2008 - Secondary - Runner-up - Bazzi

The Muslim

It all starts with a boy (me) who experiences a nightmare while awake. I was born in Syria on July 17, 1995. By the time I became five-years-old, my family and I moved to Miami, Florida. Initially, the people at the school were well-educated and students were kind to me.

Unfortunately, by the time fifth grade came along, I was mocked and treated differently. I felt like my world flipped upside down at that moment. Because I appreciated my religion, some people would shout out, “Why don’t you go to Iraq and pray!” I wasn’t even from Iraq! Others would call me “Arabian s**t!” I apologize for saying this, but this is true.

By the time I entered sixth grade, most of the name-calling stopped because I was supportive to people and made friends, but it didn’t stop altogether. For example, people would still exclaim, “SHUT UP, SAUDI ARABIA!” I wasn’t from that country, and all those names gave me invisible tears. These experiences were not even shared with my friends (even if they were Muslims), nor my family. All I’d do is post those experiences on note cards and dump them into the garbage because those memories were too powerful to remember. And now, as a seventh grader, I still face struggles, but I am forgetting them as they keep passing by. And at this moment, I feel that I have accomplished the biggest task of my life, which is to show that I’m proud of being “that one,” whether mocked, teased, or beaten, “that Muslim.”