My Lithuanian American Experience 

and the NY Bombing Suspect, Ahman Rahami

       This is in response to Sunday’s LA Time’s article about the arrest of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the NY bombing suspect. I feel I am in a unique position to offer some insight from the side of immigrants as well as from the children who grew up in the US or who were born here to immigrant parents. I am a second-generation Lithuanian (on my mother’s side) born in the US who grew up in the Lithuanian community. I grew up with stories of my grandparents fleeing Lithuania during WWII where their families were torn apart and plagued by atrocities conducted by Stalin and the communists, and yet somehow found ways to laugh and sing.

I grew up with a mother whose entire childhood was dominated by the Lithuanian language and Lithuanian-oriented activities. But, her childhood and early adult years were also sprinkled with Elvis, the Beatles, JFK, free love, Martin Luther King, and the Vietnam War. Despite my grandparents’ belief that one day they would all return to a free Lithuania, my mom would never be a Lithuanian from Lithuania like they. Even the way the language was spoken by my mom (and later us) would be different from those who were born and raised in Lithuania.

My mother was a single-mom (my father was not Lithuanian) and she raised me and my sister in a Lithuanian household and we attended Lithuanian Saturday school. We lived and breathed Lithuanian scouts and camps, danced in festivals across the nation, and always lived a dual life: one with our non-Lithuanian friends and one with. I am now doing the same with my own daughters which is only possible with the 100% support of my non-Lithuanian husband. However, I have always considered myself to be an American who happens to speak another language which happens to be Lithuanian.

My mother’s upbringing and world was dual as well. This alone separated her from her parents immensely, and it was something with which EVERY immigrant family grapples. My grandparents learned enough English to get by, but there was no way they could connect and identify with the world in which my mother was growing up. This is, of course, natural between parents and their children, but it is especially underscored within immigrant families and particularly when looking at cultural differences. My husband, for example, an avid Beatles fan, could introduce their music to our older daughter and my mother-in-law could provide living history of what it was like to hear their music live for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show. My mother would never have been able to share something prominent like that with her parents. She would have no connection to the music giants (mainly composers) of Lithuania during my grandparents’ coming of age days and they would have no connection to the music that my mom would have been listening to as a teenager. There could maybe be an intellectual understanding on my mother’s part, at least later in life, but there would be no connection to the day-to-day. Also, on a more personal note, my mom had trouble connecting to my total immersion of pop culture as a teen. While her world was split 50-50, American (pop culture) influences were much more a part of my life than hers. And I may not “get” my daughters’ eventual pop cultural references and influences, but I will understand them better than my mom with me or her mother with her.

What I find so many immigrant families doing, including my own, is coming to the US with the expectation that their lives will continue to be the same here as in their home country. I can understand the reason for this. There’s nothing else but their home country that they have to compare to. Yet, this is simply not the case. America is made up of so many fabrics which is what makes her so beautiful.

The Rahami family came to the US under political asylum and opened up a restaurant with the name First American Fried Chicken as a tribute to the United States. This shows gratitude and appreciation, for sure. But when Ahmad Rahami began a relationship in high school with a Dominican girl, Maria, his father, Mohammad, didn’t approve. He felt that the relationship with the girl was a disturbing influence of American culture. He ordered his son to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it was after these trips people noticed a change in Ahmad and that he became more serious about his religion. There is nothing inherently wrong with getting more serious about one’s religion, but I, personally, get uncomfortable when it is forced. And it feels like Mr. Rahami forced his son to fit a mold that only he saw fit.

“Born in Afghanistan in 1988, Ahmad had come to the US as a small child and rapidly inhaled American culture. [He] developed a passion for rap music, souped up cars and motorcycles…[and] favored tight jeans and fashionable t-shirts.” [1] Now, imagine growing up in one country and then being forced to go back to a country where the only connection you have to it is through your parents who themselves have not lived there for over 15 years. A lot can change in 15 years.

It was when Ahmad was 19 that he and Maria had a baby girl and his father refused to see the baby. Eventually, Maria broke it off with Ahmad and his heart broke. After the break-up, his relationship with his father was strained which isn’t surprising. Ahmad may have put himself in his father’s mold, but he is still a product of the influences that he experienced growing up in America, not Afghanistan. He was put in a position to deny who he was and what he wanted.

At the heart of all of this, is the failure on the part of the father (and maybe both parents) to acknowledge that the US is not Afghanistan. By bringing a family here, there are only so many rituals and traditions that one will be able to hold on to. The children who grow up in the US will have a different set of influence which will make their journey quite different from the one they would’ve had in their home country. This lack of acceptance on the part of the Rahami family has caused a town in New Jersey to fracture, a little girl to lose her father, a man to probably spend most of his life in an American jail, and a family torn apart. A family that probably left Afghanistan in the hope of escaping sadness and despair.

Keeping one’s culture alive is important. I am living proof of this. But it’s important to understand that culture is fluid, even within one's own culture. My daughters will not grow up with the exact same Lithuanian (American) culture as I did, and that’s OK because it is a different set of influences that surrounds them making their journey a different from the one I had. This will only help mold and shape them into the human beings they are meant to be.

1. Demick, Barbara (2016, September 25). Tolerance obscured imminent tragedy. Los Angeles Times, p. A12.