Expat: Part 2: Never Growing Up

By Raji Abuzalaf

"Expat" is a novel originally designed to portray the overseas life of an American expatriate.

In addition to relating the unique accounts of living and working outside the U.S., the book has evolved into an autobiography describing the author's expatriation from his native land, his family, his religion, and ultimately, the world (spiritually speaking).

This book is [Part 2] of a 4-part compilation:
- Part 1: Growing Up
- Part 2: Never Growing Up
- Part 3: Growing Pains
- Part 4: The Growing Pain

[Part 2: Never Growing Up]
Volume 2 depicts life after high school up until the first overseas assignment (1972 – 1979).
Foreshadows to future experiences are playfully interspersed.
The story is power-packed with adventure, romance, and of course, music.
In essence, Expat - Part 2 is a very touching and poignant love story.

Thirty-two (32) original songs are featured in Part 2, along with several poems.
Links are provided to each song recording on Sound Cloud – a free website.

Join Raji - our hero / venturer – as he rumbles and stumbles his way through the 1970's.
Whether he's battling authorities, girls, red-necks, or his own conscience, you're sure to find it both hilarious and sentimental.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483505725

Book preview

Chapter 1 – The College Scene

The summer of 1972 was relatively uneventful. For the most part, I played it straight. I needed to complete my summer school credits so I could put high school completely behind me. At the same time, I was learning my responsibilities at my new job. Gas stations were called service stations at the time, and for a good reason – everything was full service. Checking under the hood, inspecting tire pressure, and cleaning windows was all part of the client’s experience. Our Egyptian family friend, Ibrahim, owned the Enco dealership, but his full time job was CPA for a large oil company. His son, Nabil, managed the station for him while working on his MBA. He taught me the menial tasks – changing oil, repairing flats, general under the hood maintenance, etc. But I learned all about automobile engines, transmissions, and brakes from the father who was the master mechanic.

It took Ibrahim years before he warmed up to me. I had arrived on the scene with the reputation of being a hippie, a troublemaker, and worst of all, a rebellious son – all unacceptable in the Arab community. I did everything I could to earn his approval, but he was unyielding. To his credit, he did share his mechanical knowledge with me, albeit reluctantly. At first I called him Uncle Ibrahim, out of respect, then Abu-Nabil, but he seemed uncomfortable with either. After he told me to call him Abe as did all his American friends, I came up with something more personal and unique – Chief. It was more than a name, it was a designation. He accepted it pleasantly and acknowledged it ever since.

August finally rolled around and I moved into Settegast Hall, an all men’s dormitory at the University of Houston. There were coed dorms available, but Settegast was the cheapest – one hundred forty dollars per month, including meals. I paid every penny of it, but I rarely enjoyed three meals in a day. Once I settled into a groove at the Enco station, my hours were noon till midnight, Monday through Saturday. I received ninety-six dollars for seventy-two hours of service. Unless I was industrious and arose early enough to catch breakfast at the cafeteria, I usually caught an early lunch and hitchhiked to the station. Dinner consisted of crackers and soda from the station’s vending machines. After we closed the station at midnight, I stood at the entrance ramp to I-45, thumbing for a ride. Nabil took me home a couple of times, but when I began refusing his offers, he understood that I needed to be independent and take care of myself. If no one picked me up by twelve-thirty, I walked home through the neighborhoods.

I walked down Dowling to Wheeler, then up through TSU, Texas State University, until I reached UH. I got to know every prostitute and dealer on Dowling. At first, I was an oddity. The local crowd didn’t know what to think of me – a hippie white boy, a Mexican, a light-skinned black, or mixed breed. I even spoke French to those from Louisiana or Haiti, but I made a point to smile and speak to everyone. I was always looking over my shoulder, but if anyone ever thought about mugging me, they either felt sorry for the dirty, greasy kid wearing the Enco shirt or they accepted me as a homeboy. Nabil consigned two uniform shirts to me that belonged to an old attendant named Ali. They still had his name in big white letters sewn onto them. Perhaps it was the name Ali that saved my ass. Here comes brothah’ man, Ali, folks would say as I walked up Dowling.

Afro-Americans were heavily into their original ethnic names back then, so in fact, I learned to respect my own name, Raji. The local sisters who knew me, called me brothah’ Reggie. Each night, I entertained different offers – ten bucks for a tour, fifteen for a luxury tour, or twenty for two ladies. On slow nights, those prices were cut in half. But I stayed clean. Paying for sex was never in my plans. And after all, God took care of me. Even local residents managed to get cut or burned or shot in that neighborhood. Somehow, I always made it back to my dorm room unscathed.

When school started, I enrolled in four classes, the minimum full-time load – twelve credit hours. They were morning classes, of course, but if I wanted to make lunch before heading to work, I had to cut out early from my Tuesday and Thursday classes. Settegast Hall was designed with sets of two rooms sharing a bathroom and a telephone. One room housed two students, while the slightly larger room housed three. I chose the three-man room because it was fifteen dollars a month cheaper. It was neither an exercise in comfort nor privacy. It was a real life struggle for autonomy.

Until the dorm security began cracking down, we enjoyed a few pot parties at Settegast. A new experience I encountered was roach balls. Everyone chipped in all their roaches – marijuana cigarette butts – and rolled them up into one huge ball by combining about twenty rolling papers or using the oversized rolling paper in Cheech and Chong’s Big Bambu album. The roach ball, about the size of a tennis ball, was then stuck on the end of a hanger. It was lit and passed around, where large amounts of smoke were happily inhaled. It seemed that everywhere I went, I learned something new. Wasn’t that why we all attended college?

Another interesting revelation was that smoking was allowed in college classrooms. I sat in my Physics class, smoking cigarettes and listening to the professor’s lectures, wondering why we ever had to waste time with grade school. One day in Physics class, the professor turned out all the lights to demonstrate some sort of a laser generator. That was groundbreaking stuff in 1972. That morning, I had smoked a joint in the little park area surrounding Shasta, the magnificent cougar that was the university mascot. I was delighted when the professor charged the machine and cast green-colored electrons across the large auditorium to the receiving conductor node. In my state, I witnessed it as if it was happening in slow motion. Thanks, Prof. I’m really diggin’ this college scene.

I occupied a different seat in that classroom each session during that semester. During class that day, I sat next to a cute brunette who was evidently amused at my reactions during the professor’s exhibit. After class, I fought hard through my overly-introverted nature (sarcasm) and approached the little vixen. Five minutes later, we were in my dorm room smoking a joint. I pulled out my trusty, red Silvertone guitar and serenaded her. It cost me my next class, but it was worth it. After missing that class for several weeks, I wound up dropping it before the withdrawal deadline.

That semester, I barely passed three classes for a measly nine hours worth of credit, but I held fast in other areas. Despite extreme logistical challenges, I kept my position at the gas station. I overcame questionable fads on campus – like the movie Deep Throat and an interesting drug additive called Angel Dust – to explore other avenues. Instead, Isaac Hayes culture week, along with Buddhism and Islam, had captured my imagination.

The two students who shared my room were both white – one a medical student, the other an accounting major. The accountant was gay. I found out before Christmas that he was stricken with some sort of rare disease. Ten years afterwards, they would label such illnesses AIDS. The two students in the adjacent room were black. One of them was into Buddhism and introduced me to several oriental students. They taught me about Buddha and the philosophy of tolerance. Reincarnation was ultimately an exercise in illumination and betterment which led to nirvana, a state of perfection. The belief sounded ideal, but impractical. Firstly, I had already noticed that most humans rejected enlightenment, clinging instead to the status quo. Secondly, the finite number of souls reusing bodies didn’t add up when I considered our ever-increasing population. I decided that I liked many aspects of the faith, but on the whole, it could not have been the complete message of God.

I was first introduced to Islam through my parents’ friends. Wajih along with several others were Muslim. They prayed five times a day, facing eastwards towards Mecca. It wasn’t until I met Rashid, one of the many Iranian students at UH, that I began truly educating myself in the religion. He first approached me outside of the UH Library with a pamphlet explaining all about the Shah of Iran and America’s unethical support of his evil regime. Rashid had relatives serving prison terms in Tehran for the political crime of voicing their opposition to the Shah. Most students ignored the urgent supplications of the Iranian students and considered them a nuisance. But it was clear to me that like the Palestinian situation, as well as Vietnam, America had gotten in way over its head. Eventually, bad things were bound to occur, some as a direct result of our intervention.

When we consider Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, and others, we are talking about their countries, of course, but it should become our concern as good citizens when we discover how our taxes are misused in sustaining their leaders in support of ulterior motives. Some power monger – the President, his advisor, or influential constituents – may attempt to justify our nation’s illicit actions by claiming that we need dominion in those regions. He’ll propose strong reasons:

we need to guarantee a strategic ally,

we require a necessary resource, or

we need to secure business for our large corporations.

But damn it! No nation must ever allow itself to interfere in the affairs of others in order to satisfy its compulsions. However, once again, my digression runs amok.

Rashid called upon my Arabic heritage to make me appreciate the message of the final prophet, Mohammed. Islam, a religion of discipline, is built upon five pillars:

to attest that there is no god but God and Mohammed is His prophet,

the requirement for prayer five times a day,

the requirement to fast during the month of Ramadhan,

the requirement to pay the tithe, and

the pilgrimage to Mecca, if possible.

Because Arabic was the language of Islam, and Islam was supposedly the religion of the Arabs, I paid special heed. I was almost convinced that the truth lay in Islam. It would be ten years before I studied the Qur’an in detail, but I soaked up every iota of information I could gather from Rashid or Eisha, a knowledgeable and beautiful Malaysian girl I had also met. One major flaw I discovered was the inherent violence in the religion. The further I studied and inquired, the more I realized how much Islam had relied upon violence to spread and perpetuate itself in its infancy. An excellent argument that I heard rightfully pointed out that so-called Christianity and other major religions were historically responsible for a far higher percentage of the world’s violence. It took little research, however, to uncover that Islam officially prescribed violence as a precept to its existence. A candid examination of the Muslim mentality revealed a certain aversion to freedom of thought, potentially hindering social advancement. Unity existed only within the religion, and even there, out of obligation. To be completely fair, I reached these exact same conclusions with regard to Judaism, Catholicism – my own family’s religion, as well as a plethora of Protestant faiths.

My palate for spiritual truth was again being stimulated. But the one tangible constant that remained genuine for me was music. I felt closest to God when I was writing or singing. I felt the most comfortable when I composed, picked a tune on the guitar, or crooned a melody. Opportunities to do this with my songwriting buddy, Keith, had diminished since starting college. In the few times that he and I were able to assemble during those months, we managed to write a song that attempted to relate the results of our searches – the sensation of discovery as well as the frustration of stumbling, literally, upon a painful irony of life.

As we grow up, we are exposed to the world’s wonders, the most appealing of which are restricted from us because of our youth. As we grow old enough to merit access to these wonders, life’s responsibilities consume our time and render us unavailable. And again, those marvels of life become unattainable, remaining just out of our reach.

And Leads To Nowhere

Several times in different days

The sun comes with rain

And leads to nowhere

A young child learns, a preacher prays

Of love and pain

Which leads to nowhere

Lonely minds and separate ways

The heart feels a strain

And leads to nowhere

An old man turns, a young man strays

To strive in vain

It leads to nowhere

A good man’s curse are vain displays

For glory and gain

Which leads to nowhere

Compassion goes, but coldness stays

It must remain

It leads to nowhere

A poignant verse, a poet’s phrase

Their word hides a stain

That leads to nowhere

The music flows, a ballad plays

Its sweet refrain

And leads to nowhere…

CHORUS

My partner at the gas station was a brother named Reynaldo. His initials were R.A.P., so we all called him Rap. He was nineteen, an artist, taking courses both at UH and TSU. He was a talented artist among other things. He sketched a nice portrait of me, capturing my essence – eyes, chin, hair, and cheeks. He drew my nose with larger nostrils, transforming me into a handsome Nigerian. Isn’t it amazing how we all see each other with biased eyesight?

Rap and I consumed an admirable quantity of grass together, mostly in the service bays at the back of the station. We alternated pumping gas in the front and working on a vehicle in the back, keeping the square lit. In later years, square referred to a regular tobacco cigarette. Nabil thought we were insane, but tolerated us as long as we were discreet, avoided trouble, and completed our work. After many failed attempts to turn Nabil on to pot, he finally acquiesced. One Wednesday, our slowest day, we shared a joint together. Rap and I were rocking and rolling, but Nabil felt absolutely nothing. He didn’t smoke cigarettes, so we expected him to be extra-sensitive, but the joint didn’t faze him at all. But at least he tried.

Nabil was more than a decent guy. He went out of his way for his family, friends, and customers. Due to our locale, we had a strange mix of clientele, so he had to stay on his feet to oblige the different needs. One of our fleet customers was a glass company with eighteen wheelers and large glass trucks. We learned how to park and maintain those babies. Our station fronted the entrance to I-45, so we also received many tourists on the way to Galveston. Dowling split Third Ward and Downtown, so we catered to downtown businesses and restaurants, as well as the poorer customers living in the ghetto.

One of the restaurant owners was trying to dump – that is, sell – a 1962 Dodge Phoenix at the station. It became my first car for one hundred fifty dollars. But that lasted only one week. It had automatic transmission, operated by push-buttons on the dashboard. One of its many problems was that the transmission was shot. I naively thought I could maintain it since I worked at the station. I was wrong. A minimum of two different parts broke each day during the week that I owned the vehicle. Eventually, someone else in the neighborhood bought the car from me, making it their full-time project.

In October, my father decided to sell me his 1967 Malibu. I would pay him for it when I could. He had purchased it brand new for three thousand dollars and here, almost six years later, it was in cherry condition. He had recently bought a 1972 Impala, and though my mother had just obtained her license, she still drove infrequently. So he found it in his heart to hand the car over to me.

Having reliable transportation drastically changed my life. I now had time to eat meals at school. I could predict arrival times. I could visit my friends and yes – even my family. The first week of driving the Chevy, Howard and I had just loaded his amplifier into the trunk, along with an ounce of pot. Howard was the youngest alcoholic / electronic genius in Houston. He was also the part-time lead guitar player in our band. He had just acquired an SG System amplifier – the kind Hendrix had used. It was huge and took both of us to load it into my trunk. We were on our way to a jam session in Spring Branch, so I was attempting to make a left onto Westpark, which served as the feeder road to Highway 59 North. The traffic was terrible and I waited patiently for an opening on both sides. There was not enough space in the esplanade to cross halfway and wait for oncoming traffic from the right to clear. After several minutes of waiting, the closest thing to a window materialized. The traffic from the left had cleared, but only momentarily. From the right, there was only one car, a hundred yards away in the far right lane, so I gunned it, aiming for the left lane. By all rights, I had it made. Then, bang! She hit me from my right side, completely surprising me.

She was speeding – I estimated at least fifty MPH. She changed lanes in the middle of the intersection and without applying her turn signal. After the collision, she drove several hundred yards before I caught up with her and she pulled over. I did all the right things, asking for her driver’s license and insurance papers of which she had neither. I counted five infractions on her part, besides the obvious error of hitting the car in front of her with plenty of open road around her. She urged me not to call the police, but would not accept responsibility for the damage. Her car was relatively untouched, her front bumper having dented my right, rear quarter panel. Howard implored me to let things go, motioning to the contraband in the trunk. He was always particularly allergic to the police. I thought about it hard, but still decided to call the authorities. It was the wrong move.

The cop that answered the call made up his mind before even listening to the evidence. For him, it was an innocent-looking girl versus two longhairs. First, he interviewed the girl. Second, he wrote me a ticket, and third, he spent the remainder of the time interviewing me while disregarding every word I said. The ticket read, Fault of collision – running a stop sign. It’s true – there was a stop sign and I was technically obliged to yield to all traffic. But the bastard completely ignored the other overriding evidence. The only saving grace was that he had no call to search the car and bust us for possession. Howard remained quiet, entreating me with his eyes not to press the matter any further than I already had. Chalk another one up to experience. I would never again trust any other driver on the road in any situation – no matter how ordinary – ever again. As for being at the mercy of authority figures, my life would be full of such unfortunate encounters.

That Christmas, I sat down and manufactured greeting cards for family and friends. In school, they didn’t have to teach us that economics – the lack of funds – would bring out the artist in us. As expected, the last few months on my own had rendered me a bit more mature. I missed a lot of my friends from both high school and the neighborhood. And my reminiscing about them and our good times led to conscience, then to yearning. Even now, I wish that I could relive certain situations and play them differently – more like an adult, maybe.

Look Again

Sometimes I wonder why I went and threw my life away

But I don’t worry much ‘cause it’s all gonna pass someday

And then I think of all the years that I have wasted, too

My mind goes off into my heart, and then I think of you

When I look back at all my blunders, I wanna run and hide

Empty words and crazy notions, please forgive my pride

Every time I think I’m living, the end is all I see

And many times you’ve thought of giving the hurt right back to me

CHORUS

There’s still time for us to try, so don’t give up till then

You didn’t like the way things were, I’ve changed now, look again

CHORUS

At the gas station, December brought with it several major modifications. Exxon became the new name of the company – not Nixxon. They were steadily refurbishing the signs and adding a complete new set of pumps. All the talk about OPEC was coming to fruition, and of course, the consumer would inherit the additional charges – that is, the shaft. The price of gasoline had been twenty-one cents per gallon. Over the next few months, we watched it climb to over seventy. All of a sudden, we had an area labeled Self Service. Customers would require an option that cost a few cents less per gallon. The most traumatic change for us personally was the new dealership owner. Just when I was getting used to Chief and Nabil, they sold their dealership to a Creole couple – Eugene and his wife, Naomi. The good news was that Eugene was an accomplished musician. The bad news was that he brought two employees with him, so he had to dump two of us. Besides Rap and myself, there was a third guy, Joe. When news of the new owner came, Rap immediately made other arrangements. Eugene kept me on and let Joe go. Maybe he liked my face or the fact that I was a musician.

Eugene had it in for the establishment worse than I, especially for Whitey. He owned a dog named Malcom – named after Malcom X. Eugene and I seemed to bond instantly. We got high together and discussed plenty of politics. We learned a lot from each other. I shared a few tidbits regarding the Middle East with him and he shared a tremendous amount of information with me, both musically and politically. He was a Music graduate from North Texas State and played a Fender Rhodes. I helped him disassemble, tune, and reassemble his piano in the station service bay. Occasionally, he took me with him to his weekend gigs in the local and Fourth Ward clubs. This increased my appreciation for blues and jazz, inspiring me to further develop my ear and round out my knowledge of musical styles. Eugene’s knowledge of black politics was astounding. From him, I learned some of the nuances of modern day challenges faced by Afro-American adults. Eugene understood the lie being fed to the black community. It was not dissimilar from the Palestinian or Lebanese quandary.

The truth is simple. It states, The real enemy is ignorance and hatred. It commands, Educate yourself and others. Work hard. Work honestly. Love your neighbors. Be willing to change, so that others will change. Make a difference. Change the system. Don’t use evil to fight evil.

The lie, though immensely more complex, is easier to swallow. It states, The enemy is society. It commands, The solution is to get over on your neighbor. Cheat if you can. Society has no conscience, so your conscience is expendable. Nothing is fair and nothing ever changes, so get yours and screw everyone else.

For years in America, we’ve been practicing reverse discrimination. Damn it! It’s still discrimination! If they won’t fire me because I’m a black woman when I deserve to be fired, I remain a victim of a travesty, equal or greater in evil to slavery and similar atrocities.

Eugene understood this societal anomaly and taught me how to recognize it. It has penetrative, long-lasting effects on everyone concerned. Knowing this, I was able to assimilate the complexities I faced in dealing with bigotry, discrimination, and abusive authority – be it the police, the U.S. government, the Zionist-controlled media, or even my own family. Basic principles that I learned from my parents and leaders were reaffirmed, despite the fact that they, themselves, may not have practiced them.

Chapter 2 – Ups And Downs

1973’s New Year was full of surprises. The weather in Houston was colder than usual. The drugs in America were fancier than ever. Sarran, my Bellaire High School buddy who nicknamed me Wilbur, and I made it our mission to master every pharmaceutical in existence. Tetra-Hydro-Cannabinol, the principal psychoactive constituent of the cannabis plant, became the sweetheart drug of choice. Sarran’s brother, Charlie, was enchanted with THC. He was always prepared with a pitcher of iced tea spiked with the stuff in his refrigerator. His short name for THC was, in fact, ‘T’, so when he offered us tea, he really meant ‘T’.

Charlie took Sarran and me over to Gilbert’s apartment with him several times to get high. Gilbert had the best pot in town and shared it generously. During one of our smoke-outs, he opened his closet to retrieve a fresh kilo, revealing a stack of kilos. There must have been two or three hundred packages in that closet! We couldn’t believe our eyes. We just rolled a batch of huge joints and smoked out, each of us nursing our own fat monster.

With each visit, I noticed that Sarran was casing out Gilbert’s place. I had the feeling that trouble was not far off. One day, Gilbert had a surprise for us. We jumped into his car and he drove us over to Fifth Ward, near Mexican town. In an unassuming, little house – almost a shack – we finally met Manuel, his dealer. He was in his twenties, sharp, and tough-looking. He was cutting MDA on a mirror with a razor blade when we arrived. MDA was a colorful blend of mescaline, cocaine, and methedrine. He offered some to all of us. I immediately fell in love with the stuff. It contained ample mescaline for minor hallucination, cocaine to numb the vital parts, and amphetamine to provide the perfect speed rush. What a splendid combination! We snorted MDA and listened to Harry Nilsson singing Without You.

We stayed much longer than any of us anticipated, with Loggins & Messina and Frank Zappa keeping us company. Two hours into our stay, Manuel pulled out an ounce of heroine. It was the original reason Gilbert went over. That was the first and last