Boston‘s immigration story is too nuanced to speak about in definitive terms. Media scandalmongers essentialising Boston’s vast immigrant community in light of the Boston Marathon bombings is as nonsensical as gossipy, self-obsessed pundits blaming rap artists for inner-city crime and Marilyn Manson for youth violence.
I write this knowing that the United States is a different place now than it was at this time two weeks ago. The United States has suffered from another devastating terrorist attack, this time in my hometown of Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston is a small city. So, in our case, it is not a matter of the average Bostonian knowing someone who knows someone affected by the events of last week. This has been way more personal.
Every Bostonian who said that last week was “the worst week ever” wasn’t kidding. In my case, I grew up with marathoners who narrowly escaped the finish line explosions. I know countless people, including myself, who attended the marathon with their families and were nearby when the explosions took place.
I know people, too, who participated in the heroic rescue efforts. And I know locals who went to the same boxing club as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and others who interacted with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Cambridge school system.
I live in Dorchester and intimately know the community grieving the loss of precious eight-year-old Martin Richard. Every single friend and family member of mine living across the Boston area sat through last Friday’s city-wide lockdown. On top of it, we all know someone who lives in Watertown. Everybody here is sad.
True to Boston’s multicultural character, the bombings added another layer for many other Bostonians in our collective experience. The day after the lockdown, my friends and I had an interaction with a Hispanic man on the MBTA. He looked terrified. He told us that he wanted to shave off his beard knowing it could possibly make him look like the wrong type of immigrant.
In an instant, I stopped being able to recognise Boston. On top of it, there were soldiers patrolling through the familiar streets.
As soon as Bostonians began to breathe after the lockdown, the media began their magic: knocking at the doors of local mosques demanding to know what role it had played in Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radicalisation. Other media outlets began reporting hate crimes already taking place against Muslims in Boston. I found it particularly distressing to see an article published by Gawker titled “This Is What It’s Like to Be a Muslim in Boston Right Now” and see the familiar faces of the local Muslim youth published in it.
I write all this knowing that, in the face of the mainstream media narrative, I as a Bostonian Muslim can’t say much that will carry much weight next to the likes of New York Republican Congressman Peter King who is now calling for even heavier measures to be placed on American Muslim communities; or of a New York state senator, Greg Ball, who claims torture is an acceptable method to gather possible intelligence from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. To say that it is a little scary to be a Muslim in America right now is, at best, an understatement.
At the same time, I feel compelled to tell everybody in the world that a different side of Boston came to surface promptly in the midst of this great tragedy: my many non-Muslim friends have given me their unequivocal love and support. I showed up to work an emotional basket case at the beginning of this week, in one of my worst professional moments.
It was raining on my commute in and I clutched a Dunkin Donuts coffee and an egg and cheese bagel (without the sausage, naturally) that had both gone cold. I walked into the building anxious that everybody would be looking at me differently and that I might even be at risk of losing my job in the foreseeable future. I felt completely out of my skin.
Not knowing how to interact with my colleagues, I took a seat in the canteen. My boss happened to be around. I can’t explain where this instinct to offload on her in that moment came from. But I’m glad I did. I had just come out of this terrible week and I needed an ear – and like a fellow Bostonian, my boss hugged me and she cried with me.
She admitted that while she hadn’t realised that I might be dealing with this added layer, she made sure to make me feel like I belonged, and, most importantly, that I feel safe. For the rest of the day, my colleagues came to me telling me that they were worried about me.
Why I was surprised by this interaction with my boss, I have no idea, because this is our small-city attitude: we take care of our own. Long before the marathon bombings, many Bostonians were well aware of the ugliness of racism and have been speaking out against Islamophobia. Boston is a city where reactionary racism has no place.
For as long as I’ve known her, my beloved friend from Southie has been waiving her finger in the air, hollering and promising me: “If somethin’ ever happens to you, your family, or your community, I’m gonna go fuckin’ NUTS!!” She is still standing by my side.
The vigil held at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Centre was attended by several local faith communities, Occupy activists, and my dear friends who all wanted to show their solidarity. People in Boston won’t tolerate the hate crimes. In our very fragile moment, countless instances have already given me a sense of safety. Even in the midst of this crisis, I feel protected.
I can’t consider it pure chance that overlooking the Boston Marathon finish line, the insignia on the Boston Public Library asserts:
The Commonwealth Requires the Education of the People as the Safeguard of Order and Liberty.
This is the collective experience of us as Bostonians, a city made up of immigrants from all around the world: South and Central America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many of our forefathers came to this beautiful city for education and opportunity – and found it. We are a city that is good to our immigrants, because our immigrants are good to us. Multiculturalism is our everyday norm – and as beautifully demonstrated by my friends and my boss, should be our national model.
I now understand how Massachusetts “invented” America. And I hope we continue to set the national precedent. It is the responsibility of the entire country right now, including the media, in our time of crisis to not only help safeguard us from the violent threat of terrorism in the future, but to also help us safeguard and protect our local culture and custom here in Boston. I want Americans to know that the vile hate that has marred some of the 24-hour news channels since the Marathon bombings is entirely contrary to the compassion and forgiveness pouring out of the hearts of local Bostonians.
We don’t want our communities ripped apart. Instead, we want support while many of us try our best to stick together.