Many years ago, in the early 90’s, my husband and I were desperately looking for another townhouse to rent. The reason we were in a hurry was that our previous landlord David decided he was going to sell the townhouse we’d been renting for the last six years and gave us only 30 days to get out. And the way we first learned about it was coming home from work one evening to find the for sale sign in the front yard.
According to our lease, we were supposed to have 120 days’ notice and the opportunity to purchase it ourselves before it being listed. In six years, we’d never been late with the rent (maybe once for all of 3 days) and had been good tenants, but we didn’t fight him, it wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t that great of a landlord anyway, often not returning our calls the few times we had maintenance issues and we just ended up fixing it ourselves at our cost. It was also complicated by the fact I was friends with his “live in” girlfriend’s sister. FWIW, not that it matters but just as a point of interest and perhaps germane to the discussion, the landlord was a good born again Christian, or so he was always never failed to tell us. He liked to “Praise the Lord” a lot and on more than occasion asked us if we were “Saved” and what church we attended.
I will also say that one of the worst jobs I had was as an office manager for a small boutique law firm and the senior partner was ‘born again” and very much into the “prosperity gospel”, never failing to remind us who worked for him, what it meant to be a “True Christian”, what books we should be reading like by Joel Osteen, but was, FWIW one of the nastiest SOB’s I’d ever had the displeasure of working for. That might have been because he was a lawyer more than so than because he was supposedly a Christian, but his junior partner was Jewish and he was a very nice guy and great to work with. But I left after 6 months.
One of the final of many straws was when there was a major snow storm and he called me at home at 3 AM to tell me that I had to make calls, as many as I needed to make in order to get the parking lot plowed and then to call all the other employees to tell them that they were expected to get to work and on time, that he didn’t care about road conditions or about school closures. He then finally showed up at the office at 2 PM and then left after about 10 minutes after grilling me on who got in on time and who didn’t and then saying in front of everyone that he was going sledding with his daughters because “spending time with family is important to me”. I remember one of the paralegals saying, after he left, something like “Great, I guess that means me and my kids are sh!t”.
Anyway, we were having trouble finding another house or townhouse to rent because we had a dog and also finding one that was nice, in a decent neighborhood and in our price range. One day I called an ad and spoke with a fellow named Mahmood. My husband and I met Mahmood to look at the place and it was nice, in good shape, with a finished walkout basement and fenced back yard and a community pool and the rent was even a bit less than what we’d been paying, and he had no problem with us having a dog.
Mahmood was, as we learned, born in the US and worked in IT, he was a fairly young guy and had started buying and renting properties and also buying and flipping houses with his older brother as an investment for their future. He and his brother hoped to one day open their own IT consulting firm.
We decided to take it. After running a credit check, he called us a day later and said we could move in anytime as soon as we’d signed the lease. He lived way on the other side of town and suggested we meet him at his parent’s house which wasn’t far from the townhouse or from where we lived and worked and closer to his work, was just more convenient for all of us.
His parent’s home was nice, somewhat above an average size suburban home, on the large side but certainly not a “McMansion”, and very tastefully decorated. And as I recall his mother was quite attractive for her age (and dressed in western clothing, no head scarf) and I remember she kept offering to feed us snacks, cookies or make us tea, asking us to stay for dinner, a lamb dish she was cooking that smelled delicious and I was sorry we didn’t stay (my husband hated lamb but I love it). We also briefly met his father who was also very nice, very distinguished looking although a bit more reserved. His younger sister who still lived at home came downstairs and introduced herself as she was leaving for a date – again, like her mother, she dressed in western clothing and hair style and with some jewelry, rather modestly and very tastefully but very stylishly.
As we were sitting in the living room waiting for Mahmood who hadn’t gotten there yet, I noticed some wall hangings - tapestries that appeared to me to be “Islamic”/Persian in design and the beautiful Persian rugs; and I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe they were Christians, no crosses or Christian symbols, but then my husband and I noticed some portraits and photographs hanging on the one wall.
Along with the typical family portraits, one was a large portrait of Ronald Regan, next to it was a portrait of the Shaw of Iran, another was a photograph of the father with Oliver North and another of the father standing next to Ronald Regan along with some other men who I didn’t recognize. I would have loved to known the story behind those photographs but thought it might be impolite to ask.
Anyway, Mahmood was a good landlord – onetime when the furnace broke down over the long Thanksgiving weekend, my husband called him but told him that he could fix it himself, that it was a simple inexpensive part replacement. Mahmood agreed but said, “you will deduct the cost of the part and for your labor time, at whatever rate you think is reasonable, from next month’s rent”. My husband only deducted the cost of the part.
About 2 ½ years into our lease, we found a house that we really wanted to buy. Before putting in our offer my husband called Mahmood to see what our options were for getting out of our lease early if our offer went through. And he could not have been nicer about it – “just give me 30 days’ notice if you can” (officially our lease said 3 months’ notice). He also said that he really hated losing us as tenants but wished us luck. On the day we settled and walked into our new house for the first time, there was a beautiful flower arrangement sitting on the porch. It was from Mahmood and also included a check for our security deposit and a $50 Home Depot gift card and a very nice note congratulating us on our new home and wishing us much happiness.
I will also say that I was working in the finance department at a pharmaceutical company in Baltimore on 9/11. At the time we had a young woman working in our department, a recent accounting grad who I was training to be my payroll backup and sort of supervising and mentoring. She was also born here in the US and her family was also Iranian, they fled as she told me, shortly before the Revolution.
And I knew, while she didn’t seem particularly religious and also dressed in western attire, very typical for any 20 something American and I knew what bands she liked because we shared similar tastes in music, that she was Muslim because when her mother died after a short battle with breast cancer, I went to the memorial service at the Mosque her family belonged to.
And no, I did not feel at all uncomfortable there. Didn’t hear any Allah Akbar or chants of Death to America. I did cover my head with a simple scarf out of respect, but that was really no different from when, as not a practicing Catholic or of a religious persuasion myself, I covered my head with a chapel veil for my mother’s funeral mass at my parent’s Traditionalist Catholic church or when I attended a former boss’s mother’s memorial service at an orthodox Synagogue and my husband and I sat on different sides of the aisle. IIRC, my husband was asked to put on a yarmulke which he did, again, out of respect.
Anyway Mani and I were sitting at my desk watching the live streaming as best we could on my computer when the 2nd Tower fell. Mani started sobbing uncontrollably and saying “Why? Why? This is so awful. Why would those people do this to us?” I was sobbing too and we hugged each other, held each other tight and crying together. I told to her to go home and be with her family. As she was leaving she stopped by the desk of another co-worker who was waiting to hear from her husband as her mother in law worked at the Pentagon and hadn’t been heard from yet. I heard Mani tell her, “I will pray, I will pray very hard that your mother in law is safe, that you will hear good news”. Then Mani hugged her.
Over the years I’ve worked with or had business dealings or personal relationships with Muslims, and with Jews (reformed and orthodox and one gal who was Hassidic), Christians of many different denominations (including Mormons and Jo-Ho’s), Hindus, Buddhists and atheists. Heck I even worked for a time with a gal who was a Wiccan. She was a bit weird in some ways but surprisingly she had some rather conservative/libertarian political views and I was taken back when she told me she was a registered Republican and was “pro-life”. Who would have thunk.
Some of these folks were OK some, some not so much but I can’t say that their religion was the deciding factor.
I do not deny that radicalized Muslims are not a very real and present danger. To deny that would be stupid and naïve. Certainly we have to be more aware and vette who comes into the country, FWIW no matter their religion and do more to monitor extremists.
But on the other hand I do wonder sometimes why “some” Muslims, especially those born here and who have grown up “westernized” end up becoming radicals?
What if my husband and I had told Mahmood that we would not rent from a dirty Muslim or if I had told Mani on 9/11 that this was the fault of “her people” and her religion and instead of crying with her and hugging her, I blamed her. And what if I judged all “born again” Christians by the actions of a few like our former landlord David or the POS lawyer I once worked for?
