Rais Bhuiyan, American
If someone shot you in the face and left you for dead, would you try to save his life?
BY
MIKE SAGER
DEC 5, 2011
Misty Keasler
A small brown man with one good eye is driving through his Texas-sized apartment development in northeastern Dallas, on the way to dinner. It is September, nearly a week after the tenth anniversary of 9/11. He's chosen to take his second car, easier on gas than his BMW, a five-year-old Toyota Matrix he was stuck with after cosigning a loan for a friend, a seemingly small act of Muslim charity gone puzzlingly awry, another jarring cultural lesson to add to the many he's learned since coming to America.
The night is dark, with hard rain and gusting winds, an epic cloudburst to wash away temporarily the summer's lingering triple-digit heat wave. In truth the man is a bit agitated. Thirty-eight years old, a native of Bangladesh — a former elite-military-academy cadet, Air Force pilot trainee, minimart clerk, telephone solicitor, waiter, and computer-programming student — he has been working around the clock, holding down the equivalent of two jobs. His time is at a premium. With nobody to clean or cook for him, he sometimes forgets to eat. There are phone calls to make, memos to write, an organization to create, a Web site to manage ... and so many interviews to do, more and more lately, which doesn't actually bother him, because at the time of his shooting he was pretty much ignored. Over the last few months he's lost twenty pounds.
In one of his roles, Rais Bhuiyan (pronounced
Race Boo-yon) is a six-figure-a-year supervisor of global IT for a travel company, responsible for teams of systems engineers in India, the Philippines, and England. He lives in a planned community called the Village Apartments. There are jogging paths and soccer fields, cooking classes, even a country club. Most afternoons he strolls beside a man-made lake with its central fountain, taking in the utopian panoply. The ducks like corn. The squirrels like sunflower seeds. They eat out of his hands. For the fish he brings a piece of bread; no creature unconsidered.
The other cap he wears is newer and a little less well defined. As the founder of an organization called World Without Hate, he's dedicated himself to an international crusade against hate crime — spreading the word, offering education, trying to build a fund to assist victims, working to make his adopted country, in the words of a visiting speaker earlier this afternoon at his mosque in Richardson, Texas, "a Judeo/Christian/Muslim land where all people can live together in peace."
It's proving to be a little more difficult than he'd imagined.
In 2001, ten days after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers, Bhuiyan suffered a terrorist attack of his own.
He'd been living in Dallas only four months, having moved from Manhattan, seeking a more affordable lifestyle. A year earlier, he'd experienced impossible good luck — being one of the thousands of winners among the millions who'd applied to the U. S. A.'s national green-card lottery of 2000. Even though he'd been cautioned by his friends in the immigrant community that the natives in Texas could be somewhat hostile, Bhuiyan had his heart set on bringing over his fiancée and starting a family as soon as he could. Given the promise by a friend of a job and a place to live, and with plenty of opportunities for continued education, it seemed like a perfect fit. He was already twenty-seven. He was ready to start his life.
Just after noon on September 21, Bhuiyan was working an extra shift at a Texaco station — subbing for a friend — when a thirty-one-year-old meth addict and father of four with a shaved head, a long criminal record, and an array of racist tats did what he said "millions of Americans wanted to do" after 9/11 — he walked into the minimart where Bhuiyan was standing behind the counter and, from a distance of about four feet, took his revenge with a sawed-off shotgun.
Mark Stroman would later tell police he was hunting Arabs. His claim to have a sister who died in one of the Twin Towers was never confirmed. Bhuiyan was one of three victims. The others were immigrants from Pakistan and India. Neither was Arab. Neither survived. Between them they left behind two wives and six children.
Stroman was tried for the murder of the Indian, a forty-nine-year-old Hindu named Vasudev Patel. That shooting, also in a convenience store, at close range with a .44-caliber pistol, was caught on tape. Bhuiyan's place of work, in a bad part of Dallas called Buckner, had no security monitoring. After reading in the newspaper about the murder of the forty-six-year-old Pakistani, Waqar Hasan, in a grocery store he owned, Bhuiyan dreamed for three successive nights that he'd be killed in similar fashion. He pleaded with his boss/friend/roommate to reinstate the cameras — or at the very least to hire a security guard.
On the fourth morning, Stroman entered the Buckner Food Mart wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a red bandanna tied around his lower face like an outlaw in an old cowboy movie, the kind Bhuiyan and his seven brothers and sisters used to watch in their comfortable middle-class household in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in the years after George Harrison's landmark aid concert. (Bhuiyan's father was a government telecommunications engineer who spent much of his year working in the United Arab Emirates.)
When Stroman entered the store carrying his sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun, Bhuiyan figured he was about to experience his second robbery. The first time, he thought the robber was trying to sell him a handgun — locals were always trying to sell him TVs and watches and other stolen merch.
Bhuiyan asked, "How much?"
The man cocked the hammer.
This time, Bhuiyan was prepared. He did the sensible thing and immediately emptied the cash register. Per his boss's instructions, there was only about $150 in the drawer. "Sir, here's the money," Bhuiyan said. "Please don't shoot me."
Then Stroman asked, "Where are you from?"
Oddly, it was not an unusual question in the days after September 11. Just the day before, in fact, Bhuiyan had been talking about Islam and geography with a couple of friendly police officers who always stopped by for sodas and snacks — they were interested to learn that the religion was practiced by people who weren't even Arab.
Bhuiyan heard an explosion. At first it seemed far away; one of the random gunshots typical of the neighborhood. Then his body was jerked back and he felt "a million bee stings" onhis face. He looked down and saw blood pouring as if from an open faucet on his right side, and he thought,
Maybe my brain is going to come out pretty soon; I have to keep it from spilling out. He applied both palms to his slippery head. He wondered,
Am I dying today?
Then he hit the deck.
Stroman showed no remorse at trial. In 2002 he was found guilty and sentenced to death for the shooting of Patel. His was one of the first such cases to be tried under the state's new hate-crime statutes, created partly in response to the death of James Byrd Jr., an African-American man from Texas who was beaten, urinated upon, bound by his ankles with a heavy logging chain, and dragged behind a pickup truck for three miles, causing decapitation.
Bhuiyan survived with thirty-eight pellets embedded in his face, scalp, and eye. Because he had no health insurance and no one to drive him consistently to treatment, he lost the sight in his right eye — he now sees only blobs of light. The pellets irritate the nerves under his skin. He doesn't sleep on his right side. Getting a haircut can be agony if the barber isn't careful.
Since the shooting, he has had two of the most bothersome pellets removed — a process that involved much yanking, like an old-fashioned dentist pulling a tooth, and copious amounts of blood. The worst piece was embedded in the center of his forehead. A devout Muslim, he prays five times a day. Every time his head touched the floor, the pain was excruciating. The lead sphere was flattened into the shape of a pancake by the impactagainst his skull. His mother always told him he was hardheaded. Now he knew for sure. He chose not to keep the souvenir.
After Stroman was remanded to death row, Bhuiyan got on with his life the best he could. He had no car, no money, tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, and no place to live — the friend and employer who had brought him here made him feel like a burden. Even so, Bhuiyan was too proud to go home. He'd given up his future in Bangladesh's more elite circles to try his hand at the American dream. He'd promised success to his beloved mother and father, who'd backed his decisions and happily financed his whim. Meanwhile, his fiancée had moved along; she could no longer wait. There was nothing left for him.
Bhuiyan stayed in Dallas, living on couches. For a long time he was afraid to go outside. He probably suffered from post-traumatic stress, but couldn't afford counseling. In 2003, after much prayer, he decided to seek employment as a waiter in a restaurant. What better way to reacclimate himself to people, right? He started at Olive Garden. Along the way, the Red Cross determined he was not eligible for payment from its 9/11 fund and could not give him anything but free food, which he adamantly declined. Later, with the help of a friendly doctor, Bhuiyan's medical bills were paid by a state-run victims'-compensation fund. With most of his debt cleared, he was able to open a new bank account, rent an apartment, apply for credit, buy a car.
By November of 2009, after attending for free a computer school owned by a member of his mosque (and starting a company to promote the restaurant software he designed with his teacher), Bhuiyan felt strong and flush enough to keep what he'd thought was a deathbed promise to Allah: to make the hajj to Mecca.
Because his father had already been three times, he took hismother, who had never made the sacred pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam. The pair stayed an entire month, praying among the millions of faithful.
Bhuiyan returned to Dallas a different man. "I could feel that I'm not worried about myself anymore," he would later explain. "Instead, I started thinking about this guy, Mark Stroman, who is waiting behind bars for the last nine years to die."
"He's a human being like me," Bhuiyan remembers thinking. "He made a mistake. Definitely it's a terrible mistake, no doubt about that. But in Koran it says very clearly that if you're in a situation like mine, either you can ask for justice, you can ask for financial compensation, or you can forgive. And once you forgive, that means he is forgiven; he is not supposed to go and serve time behind bars. Once I forgive him, what is the point of punishing him again? That is Islamic teaching. I suffered the worst I could. These two women who lost their husbands, and their children, they suffered, too. But there is nothing we can get now by killing Mark Stroman. He must be saved."
(Bhuiyan on phone) Lara Solt/The Dallas Morning News/AP Photo; (Stroman) Texas Department of Criminal Justice/AP Photo
Polite and somewhat impish, with an endearingly bashful smile and a musical South Asian lilt, Bhuiyan set out to implement a public campaign for Stroman. He got busy on the Internet, doing research. He attended fundraising programs, listened to speakers, began to build a network. Finally he met a professor at Southern Methodist University, Rick Halperin, who had a long history of battle against the death penalty in Texas. Over the last decade, despite a dip in violent crime, the Lone Star State has averaged twenty-four executions per year, the highest rate in the modern history of the death penalty.
Halperin is the former chairman of the board of Amnesty International U. S. A. With his help, on May 16, 2011 — about eighteen months after Bhuiyan's hajj and his pledge to save Stroman — an article was published in
The Dallas Morning News: BANGLADESH IMMIGRANT SEEKS STAY OF EXECUTION FOR MAN WHO SHOT HIM IN 9/11 ATTACK.
In a longish op-ed piece that ran a few days later in the
Morning News, Bhuiyan called for a reduction of Stroman's death sentence to life without parole.
"I forgave Stroman many years ago," Bhuiyan wrote. "I believe he was ignorant and not capable of distinguishing between right and wrong; otherwise, he wouldn't have done what he did... I believe that by sparing Stroman's life, we will give him a chance to realize, through time and maturity, that hate doesn't bring a peaceful solution to any situation. Perhaps, if given the opportunity, it might generate such a positive influence on him that he may want to become a spokesman against hate crimes."
There was only one problem: Stroman was due to be executed in exactly two months. The date was set: July 20, 2011.
Overnight, Rais Bhuiyan became internationally known — the subject of articles, TV interviews, blogs, and news reports. Yet he got nowhere in his quest. With the clock ticking down toward Stroman's execution, Bhuiyan bounced back and forth between Stroman's lawyers and state officials. Mired in law and red tape, Bhuiyan finally found an attorney to take his case pro bono.
Together with an anti-death-penalty group called GRACE, Khurrum Wahid pushed Bhuiyan's case through the state courts on grounds of victims' rights.But as it became clear thatany thought of commutation in Governor Rick Perry's Texas was folly, Bhuiyan's team sought at least to engineer a face-to-face meeting with Stroman.
On the day of the scheduled execution, with eleventh-hour legal wrangling still proceeding in the courts, Bhuiyan made one last, unsuccessful attempt to call the prison in Huntsville and speak to Stroman.
Moments later he called an Israeli filmmaker who'd been following Stroman for years. Ilan Ziv was at the prison, talking with Stroman. Ziv said that Stroman was expressing remorse for his crimes, his racist beliefs. He'd been especially touched by Bhuiyan's unselfish campaign to have his sentence commuted.
Ziv offered to facilitate a conversation via speakerphone. Bhuiyan accepted. Late that afternoon, his legal team gathered around. This is part of their exchange, as taped by Ziv:
"Hey, man," Stroman said in his heavy southern accent. "Thank you for everything you've been trying to do for me. You are inspiring. Thank you from the heart, dude."
"Mark, you should know that I am praying to God, the most compassionate and gracious. I forgive you and I do not hate you. I never hated you — "
"Hey, Rais, they are telling me to hang up now. I will try to call in a minute."
The line went dead. Bhuiyan looked frustrated. "I never got the chance to tell him
whyI forgive him," he lamented. "That was the whole point, and I didn't get to say it." He looked out the window. "This is
not what I wanted."
At 8:53 P.M., Mark Stroman was put to death by lethal injection.
Rain drums the roof of Bhuiyan's Toyota hatchback as he maneuvers through his vast apartment complex. It is three days before the tenthanniversary of his shooting, which he has since recognized as one of those blessings from Allah that sometimes come wrapped in the cloak of misfortune.
After a long and emotional final interview, Bhuiyan and I have set out for dinner. He drives past the lake. Headlights glare off slick asphalt, wipers drag and screech across the windshield. Since Stroman's execution, and on through the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary, Bhuiyan's career as a spokesman has taken off. Each week brings more inquiries and interviews. Nearly every weekend he is jetting somewhere to give a speech. Recently, he participated in a march and interfaith service in a Jewish temple in Washington, D. C. In November he will speak at two different Amnesty International conferences.
His paying work aside, with the attendant complications and office politics, he has a million plates in the air: Helping Stroman's down-on-her-luck twenty-something daughter and grandchild. Helping Stroman's son when he gets out of prison, where he is serving time for aggravated robbery. Helping the widows and children of Stroman's other victims. Navigating the fraught world of donations and volunteers. Working with a lawyer to legally charter his organization. Answering tons of e-mail; working on a book; managing all the media requests ...
"I'm really confused right now," he is saying. His voice is troubled; his hands are at ten and two on the steering wheel. "I'm thinking,
What should I do? I know my destiny is to move toward helping people full time. But is it the right time to quit my job? Because right now I have the energy. I'm single, I have time, the momentum is there. But I only have savings enough to last three months. Maybe it is smarter to wait for a year and save — "
As Bhuiyan speaks, a tow truck to our left pulls away abruptly from the curb with its payload. Jacked up high, with huge tires and lots of lights mounted on its gleaming chrome exoskeleton, it is heading directly for Bhuiyan's left front fender. Clearly the driver doesn't see us.
At the last moment, Bhuiyan sees him and swerves to his right, just out of the way. The driver lays on his horn. Bhuiyan waves feyly out the window —
so sorry, no worries — and continues on.
A few hundred yards down the street, we stop at the complex's exit. We sit in silence, waiting for an ebb in the traffic on a large and busy avenue.
Suddenly the tow truck reappears. It pulls up to our left, beside Bhuiyan. The driver guns the engine. He trains a bright halogen light down into Bhuiyan's face and unleashes a fusillade of curses.
Bhuiyan immediately raises both palms. He apologizes profusely in a supplicating voice. "I am
so sorry, I did not see!"
The curses continue.
"Turn off the light,
motherfucker!" I holler.
"Yes!" Bhuiyan hollers, joining in. "Turn off the
damn light!"
We bellow back and forth for a few long seconds. Then the driver yells, "You're a fucking
jackass!" There is a certain finality in his tone. He rolls forward into traffic, pulling a smaller pickup behind him.
A man more experienced in the subtle ways of American culture might have known at this point that the altercation was pretty much over. Or maybe Bhuiyan did know but couldn't help himself. He might be five foot six, but he was trained in a military academy for much of his youth, after all. Or maybe he is only human.
In any case, as the tow truck begins pulling away, Rais Bhuiyan finally boils over. He sticks his head fully out the car window into the dark and stormy night and yells, in a loud but somehow still endearingly innocent-sounding voice:
"YOU ARE THE JACKASS,
TOO!!!!!"
For one long beat, Bhuiyan's words hang in the humid air.
Then the tow truck's brake lights turn angry red.
The back-up lights come on, white and bright.
The rig reverses direction.
"Go, go, go!" I yell.
And like the fighter pilot he once hoped to be, Bhuiyan punches the gas and the Toyota fishtails across several lanes of traffic.
"Dumb redneck Texans!" he hisses.
Bhuiyan eats his roll, chewing thoughtfully. "Now I feel bad that I raised my voice. I'm feeling guilty right now. I'm feeling pressure: Why I could not control myself. It's not me."
I remind him he's been through a lot. He tells me about hearing Stroman interviewed in Ziv's documentary footage. "Mark was telling that in this kind of situation he was taught to fight back and do worse to somebody than what they did to you. That was Mark Stroman's teaching."
He butters the last piece of his roll. "There's a lot of Mark Stroman on the street. In this country and also in the world there's a lot of hate. If you don't like my color or my faith or my accent, well, I cannot change because that is the way I was born. If you don't like me, that's okay. Just don't cause any pain or suffering.
"In this kind of situation I always feel scared that they are going to, you know, pull gun," he says. "It happened in Dallas a couple of times. People killed on the highway. One because he was driving too slow."
He doesn't mention the pellets in his own face.
"The low-hanging fruit is
Can I change myself? It doesn't cost anything. Change your vision. Change your mentality. It's important to let people know not to hate each other because they're different. If you really want to hate something, hate that attitude."
