Imagine that a terrorist tried to kill you. If you
could face him again, on your terms, what would you
do?
The True American tells the story
of Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladesh Air Force officer who
dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology.
But days after 9/11, an avowed "American terrorist" named
Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas
minimart where Bhuiyan has found temporary work and shoots
him, maiming and nearly killing him. Two other victims, at
other gas stations, aren’t so lucky, dying at once.
The True American traces the making of these two
men, Stroman and Bhuiyan, and of their fateful encounter. It
follows them as they rebuild shattered lives—one striving on
Death Row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull
himself up from the lowest rung on the ladder of an
unfamiliar country.
Ten years after the shooting, an
Islamic pilgrimage seeds in Bhuiyan a strange idea: if he is
ever to be whole, he must reenter Stroman's life. He longs
to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the
attack that changed their lives. Bhuiyan publicly forgives
Stroman, in the name of his religion and its notion of
mercy. Then he wages a legal and public-relations campaign,
against the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry, to have
his attacker spared from the death penalty.
Ranging
from Texas's juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd
of pilgrims at the Hajj in Mecca; from a biker bar to an
immigrant mosque in Dallas; from young military cadets in
Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel; from a wealthy
household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the
sober residences of Brownwood, Texas, The True
American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving
exploration of the American dream in its many dimensions.
Ultimately it tells a story about our love-hate relationship
with immigrants, about the encounter of Islam and the West,
about how—or whether—we choose what we become.
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