So the schools was good. I really loved Sheepshead Bay. Junior High School
also, that's actually
IS 14.
And PS 194 was my elementary school. So IS 14 really
gave me a little bit more changes in my...
How could I say my perspective.
IS 14 gave me changes which I viewed for myself in
different ways because that's where I started sometimes calling myself Mo,
not Mohammed. It was like a cool thing, alright you know what,
call me Mohammed or Mo, it doesn't matter, but Mo just
fell in, and it was a... I was more
more American in IS 14
that I was in my elementary school, and that's where I started playing
handball, and I loved the sport, and I just continued all the way into
high school and then I joined the handball team, which I really liked
a lot.
But I learned, I learned other things. When I say other things,
I mean how to interact with others, more importantly because I had my
friend, one of my Russian friends was Alex
and he's still... We're still friends. Another African American friend,
his name is Clayton, we're still friends. We're still... Here and there,
we talk to each other. I actually brought
my friends to meet with Commissioner Kelly. I remember.
I actually have that picture in my office, somewhere, I'm gonna find that,
but that's what I did. I continued with some of these friends and
because of what the relationships we had... What I learned, that's what
I did.
Talk to me about the Mo transition a little bit. What do you
mean by more American and... So when I was in at that moment
when I was in...
I think it was my
Math teacher.
I was in a math class or something, and the teacher said Mohammad Razvi,
and they said, "Oh, how about Mo?" And I said, "Yeah that's fine."
To me, it didn't make a difference but then everyone started calling me
Mo at that junior high school. And whoever my friends were,
they knew me as Mo. It was okay. To me,
I didn't see any difference.
However, it just was like
a... Just like a nickname from Williams to Bill or from Michael to Mike.
Elizabeth to Liz. Elizabeth to Liz. There you go. So it... My experience
with nicknames is that it came with a social shift or an identity
experiment, which is why I ask about it. Also, because you said something
about being more American than you had previously. So tell me what does
that mean in your mind? What more American is? More American,
the way I'm looking at it, is because I had more grasp of
the language because in elementary, I was still picking up,
I was still catching up. So when I was in junior high,
I was in it,
I had everything, I was good, I knew
and I was able to articulate my arguments or articulate my conversations
perfectly, but in elementary,
that was a little bit of a difficult time for me.
Got it. Another thing you mentioned that stood out to me,
is learning to deal with difference, people who were different from you.
Can you give me an example of a specific story where? Oh, Howie Goldman.
So Howie Goldman invites me to his bar mitzvah, I take the invitation
card and I show it to my mom.
I said, "Mom, this friend of mine, he's invited me," and she sees
it, it's a bar mitzvah, it's the Jewish community member,
and she's like, "You sure you wanna go there?" I'm like,
"Yeah, he's my friend, he's my friend."
Mom was thinking and thinking, she goes, "Okay, go."
And then when I talked to Howie, I said, "You know my mom
was kinda peculiar, why I would wanna go to a Jewish bar mitzvah.
And I told her he's my friend." And he goes, "Mo, you know
what, similarly when I was writing out, when I told my dad,
your name Mohammad Razvi, to write an invitation card to my friend Mohammad,
he asked me the same thing, 'You sure he wants to come?
You sure he was gonna come?'"
And I didn't know back then there was... To me, he's my friend.
So that story stuck with me and when I went to the bar mitzvah, it was
so awesome that I was like, "Oh my God, look at this.
He's becoming a... How could I say? A teen. And the way they
celebrated it and everything, and it was in a ballroom out in,
by... Avenue U. A huge ballroom, and it was just amazing.
I thought it was wonderful. I told my mom, "That's great,
what they did, it was awesome, and like a birthday party."
But that stuck with me only because when I became an adult and
I started building these relationships between Jewish and Muslim community,
then I start to realize, I'm like, "Oh my God.
There's so much
dynamics that has to put in place, and that's why my mom was
asking me and that's why his dad was asking him,
"Is he really gonna come? Does he really wanna come?" And do I really wanna
go?
And I'd never thought of that until...
When I started doing this community service work, it never occurred to me.