serving in the U.S. Armed Forces in 2015 according to the Pentagon – only about .045% of the entire force. Despite the low numbers, Abdullah believes he was not treated differently because of his background. Rather, he tells me he benefited from the unique position his religion afforded him during his deployments.<\/span><\/p>\nHis boot camp nickname – as well as the physical exhaustion – was a method to break him down, only for the instructors to build him and his fellow recruits back up together as equals. \u201c<\/span>If there is one thing the Marine Corps does right, it shows you that nothing matters except who you are as a person. Are you a good marine, are you good at your job, are you a good leader,\u201d Abdullah says<\/span><\/p>\nReceiving top scores in basic training, Abdullah was selected and trained as part of an elite group known as assault infantrymen. These infantry marines are trained to breach doors under enemy fire, manipulate explosives and rockets, and maneuver through urban environments – skills particularly relevant to combat in Afghanistan. Due to his expertise, Abdullah was assigned to an advisor mission in 2013 to Helmand Province, Afghanistan to train Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers.<\/span><\/p>\nUpon arrival, Abdullah was given a group of Afghans to train. Excited to make a difference, he was initially enthusiastic about his mission. \u201cYou\u2019d wake up in the morning and each day was different. It was a holistic approach. I was gonna train them in marksmanship, I was going to train them in just basic stuff, like weapons safety,\u201d Abdullah says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAs the days wore on however, negativity set in. The realities of training Afghan soldiers emphasized the difficulty of building an army from scratch. \u201cYou have to fight the pessimism sometimes, there was an overwhelming sense of, man I\u2019m just wasting my time here, these guys aren\u2019t picking this stuff up,\u201dAbdallah says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe Marines often relied on a select few trainees to act as leaders among the ANA soldiers. \u201cYou\u2019d have those who were there because he wanted to defend himself and his family and really be an upstanding human being and a leader in his village,\u201d Abdallah says. \u201cThose guys we loved because they put in a lot of effort and they would become your sort of a liaison between you and the rest of those guys there because they spoke the language.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAbdullah had an additional way to connect with his trainees, however.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt was an advantage,\u201d Abdullah says regarding his common religion. \u201cI was born and raised almost in between two worlds, I spent most of my time in school and my friends were Americans like me, but I also had this other world that I lived in which was the community –\u00a0 the Arab community, the Muslim community I lived in, so there were these dual values and a lot of them did overlap.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAbdullah relied heavily on the Mulsim community while growing up. His father passed away while he was young, and the community rallied around him and his mother. \u201cThe Muslim community took the place of my father,\u201d Abdullah says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile Abdullah was deployed, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan came and went. During this month, Muslims observe a religious obligation to fast from sunrise to sunset, making extensive training difficult. This time was especially trying for both Afghan trainees and their Marine Corps overseers. While many of Abdullah\u2019s colleagues did not appreciate the cultural weight of the month long obligation, Abdullah did.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u201cI totally understood. There was almost no learning curve,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d see them pray, and I wanted to go pray with them, but I knew that I needed to keep a level of professionalism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nDespite his connection to the ANA soldiers, Abdullah and his colleagues were always wary of green-on-blue attacks. These attacks, in which a service member is killed by an allied soldier,<\/span> increased dramatically<\/span><\/a> between 2011 and 2013, accounting for 15% of coalition fatalities in 2012.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cFrankly the threat of a green-on-blue attack was always there, which is why we had guys who were armed at all times. That\u2019s not to say you don\u2019t make friends with these guys, you do, you make friends with a lot of them,\u201d Abdallah says. \u201cBut it never leaves the back of your mind that these dudes are just here more often than not just so they can make money and survive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nNear the end of his time in Afghanistan, Abdullah felt like he had improved substantially in his training techniques. \u201cRight around the point when I was leaving I finally started to get a good rhythm going,\u201d he says. \u201cI now know how to teach these guys a new concept like rapid fire shooting or reloading properly and positioning when they are kneeling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt kind of defeats the purpose of the advisor missions, because mine was so short,\u201d Abdullah says.<\/p>\n
Despite early hurdles, Abdullah was happy with his personal impact. \u201cI helped them in the capacity that I was the alternative to some thug showing up with a posse telling them what to do. I didn\u2019t tell them how to live their lives,\u00a0 I didn\u2019t tell them what their wives could wear, I didn\u2019t tell them what they could eat, I didn\u2019t tell them when they could eat, all I did was training them on how to defend themselves,\u201d Abdullah says. \u201cThese guys came to me not being able to hit the broad side of a barn, and then they left being damn good shots.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nClouds block the sunlight streaming in through his apartment window. Abdullah shares his disdain for New York weather, and is nostalgic of his days in California. He\u2019s excited to finish his bachelor\u2019s degree at Columbia and move back West. He is also nostalgic of his time in the Marine Corps.<\/p>\n
He has a well-paying job lined up in Los Angeles at a large defense contractor, but he tells me he is talking to a recruiter about going back in. He\u2019s worried about the cubicle.<\/p>\n
He continues to think about his family, however. He is ready to have children and settle down with his wife. For more stability, he is contemplating joining the special forces with the reserves, who train once a month on the weekends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEvery time he walks into his living room, that recruiting poster beckons to him. <\/span>\u201cJoin Now and Test your Courage,\u201d it implores incessantly. Although Abdullah was born a Muslim, he was born again in bootcamp as a Marine. In Afghanistan he used both identities to help fulfill his mission, and he is hoping that the next chapter of his life, although not nearly as dangerous, will also be fulfilling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t need their money,\u201d\u00a0 he says. \u201cI just want to be a ninja on the weekends.\u201d <\/span>