In the chaos following 9/11, with America trying to unravel the devastating attacks while wondering what might be coming next, Mark Stroman walked into three Dallas gas stations and shot three men he supposed to be Arabs at near point-blank range.

Two died within moments. The third, a former Bangladesh air force officer who immigrated to America to pursue a technology career, managed to survive, though he would undergo repeated surgeries to his mangled face, ultimately losing most vision in one eye.

New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas meticulously re-creates the crimes and all that would happen to these two men over the next decade, a period of transformation for the self-styled “Arab Slayer” as he awaited his fate on Texas’ death row, and for young immigrant Rais Bhuiyan, who finds in his Muslim faith the power to forgive.

“The True American” is a riveting tale, dense with detail, from Giridharadas’ unflinching descriptions of the struggling neighborhoods on the eastern edge of Dallas, to Stroman’s troubled and brutal childhood, to the ebullient optimism of these new Americans determined to create better lives.

Stroman, an ex-con with considerable experience in the halls of justice, had spent the months between his arrest and trial building a reputation as a hate criminal, alluding to associations with the Aryan Brotherhood and, in a television interview, admitting to the shootings.

“We’re at war,” he said. “I did what I had to do. I did it to retaliate against those who retaliated against us.”

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The state charged Stroman with just one of the killings, but the outcome of the trial was never in doubt, Giridharadas writes. The evidence was overwhelming. Bhuiyan testified briefly, telling the jury about the three surgeries he’d already had and the fourth to come, the one he hoped would restore perhaps a quarter of his vision.

By that point, the only question was whether Stroman would get the death penalty. He did.

For Bhuiyan, who had lived in fear that Stroman would track him down and kill him, the sentence brought freedom. As he prayed for a full recovery, he promised that he would use his life to help others.

Eight years after the shooting, with his career on track and money in his pockets, Bhuiyan flew home to Bangladesh, picked up his mother and took her to Saudi Arabia to visit the sacred sites of the Muslim religion.

There, while Bhuiyan was in prayer at the huge Haram Mosque, on his hands and knees with his head almost touching the floor, an old man collapsed and fell on him, and Bhuiyan felt his nose break. At the first aid station, he asked for antibiotics. No need, the attendant said. Just clean it with water from the magical well called Zamzam. In less than a week, his nose healed.

God had healed him, Bhuiyan thought, but why did God want to hurt him in the first place? He searched for meaning and found it in the teachings of the Prophet, who had looked down from a mountain at a world filled with hate and wondered how that could change.

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Bhuiyan realized the pain and suffering he overcame would allow him to help others do the same, “to fill my heart with peace, forgiveness, and love for His creation.”

Ultimately, that spirit of forgiveness came to include the man who had left him for dead.

Stroman, on death row in the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, was gradually undergoing a transformation of his own.

“I’m no angel by far and I’ve done some things after September 11, 2001 that still haunts me and by no means am I proud of the pain my own actions have caused,” he wrote for a blog in April 2009.

Though his sisters remained suspicious, Stroman drew followers on the Internet, mostly people desperately opposed to the death sentence.

But none could have imagined that the person who would fight as hard as any to keep Stroman alive was the man he almost killed in that rampage after 9/11.

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Bhuiyan traveled to Europe to build support. A lawyer in Dallas represented him in court battles with the state of Texas, battles that continued into the night of Stroman’s scheduled execution.

In those last minutes, Bhuiyan and Stroman spoke by phone, the first words they’d exchanged since the shooting.

“I love you, bro. I love you with all my heart,” Stroman told him. “Thank you for being such an awesome person. I mean it. You touched my heart.”

“You touched mine, too,” Bhuiyan told him.

The call ended then, and a few hours later, Stroman’s life.

But Bhuiyan carried on, his quest ahead of him.

This driven young man from Bangladesh had become the True American.


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