20 December 2009 BORDERLINE by Allan Stratton, Harper Teen, March 2010, 320p., ISBN: 978-0-06-145111-9; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-06-145112-6
"Roll you down the line boy, drop you for a loss,
Ride you out on a cold railroad and nail you to a cross."
-- Petersen/Lesh "Unbroken Chain"
"Sometime after midnight, I eventually drift off. I wake up at four, drenched in sweat. For the first time since I can remember, I have this need to pray. I wash my hands, face, and feet in the laundry tub. Lay a blanket on my bedroom floor as a prayer rug. Face Mecca, and begin to bow, kneel, prostrate myself, praying in Arabic for God's blessing.
"I've prayed the first chapter of the Qur'an so many times, I've stopped hearing the words. But now, in the predawn dark, they ring clear. Each syllable connects me to a power bigger than myself, a world of others praying the same words. My forehead tingles. I'm not alone."
The progression of events in Allan Stratton's absorbing new coming-of-age tale BORDERLINE -- particularly what befalls fifteen year-old Mohammad Sami "Sammy" Sabiri at the Theodore Roosevelt Academy for Boys -- is at times so outrageous and unspeakably evil that there may be skeptics who will argue that such behavior on the part of school administrators and law enforcement authorities could not take place in America today. But those who know their American history will likely respond by citing scores of textbook examples revealing this tale involving Muslim hate mongering in twenty-first century America to be just one more link in a long chain of unfortunate blemishes on the face of our so-called sweet land of liberty.
"Then I think of what our imam says: 'Show me what a man attacks, and I'll show you his sin.'"
BORDERLINE, set in Rochester, New York, is an eye-opening mystery and adventure story involving what happens before and after the FBI tears apart Sammy's home and arrests his father as a member of an international terrorist conspiracy ring. Sammy has always known his father to be an overly strict but good man. But he just doesn't know what to think -- or what the real truth about his father might be -- because, shortly before the FBI raid, he uncovers his own evidence that his father has blatantly lied to him about a business trip to Toronto. The anti-Muslim sentiments that we see Sammy and his parents frequently encountering prior to the surprise raid seduce us into presuming that Sammy's father is being railroaded. But is he really innocent? It turns out that Sammy will find it necessary to take some crazy risks, putting his own safety on the line in order to uncover the truth about his father's involvement in the alleged plot.
"'We can't choose what life throws at us. But we can choose what we do about it. Our choices are who we are. And who we are -- that, no one can take away from us.'"
We live in a country where the swiftboating strategy employed in the last election contest against our President was a whisper campaign claiming that he, Barack Obama, is a really a Muslim; that he is one of Them rather than one of Us. Hate mongering in America is nothing new, of course. Whether identified by the color of the face, the slant of the eye, the sound of the name, the choice of the partner, or the manner in which freedom of religion is practiced, there always seems to be those in America who are ready and willing to mark the next group whose turn they believe it is to become the focus of hate and suspicion; to be the next Them.
"And so it goes and so it goes
And so it goes and so it goes
But where it's goin' no one knows"
-- Nick Lowe
What I pray for is that it won't always have to be this way.
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