blown apart simply because they're different, well, that's not something I could forget, no matter how many beers I drank. I returned to my family, and tried to resume my old life. Originally I wanted to go to Law School and become a kick-ass attorney. Growing up, I practically worshipped Johnny Cochrane, the brilliant African-American attorney who successfully defended ex-NFL star and actor turned social pariah Orenthal James Simpson.
The faces of the men and women I killed in the Middle East haunted my dreams, and I sought help. Psychiatrists, priests, shamans, nobody could help me. I lost my job, became a drunkard, and ended up homeless. Yeah, that's right. The war hero who received medals from Uncle Sam for defending America during the War on Terrorism ended up homeless on the streets of Buffalo, New York. I became one of those smelly, dirty people you see on a street corner, begging for change. My family had abandoned me, deciding that I wasn't worth the trouble. The society I fought so hard to defend had basically forsaken me. I went to the Middle East to fight against the Arabs because I believed that all Americans and Westerners are decent, fair-minded people and all Muslims are terrorists who hate women, hate freedom and despise those different from themselves. Yet it's Western society that cast me out like so much garbage and turned its back on me. Oh irony of ironies.
One day, I got into a brawl with another homeless guy and he and his friends cornered me and stabbed me. I ended up in the trash, bleeding to death, basically. They discarded me there, leaving me for dead. Yeah, I thought I was done for. I never gave much stock to religion, any religion. I didn't believe in Jesus Christ or Buddha or Mohammed. I thought all religion was nonsense. Yet as I lay dying, I said a prayer to a God whose existence I had never given credence to, and begged Him to save me. When I opened my eyes, I was at the Buffalo General Medical Center. No, wait. There was one more thing.
