They Call Him Abraham:
A glimpse into a wondering warrior

by Kamal Sefeldeen

Baton Rouge, eclipsed by the fame of New Orleans further south. It means in French “Red Stick,” commemorating a red cypress tree that marked the boundaries between the hunting grounds of two Native American tribes. As the capital of the state of Louisiana, 50 percent African-American, 45 percent white and the remaining percentage Asian and Hispanic, time in Baton Rouge passes in a slow cycle, and the children of the slaves as well as the creoles, time has forgotten, but on the 18th day of November 1968 another concern was in the mind of the woman whose attention was on the baby boy she just gave birth to, his lungs screaming and announcing the arrival of the little Abraham. He would be raised by this African- American single mother until the age of eight, during a time when the African-American community was stricken with a social pandemic. Mothers, grandmothers and aunts left with the yoke of raising angry boys and destitute young girls who seldom complained of the deep hole left by questions they not dare ask, and no one offers to answer: where is my Dad?

At the age of five, little Abraham did not let anything stop him from
putting his old shoes on, after carpeting their insides with old newspapers to make up for the holes, and running outside to catch up with the older boys who armed themselves with a .22 rifle to hunt ducks, geese, rabbits in a make believe world where role models, the spectator, the apprentice and the teacher are children. There is great doubt, Abraham and his older hunters, father-want-to-be, ever encountered the red cypress tree, “the red stick,” for it was not a child’s goal. Their goal was that smile a fowl or a fish would bring to a mother’s and aunt’s and grandmother’s face. It is anything but a plateau; the skinny dog, the shack houses, the wetland, the woods, the .22 rifle, the homemade fishing rod, all were tools of the game. A game called the provider.

For Abraham, at the age of six-years-old, the old plateau became a
distant memory as the bus took him away with his mother to a new
strange world, Oakland, California.

At Oakland, the old question, the need for a father came to life. There
was no old game to cover up for the missing hole, or to patch up for the answer. At eight years of age, Abraham’s question was of a different kind, persisting with a gory face nascent from a very dark cloud annulling any hope for sunrays. Abraham gives a profound account of a heart-wrenching scene of his mother dropping him with a relative to raise him, leaving him behind with a mountain of questions, although only one that sticks in his mind, what did I do wrong? Abraham’s life seems like a journey in search of the answer. That trip commenced with him climbing the hill of anger, a temporary relief from the agony of frustration, the paucity of response, self-blame and unjustified self-guilt.

Confrontational with the unknown, Abraham was ready for a head-on
collision with anything or anyone that could be sensed as inducer of pain. “I remember when a bigger and older boy than me was causing chaos in the neighborhood, I found myself drawn by intimidation to challenge him,” says Abraham recollecting his adolescent years. When asked about why he would risk a beating from an older kid, he responded, “Because sooner or later my turn will come for him to pick on me, and I would rather get it over while my heart is ready.”

Abraham’s journey continued its full throttle until it landed him
in prison. He finally found the time to ponder, to slow down his Don
Quixotic apparition, fighting the ghoulish monster of the past in every
current object or subject. “Pondering things of an in-depth nature is how I spent a great deal of my time,” says Abraham, describing the downing effect after a long battle confronting the specter of anger. Now in prison, he has a different kind of battle, where he has to face none other than his demons.

It was during that time of pondering that Abraham’s journey of self
finding started. “I knew that my current situation could not be the end to all of who and what I was put on this earth to be,” states Abraham, who for the first time finds himself alone. Alone from the ghost of the past, alone from the blames and the deep guilt of self-hate. “Through a series of circumstances and traumas in my life, I found myself in a place of feeling very alone,” Abraham states. He was alone amidst a deafening silence in a sad valley where angels are floating over collecting and repairing what ever was left of his own wounded, angry soul. The virtual battle with the past, with the unknown, with the ghouls of betrayal, have been let go, and there is no one claiming victory or mourning the victims, the old questions that couldn’t be satisfactorily answered.

“As a child, I always had thoughts concerning the Divine, who was
God and how did my being here relate to him,” Abraham recalls. He said that the feeling of desolation that followed, the silence, caused him to really look at himself and see the real purpose of his creation. He realized that while he was seeking all the wrong answers he had encountered the one answer that would define him now forward. “From this revelation came the realization that I had not all the answers that my situation, my positioning life, demanded. Fortunately, Allah had been planning this for me since my birth…In looking back, I can see that my life was for the service of Allah. Since my eventual conversion to Islam, the transition has been mind blowing, in as much as who I have become personally, as well as who I have become to others,” says Abraham with a deep conviction.

“Although my path was one full of hurts and trauma, the end result
is such a blessed thing that I would not want to change it for the world. Not only have I become a better person for myself, I have found out the why and the who I am in relation to the Creator and just what duty that places on me towards my fellow man, and that is a job I cherish,” says Abraham. “Hearing his comments and the account of his life, makes me touch my own scars,” says one of Abraham’s classmates. Abraham’s accomplishments are considerable, some kept for himself in the form of poems and thoughts, in a wish he shares in close proximity with a safe distance:

“I address the stage,
That was my jump for the fight
I had to change something, you see!
I mean living right.
Done thieving in broad day light
That should’ve been done at night
I address the stage to bliss the Mic
I show this as my jump for the light.”

When he scores one for the team, a homerun, or even a hit or stealing a base, followed by a roar of his teammates and spectators, a sparkling of joy comes to his eyes with satisfaction manifested in energetic participation. In self-help classes many mistake his quietness as a lack of interest, but if asked to summarize a discussion, a surprise more than what the bargain calls for, he articulates a critique to the subject.

One would find in him an attentive listener with mordant approach;
yet, his animating eyebrows are elevated when struck by curious note,
and bow out when they detect tedium, screaming, “sell me the car. Don’t drive it for me!”

A philosopher, he is not, but a prospector for those things that he didn’t have the chance or the lead to search for and to know about, things that would enhance his mind and heal his spirit. Ebraheem, as named by his Muslim brothers, could have been a bronze bust of an African warrior, no longer seeking an answer for a question of the past, but aiming to the horizon of what is to come.