In melting pot, suspect boiled over
N.J. neighborhood reels as one of its own tied to bombs
ELIZABETH, N.J. — Ahmad Khan Rahami’s troubles with his family and his identity may have begun when he met a girl named Maria. The 28-yearold suspect in a string of bombings grew up in a perfect corner of the American melting pot. Elmora Avenue was awash in languages and cultures. Restaurants along the road represent most of the world’s cuisines, and some of them — like the kosher Chinese place — more than one.
Mohammad Rahami, his father, had named their own fast food restaurant First American Fried Chicken, a tribute to the country that gave them political asylum after they fled Afghanistan in the 1990s.
A pious Muslim, Mohammad considered his best friend in the business community a local real estate agent, an observant Jewish woman who happened to be married to a Colombian immigrant, an equally observant Catholic. “This place is beautiful. You wouldn’t believe the way everybody got along,” said the agent, Jill Guzman.
But the tragedy of the Rahami family, which has been unfolding in the public eye since Ahmad’s arrest on Sept. 19, underscores the limits of tolerance in even the most harmonious community.
Long before his arrest, the young Afghan immigrant’s love affair with his high school sweetheart, a local Dominican girl named Maria Mena, had taken on overtones of a “West Side Story”-like cultural collision.
Ahmad Rahami’s relationship with the girl was one of several things about the influence of American culture that his father found disturbing, according to at least two people close to the family. Mohammad Rahami ordered his son to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan — one of several such trips that friends say caused the younger Rahami to begin taking his religion much more seriously.
Born in Afghanistan in 1988, Ahmad had come to the U.S. as a small child and rapidly inhaled American culture. His developed a passion for rap music, souped-up cars and motorcycles. He favored tight jeans and fashionable T-shirts.
It was when he was 19 that Ahmad crashed up against the limits of his family’s assimilation into American culture. Mena, who came from the Dominican Republic, gave birth to a baby in 2007. Mohammad refused to meet with either the mother or the baby girl. From the glass storefront of the adjacent beauty salon, staff and customers, many of whom knew the family well, would watch the heartbreaking spectacle.
“Maria came with the baby many times. She would stand outside the door and wait,” said Martha Renza, who was often at the salon and is friends with its owners. “But the old man would never come out. He didn’t want to meet the grandchild.”
Mohammad Rahami had remained close to his roots after immigrating to the U.S. He wore an Afghanstyle tunic and prayed five times a day in a basement under the restaurant. His wife and daughters were rarely seen out in the neighborhood, and the operators of the beauty salon, who regularly cut hair for Mohammad and his sons, never met the female family members.
Friends say Ahmad and Maria started dating at Edison High School over the objections of Rahami’s father, who expected his sons to marry cousins from back home. Mohammad, they said, was concerned that his son was too Americanized and sent him to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they had relatives.
By the time of the high school prom, Maria was pregnant. Ahmad moved out of the apartment above the chicken shop and rented a place with Maria near Middlesex Community College in Edison, N.J., where he was studying criminal justice.
Friends say the young couple were committed to one another and that Ahmad traveled with her to meet her family in the Dominican Republic. But Ahmad’s father prevailed. Ahmad could not find work outside the chicken shop, and without a job he could not afford college or the apartment with Maria. She broke off the relationship and sued him for child support.
“Ahmad loved her very much. He was very depressed after she broke it off,’’ Renza said. After the breakup, Ahmad quarreled with his father more frequently.
Friends say that after Ahmad left again for Pakistan and Afghanistan, he returned a different person.