Four years ago, in my first Fourth of July here, I stood on the Mass Ave Bridge over the Charles River and, along with several hundred thousand other people, belted out "Sweet Caroline" as the Boston Pops played and before fireworks lit up the sky in spectacular fashion.On Thursday, it was revealed that the original massacre technique of the two Tsarnaev brothers was suicide bombs, the date was the Fourth of July and the place was the Charles.
The family of the alleged Boston bombers were in a spectacular spiral even before the two sons, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, allegedly detonated explosives and shot point-blank a policeman, killing four and injuring around 250 in total.
The latest reports state the mother, Zubeidat, had reintroduced Islam to herself and Tamerlan; she went from dark eyeliner and teased-up hair to a hijab and conservatism, odious even to her husband such that they filed for divorce. That three college friends of Dzhokhar, two of whom came here on visas, were arrested for throwing away the suspect's backpack.
A sweeping portrait of the Tsarnaev family just published in The Washington Post revealed a family in...dreamland. They dreamed of walking through America's golden door to grandeur and bliss.They dreamed the American Dream: that intangible but overarching and overwhelming notion millions of people believe to be true, to be sure and, perhaps, to be entitled to.
Lost Chechens in Cambridge
It's what most all immigrants to America believe even if they don't admit it. That they will travel afar, get a good job, have a nice place and live like they see people do on TV. As if the move itself is the hard part, it's not nearly as hard as what follows.
Particularly in a place like Boston where every other person is a software engineer or researcher of cancer-causing stem cells; where the cost of living is almost unreachable; where success isn't handed to you because of your lineage or tribe; where you are given a level playing field, itself a rare commodity, and must work harder than everyone else to rise above it.
For the immigrant Chechens, it was too hard. With their history of displacement, political "instability" and war following them, the parents moved to, of all places, the home of Harvard and MIT with degrees that, as often happens, didn't translate equally in a developed country. So the father fixed cars and the mother gave facials.
They expected an easy ride. The boys' uncle, Ruslan, had moved to the US earlier. He was living in a big house in a DC suburb. In 2005, his salary was US$216,000 plus stock options. The aunt who had moved to Toronto got a law degree.
The Tsarnaev mother, instead, was accused of shoplifting dresses from Lord and Taylor. The father used to pilfer auto parts from the store. Police were called when Tamerlan slapped his girlfriend. He was a stay-at-home dad with an incomplete degree while his American wife worked up to 80 hours a week. The Tsarnaev daughters were estranged. One got arrested for weed. The country that had given them a chance was now paying for their welfare benefits and subsidising their rent.
'Great Gatsby' illusion
I've met lots of immigrants who have had it hard, too.I met a grocery owner whose family was slaughtered in the Cambodian genocide. She walked for one day and one night until she was in Thailand. She went from the refugee camp, to the Philippines and then to California. She is the face of resilience.
I met a man whose degree from Chile didn't mean much here so he painted houses. He stuck with it and grew it into a business. He harbours no ill will to America even though it took the life of his son, a marine. A 20-foot US flag hangs from the giant tree in front of his house.
I met a young man whose parents crossed the border with a "coyote," whose mother worked as a "domestic" in Beverly Hills, whose father died early of cancer because he had no medical benefits. The young man's parents taught him the only thing he needed to succeed was to work hard. He graduated with his master's from MIT last year.
Obviously not every immigrant is a success story. But as the immigrants above realised, their American Dream was not something to get but something to earn. In a kind of "Great Gatsby" way, the grandeur is but an illusion: something you can see but can't touch unless you can create it for yourself.
I imagine that, in another life, the Tsarnaev brothers could have been on the Charles singing "Sweet Caroline" in that cliche Fourth of July way with the rest of Boston's natives and immigrants just as a tourist might jump and wave and chant at Carnival time. But their past followed them wherever they went. Their present was too challenging. The future seemed destined. The resentment, unhappiness and loneliness must have been staggering.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."