AN INTRODUCTION BY TAYLOR STEPHENS
While I believe this book embodies a multitude of concepts, I know for certain that its origin is due to one thing and one thing only: serendipity. If you haven’t read Fahim Fazli’s autobiography, Fahim Speaks, you might not be aware that he grew up in Afghanistan during the fall of its monarchy to a socialist coup, which led to Soviet occupancy throughout most of the 1980’s. You might not be aware that he fought hard against the military machine that oppressed his people and threatened their very way of life. And you might not be aware that he’s one of the biggest American patriots you could ever meet.
As a teenager, he escaped Pakistan with his father where they waited in limbo until being granted United States Citizenship. In what seemed like instant deliverance, he stepped off a plane and reunited with his mother and siblings. It was that moment when Fahim’s life became less about raw survival and more about constructing an American life for himself and his family. He worked as a dishwasher and a construction worker, learned Spanish, and made new friends wherever he went. However, what he often neglected to divulge was the fact that since he was a little boy, his indelible dream had been to cultivate a career as a professional actor, an aspiration that was looked down upon by his original culture and by his family. But in America, this was not such a faux pas, but more of a delusional fantasy that attracted the bright and bleary eyed in droves.
And against all odds, Fahim did it. It took him years of grinding away every day, often working multiple jobs while taking any gig he could. He was rejected, scammed, and at times, he felt defeated. But now, he’s a successful, working actor; someone you would find in movies such as Iron Man, Argo, Rock the Kasbah, and more. Someone who worked with Clint Eastwood on American Sniper and acted as a cultural advisor for Tom Hanks. He stands as vindicated proof that the purest incarnation of the American Dream is a reality.
And what did he do upon achieving success? He joined the Marines. So overwhelmed with gratitude for the life this country had given him, he felt it imperative to give back, to make a difference, to mediate the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. He became an interpreter. He became the ultimate patriot.
If you make the effort to look at it, to understand it, this is a story powerful enough to shake people to their core, maybe even enough to make some reconsider a few seriously atavistic sentiments and generalizations toward Middle Eastern Americans. Because here he is, an Afghan native that resisted Communist oppression, came to this country legally, seized success through tireless hard work, and then had the integrity to pay his respects for one reason and one reason alone: he loves the United States of America. He appreciates what this country has done for him.
On the other hand, there’s me: Taylor Stephens. I grew up in a predominantly white middle class neighborhood called Los Gatos, California. I got decent grades in high school, I went to a good college, and before I met Fahim, I thought that I had “paid my dues.” How adorable is that?
My whole life, I had dreamed of becoming a writer. In college, I had written long form prose, poetry, and as many screenplays and teleplays as I could. After school, I moved down to Los Angeles and lived in a warehouse in South Central because it was rent free (it’s a long story.) And it was there that I found out that life didn’t have a golden road paved for me. I interned for free at Funny or Die and three other companies and worked my ass off. None of them gave me a job, especially not Funny or Die, even though I had won a sketch competition and ended up writing an online short with John Goodman in it. But why would they give me a job? There were people that had been waiting for a receptionist position by working a series of unpaid internships for over a year. That’s what I hadn’t figured out yet; that the world doesn’t owe you anything. Even if you played the game just right. And you know what? That’s the beauty of life; that’s the purity in finding true success.
So, I toiled fruitlessly. I spent everything I had. I ran around town. I worked unpaid internships during the day and then delivered pizza until 3 am most nights before starting work again at 8 or 9 am. And how did I do it? I drank energy drinks like they were life’s nectar, which amped me up so much, I ended up needing marijuana to go to sleep, further muddying my pitiful hours of self-rationed respite. Then, one day I got sick. My heart began to spasm out of control and in a matter of days, I was hit with flu-like chronic fatigue, serious migraines, 24-hour palpitations, and a litany of other health problems that would go on for years to come, despite the procession of doctors that took long-winded cracks at treating me.
This is where serendipity comes in. You’re probably wondering, “So how did you and Fahim meet?” Well, we didn’t. He met my dad. They played a game of volleyball together, and my dad taught Fahim a few things. In return, Fahim wanted to do him a favor, so my dad said, “Well, my son’s a struggling writer, if there’s any way you could help him out…” Of course, being the unrealistically magnanimous person that Fahim is, he immediately agreed to talk to me.
At this point, I had moved into Entertainment Advertising, securing a writing position after a year or so as a staff production assistant. During my waning health, I wrote at my agency for free on my off time and on top of my normal 40 to 50-hour workweek. I did this for a little over a year until they officially made me a writer.
When I got the call from Fahim, I was incredulous to say the least. It didn’t seem real. This guy’s story seemed like something ripped out of The Kite Runner and pumped up with steroids. And he was a successful actor? A Marine? It was a lot to process.
Then, he saw my writing and asked me to read his newest book. Well, not a book, more of a twenty-page manuscript. When he heard my ideas on how to shape the narrative, out of nowhere, he asked me to write the book for him. You see, Fahim speaks five languages but his weakest is English, struggling more with reading and writing than he does with verbal communication. However, after developing his first published book with a former Marine, he conceived the idea for a second, and this time, he wanted to dive into the world of fiction. And why not? Fahim had already accomplished the impossible. If he had a good idea, there was a way to get it done.
In 2009, Fahim was utilizing his skills as a Marine interpreter in the Almond Province in Afghanistan. In a small village called Delaram, he met a boy named Ishmael. Ishmael’s father had been a police officer for the Afghan National Police: a man of diligence and an ally to U.S. forces. One night, he was murdered. The Marine investigation yielded no results. Ishmael was left without a home.
Subsequently, the eight-year-old boy was forced to live in the dilapidated tenements of the Delaram village with his uncle. They shared bread handouts from the ANP that could hardly feed a single person. They suffered. One day, wearing sandals, tattered pants, and a thin long sleeve shirt in forty-degree weather, Ishmael wandered into the local Marine base looking for food where he met Fahim. The boy’s face was covered in soot and his hands were black and blue and cracked from dehydration. Glassy eyes protruded out from above a perpetual frown. Fahim was overwhelmed with pity.
Immediately, Fahim took action. He gave Ishmael whatever food and clothes he could find. Using YouTube and other forms of social media, he rallied people to donate clothes and supplies for the boy. Bountiful provisions began to arrive, and when Ishmael received enough, the extras were given to other Afghan children in need.
But Fahim still wasn’t satisfied. In his spare time, he tried to investigate the murder of Ishmael’s parents. He talked to locals, questioned officials, and even wrote directly to the Afghan government. But he was stonewalled. Government officials and ANP members purposely ignored him, others seemed afraid to comment. It became clear to Fahim that there was something more behind the murder of Ishmael’s father, but unlike the exciting fiction novels we often read, Fahim’s search went cold and stayed cold. He simply didn’t have the resources or connections.
The last time Fahim saw Ishmael was when the boy came to the base for food in 2010. Leading up to that point, the Taliban had been threatening Ishmael as well as the other children that had been tagging along to get handouts from Fahim and other Marines. Word of Fahim’s generosity had spread outside of the village, and the Taliban felt it necessary to respond. It was imperative for them to indoctrinate these children by vilifying the west, and Fahim was a shining example of Afghan and U.S. harmony. So, they tried labeling Fahim as a traitor, but the unadulterated innocence of a child is often incapable of differentiating between conflicting political motivations and machinations. Instead, these children saw the world in black and white. They saw Fahim’s kindness in direct contrast to the Taliban’s ruthlessness, so they kept coming. The Taliban even put a bounty on Fahim’s head, but Fahim’s head remained untouched. Out of options, they began to threaten the children. When that didn’t work, they threatened their families. One day, Ishmael and the other children stopped showing up, and Fahim never saw him again, no matter how much he searched.
As Fahim’s life in the Marines went on, he couldn’t help but think back about Ishmael: the mystery and injustice of his father’s murder; the destitute state the boy was left in; and ultimately, Fahim’s own inability to save him. It dug into the man, ate away at his very being. He couldn’t help but feel like he could’ve done more.
This followed him back to the States until an epiphany struck him amidst a privileged day at the beach and he saw a vision of catharsis. It was a little overly optimistic, but it was a way to honor Ishmael’s memory. And that was better than nothing. So, Fahim set out to write his second book. He would weave fact into fiction, extrapolating reality in order to create a story that could both honor Ishmael and perhaps sway some American hearts. It would tie the murder of Ishmael’s parents into something bigger and offer an adventurous insight into a world with answers, no matter how crazy those answers might be. So, he labored for six or seven months, constructing a 20-page manuscript in the best English he could muster, and that’s when he met me.
Had it not been for his calm, sincere voice, and the fact that I had been sick and unable to do anything physically outside of work for a year, I’m not sure I would’ve said yes. In retrospect, I don’t think I would’ve been mature or grounded enough without something to hold me in place. But the fact was, every day was a struggle for me, and in the evenings, I was pretty much confined to my bed after work, and there didn’t seem to be an end to this routine in sight. I was lost and desperate, and when Fahim showed me his story, it seemed crazy. It seemed like a Hail Mary from the 100-yard line. It was exactly what I needed. Something big to believe in. So, I thought to myself, “What the hell?” And I got to work.
With Fahim’s permission, I made some serious changes to the narrative, almost all of which we talked out together beforehand; I focused on the bigger picture; and I turned that 20-page manuscript into a 370-page novel. Ultimately, it began to become an allegorical reflection of our dichotomy and the collision of those two worlds. In the case of Fahim and I, it was harmonious, but unfortunately, it isn’t always that way. And that’s what I wanted to reflect: acceptance versus rejection, two different samples not too far removed from each other but with opposite outcomes.
What I was left with was a source of pride. It was a story that I never would have written on my own. At first, it was daunting, but the more I worked, the more I researched, the more I wrote and rewrote, the more I fell in love with the project. It pushed me, and it led me down a path I’m glad to have walked. In the end, we’ve created an action-adventure story with heart, and I know that if it has even half the heart that Fahim was born with, it’ll move someone out there. And if it entertains thousands of readers, we’ve done our job. But if it causes one person to think a little deeper about how some Americans view cultures they barely understand, we’ll feel complete.
While I believe this book embodies a multitude of concepts, I know for certain that its origin is due to one thing and one thing only: serendipity. If you haven’t read Fahim Fazli’s autobiography, Fahim Speaks, you might not be aware that he grew up in Afghanistan during the fall of its monarchy to a socialist coup, which led to Soviet occupancy throughout most of the 1980’s. You might not be aware that he fought hard against the military machine that oppressed his people and threatened their very way of life. And you might not be aware that he’s one of the biggest American patriots you could ever meet.
As a teenager, he escaped Pakistan with his father where they waited in limbo until being granted United States Citizenship. In what seemed like instant deliverance, he stepped off a plane and reunited with his mother and siblings. It was that moment when Fahim’s life became less about raw survival and more about constructing an American life for himself and his family. He worked as a dishwasher and a construction worker, learned Spanish, and made new friends wherever he went. However, what he often neglected to divulge was the fact that since he was a little boy, his indelible dream had been to cultivate a career as a professional actor, an aspiration that was looked down upon by his original culture and by his family. But in America, this was not such a faux pas, but more of a delusional fantasy that attracted the bright and bleary eyed in droves.
And against all odds, Fahim did it. It took him years of grinding away every day, often working multiple jobs while taking any gig he could. He was rejected, scammed, and at times, he felt defeated. But now, he’s a successful, working actor; someone you would find in movies such as Iron Man, Argo, Rock the Kasbah, and more. Someone who worked with Clint Eastwood on American Sniper and acted as a cultural advisor for Tom Hanks. He stands as vindicated proof that the purest incarnation of the American Dream is a reality.
And what did he do upon achieving success? He joined the Marines. So overwhelmed with gratitude for the life this country had given him, he felt it imperative to give back, to make a difference, to mediate the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. He became an interpreter. He became the ultimate patriot.
If you make the effort to look at it, to understand it, this is a story powerful enough to shake people to their core, maybe even enough to make some reconsider a few seriously atavistic sentiments and generalizations toward Middle Eastern Americans. Because here he is, an Afghan native that resisted Communist oppression, came to this country legally, seized success through tireless hard work, and then had the integrity to pay his respects for one reason and one reason alone: he loves the United States of America. He appreciates what this country has done for him.
On the other hand, there’s me: Taylor Stephens. I grew up in a predominantly white middle class neighborhood called Los Gatos, California. I got decent grades in high school, I went to a good college, and before I met Fahim, I thought that I had “paid my dues.” How adorable is that?
My whole life, I had dreamed of becoming a writer. In college, I had written long form prose, poetry, and as many screenplays and teleplays as I could. After school, I moved down to Los Angeles and lived in a warehouse in South Central because it was rent free (it’s a long story.) And it was there that I found out that life didn’t have a golden road paved for me. I interned for free at Funny or Die and three other companies and worked my ass off. None of them gave me a job, especially not Funny or Die, even though I had won a sketch competition and ended up writing an online short with John Goodman in it. But why would they give me a job? There were people that had been waiting for a receptionist position by working a series of unpaid internships for over a year. That’s what I hadn’t figured out yet; that the world doesn’t owe you anything. Even if you played the game just right. And you know what? That’s the beauty of life; that’s the purity in finding true success.
So, I toiled fruitlessly. I spent everything I had. I ran around town. I worked unpaid internships during the day and then delivered pizza until 3 am most nights before starting work again at 8 or 9 am. And how did I do it? I drank energy drinks like they were life’s nectar, which amped me up so much, I ended up needing marijuana to go to sleep, further muddying my pitiful hours of self-rationed respite. Then, one day I got sick. My heart began to spasm out of control and in a matter of days, I was hit with flu-like chronic fatigue, serious migraines, 24-hour palpitations, and a litany of other health problems that would go on for years to come, despite the procession of doctors that took long-winded cracks at treating me.
This is where serendipity comes in. You’re probably wondering, “So how did you and Fahim meet?” Well, we didn’t. He met my dad. They played a game of volleyball together, and my dad taught Fahim a few things. In return, Fahim wanted to do him a favor, so my dad said, “Well, my son’s a struggling writer, if there’s any way you could help him out…” Of course, being the unrealistically magnanimous person that Fahim is, he immediately agreed to talk to me.
At this point, I had moved into Entertainment Advertising, securing a writing position after a year or so as a staff production assistant. During my waning health, I wrote at my agency for free on my off time and on top of my normal 40 to 50-hour workweek. I did this for a little over a year until they officially made me a writer.
When I got the call from Fahim, I was incredulous to say the least. It didn’t seem real. This guy’s story seemed like something ripped out of The Kite Runner and pumped up with steroids. And he was a successful actor? A Marine? It was a lot to process.
Then, he saw my writing and asked me to read his newest book. Well, not a book, more of a twenty-page manuscript. When he heard my ideas on how to shape the narrative, out of nowhere, he asked me to write the book for him. You see, Fahim speaks five languages but his weakest is English, struggling more with reading and writing than he does with verbal communication. However, after developing his first published book with a former Marine, he conceived the idea for a second, and this time, he wanted to dive into the world of fiction. And why not? Fahim had already accomplished the impossible. If he had a good idea, there was a way to get it done.
In 2009, Fahim was utilizing his skills as a Marine interpreter in the Almond Province in Afghanistan. In a small village called Delaram, he met a boy named Ishmael. Ishmael’s father had been a police officer for the Afghan National Police: a man of diligence and an ally to U.S. forces. One night, he was murdered. The Marine investigation yielded no results. Ishmael was left without a home.
Subsequently, the eight-year-old boy was forced to live in the dilapidated tenements of the Delaram village with his uncle. They shared bread handouts from the ANP that could hardly feed a single person. They suffered. One day, wearing sandals, tattered pants, and a thin long sleeve shirt in forty-degree weather, Ishmael wandered into the local Marine base looking for food where he met Fahim. The boy’s face was covered in soot and his hands were black and blue and cracked from dehydration. Glassy eyes protruded out from above a perpetual frown. Fahim was overwhelmed with pity.
Immediately, Fahim took action. He gave Ishmael whatever food and clothes he could find. Using YouTube and other forms of social media, he rallied people to donate clothes and supplies for the boy. Bountiful provisions began to arrive, and when Ishmael received enough, the extras were given to other Afghan children in need.
But Fahim still wasn’t satisfied. In his spare time, he tried to investigate the murder of Ishmael’s parents. He talked to locals, questioned officials, and even wrote directly to the Afghan government. But he was stonewalled. Government officials and ANP members purposely ignored him, others seemed afraid to comment. It became clear to Fahim that there was something more behind the murder of Ishmael’s father, but unlike the exciting fiction novels we often read, Fahim’s search went cold and stayed cold. He simply didn’t have the resources or connections.
The last time Fahim saw Ishmael was when the boy came to the base for food in 2010. Leading up to that point, the Taliban had been threatening Ishmael as well as the other children that had been tagging along to get handouts from Fahim and other Marines. Word of Fahim’s generosity had spread outside of the village, and the Taliban felt it necessary to respond. It was imperative for them to indoctrinate these children by vilifying the west, and Fahim was a shining example of Afghan and U.S. harmony. So, they tried labeling Fahim as a traitor, but the unadulterated innocence of a child is often incapable of differentiating between conflicting political motivations and machinations. Instead, these children saw the world in black and white. They saw Fahim’s kindness in direct contrast to the Taliban’s ruthlessness, so they kept coming. The Taliban even put a bounty on Fahim’s head, but Fahim’s head remained untouched. Out of options, they began to threaten the children. When that didn’t work, they threatened their families. One day, Ishmael and the other children stopped showing up, and Fahim never saw him again, no matter how much he searched.
As Fahim’s life in the Marines went on, he couldn’t help but think back about Ishmael: the mystery and injustice of his father’s murder; the destitute state the boy was left in; and ultimately, Fahim’s own inability to save him. It dug into the man, ate away at his very being. He couldn’t help but feel like he could’ve done more.
This followed him back to the States until an epiphany struck him amidst a privileged day at the beach and he saw a vision of catharsis. It was a little overly optimistic, but it was a way to honor Ishmael’s memory. And that was better than nothing. So, Fahim set out to write his second book. He would weave fact into fiction, extrapolating reality in order to create a story that could both honor Ishmael and perhaps sway some American hearts. It would tie the murder of Ishmael’s parents into something bigger and offer an adventurous insight into a world with answers, no matter how crazy those answers might be. So, he labored for six or seven months, constructing a 20-page manuscript in the best English he could muster, and that’s when he met me.
Had it not been for his calm, sincere voice, and the fact that I had been sick and unable to do anything physically outside of work for a year, I’m not sure I would’ve said yes. In retrospect, I don’t think I would’ve been mature or grounded enough without something to hold me in place. But the fact was, every day was a struggle for me, and in the evenings, I was pretty much confined to my bed after work, and there didn’t seem to be an end to this routine in sight. I was lost and desperate, and when Fahim showed me his story, it seemed crazy. It seemed like a Hail Mary from the 100-yard line. It was exactly what I needed. Something big to believe in. So, I thought to myself, “What the hell?” And I got to work.
With Fahim’s permission, I made some serious changes to the narrative, almost all of which we talked out together beforehand; I focused on the bigger picture; and I turned that 20-page manuscript into a 370-page novel. Ultimately, it began to become an allegorical reflection of our dichotomy and the collision of those two worlds. In the case of Fahim and I, it was harmonious, but unfortunately, it isn’t always that way. And that’s what I wanted to reflect: acceptance versus rejection, two different samples not too far removed from each other but with opposite outcomes.
What I was left with was a source of pride. It was a story that I never would have written on my own. At first, it was daunting, but the more I worked, the more I researched, the more I wrote and rewrote, the more I fell in love with the project. It pushed me, and it led me down a path I’m glad to have walked. In the end, we’ve created an action-adventure story with heart, and I know that if it has even half the heart that Fahim was born with, it’ll move someone out there. And if it entertains thousands of readers, we’ve done our job. But if it causes one person to think a little deeper about how some Americans view cultures they barely understand, we’ll feel complete.
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