GONZÁLEZ: Hey, everybody. I’m Ana. 

NUNES: I’m Alex. And you’re listening to Mosaic.

GONZÁLEZ: This episode is about good old American football.

NUNES: But it’s also about more than just touchdowns and field goals. 

GONZÁLEZ: Yes. It’s about being a new immigrant, being Muslim in America, and how pop culture and sports can help a person connect to their new home at a time when things are tough.

SALEH: I just fell in love with the sport. I was like, “Oh, my God. Where was I the whole time? How come I never knew about this sport?”

NUNES: That’s Saleh, an immigrant from Senegal. He came to America thinking it’s the land of Michael Jordan, Arnold Schwarzegger, and Olympic runners. Then he found out that’s partly true, but it’s also a whole lot more.

GONZÁLEZ: Now let’s get to our story on three, Alex: hut, hut..

NUNES: When you visit Saleh at his house in Lincoln, Rhode Island, he greets you with a pot of tea and a tray of little cookies and pastries.

NUNES: What are we having here?

SALEH: So, we’re having a--it’s a mix of African tea and Pakistani tea. It’s a chai. But what we do is we mix ginger with black pepper. I’ll let you be the judge and let me know what you think.

NUNES: [Sips] Yeah, it’s pretty strong.

SALEH: It’s strong, yeah.

NUNES: Saleh is from Senegal in West Africa. In that country, enjoying tea is something special. You don’t grab a cup on the run at the Starbucks drive-thru. You sip it slowly with friends over conversation, sometimes for hours.

SALEH: It’s not like, you know, “I need to have tea because I have to go to work,” stuff like that. It’s not that same mentality. It’s just like, when you have a guest, you have to have tea. You get out of work, you tired, you call up a couple of your friends, you sit down and you enjoy the tea. It’s a two hour process.

NUNES: And if you sip tea with Saleh long enough, there’s a good chance the conversation will eventually veer to one topic in particular.

SALEH: Do you like football?

NUNES: Yeah. I played football in high school. I was really into it.

SALEH: Yeah?

NUNES: Yup. Is American football your favorite sport now?

SALEH: Oh, yeah. I love American football, man.

NUNES: Living in New England, Saleh loves one team above all.

SALEH: I just become like that Patriots junk fan guy. It doesn’t matter. They cannot do anything wrong. [Laughs] It’s just become like: I’m a diehard Patriots.

NUNES: Saleh is the type of diehard fan who wears the merchandise--hats, sweatshirts. He watches games on the edge of his seat, and he can fall into a funk when his team loses. After living in the U.S. for more than 18 years now, Saleh says the Patriots are pretty much part of his identity.

GONZÁLEZ: But Saleh wasn’t always a fan of American football. Growing up in Senegal, he doesn’t really know much about the game at all. His impressions of American culture are limited to what he sees on TV and in the movies.

NUNES: And what he does see is a lot of other sports. And he loves them.

GONZÁLEZ: It’s the 1990s. U.S. runners are winning gold medals at the Olympics. America has the “Dream Team” in basketball. And Saleh is completely blown away by this country he’s never been to that has all these athletic superheroes.

SALEH: The Magic Johnson. The Clyde Drexler. The Michael Jordan. Any game that Michael Jordan play, we watch it there and everything. We wanted to just be like American, act like American, because of what we see.

GONZÁLEZ: To Saleh, America is the coolest country on earth.  It’s exciting and larger than life. He watches action movies. He loves the personas of actors like Sylvester Stalone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

SALEH: “Commando.” That was one of my favorite movies, with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

NUNES: Saleh decides he has to move to America someday. It’s not just the basketball and the action movies that he likes. He idealizes the United States for other reasons. 

GONZÁLEZ: Right. Because on TV, America is always portrayed as the land of opportunity, a place where everyone is equal no matter who they are or where they come from.

SALEH: If you want to just succeed in life, that’s the country to go. Because what you see on TV is people from different nationality, different skin type and everything, all living together and making this actually great, great country. It was just advertised out there as the greatest country in the world. And who doesn’t want to be among the greatest country in the world? 

GONZÁLEZ: Saleh’s life in Senegal is comfortable and safe. He and his family members are Muslim. They know a lot of Christian people, too, and Saleh says there’s never any major tension between different religions.

NUNES: But, after he graduates from college with a degree in business management, Saleh decides he’s ready to leave Senegal. It’s time to fulfill that dream of living in the United States. 

GONZÁLEZ: Saleh arrives in America on a visa in March 2001. His plan is to settle down in the Washington D.C. area, learn English, and enroll in an American college. From there, he’ll be able to build a career in the U.S., and life will keep getting better and better.

NUNES: But there are certain realities to living in America that hit Saleh when he gets here. Making it in America can be tough. There’s not always a lot of social support for people. You have to look out for yourself. 

SALEH: Here, if you don’t work, you don’t eat, or you’re going to have to live on the street. So I had to make the decision just to work.

GONZÁLEZ: Saleh realizes his dream of going to an American college isn’t going to happen, at least for now.

NUNES: So he starts working retail jobs. He finds out about opportunities in New England, and he moves up to Rhode Island in the summer of 2001.

GONZÁLEZ: But just as Saleh is settling into his new life in Rhode Island, this happens: NEWS REPORT: [Description of 9/11 attacks.]

NUNES: On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Saleh doesn’t realize anything is wrong at first. Then he gets a call from a friend in the D.C. area.

SALEH: He was the one who actually called me: “Hey, listen. Look at the TV--what’s going on.” I was like, “What do you mean? What’s going on?” He was like, “United States is on war.” I was like, “What do you mean ‘is on war’?” I opened the TV, and actually, when I opened the TV at that time in the morning, only one plane has hit. So while we’re talking on the phone and everything, the other plane hit, and I’m like, “Oh, my God.” It was just like one of the worst days ever. 

NUNES: Saleh is horrified by the attacks. He says he also feels a sense of shame because the people who carried them out call themselves Muslims. And he begins to worry about his own future.

GONZÁLEZ: He’s a new immigrant, and he’s Muslim. He doesn’t know what to expect.

SALEH: A lot of stuff go through your mind, you know, about like what’s going to happen? You know what I mean? Are they going to do like what you see in movie? They gonna call all the Muslim on one side, do this, and then investigate, all that stuff? You know, I have nothing to do with it. Because you’re just kind of: What’s going to happen now? 

GONZÁLEZ: For Saleh, 9/11 is the beginning of this larger turning point in his life.

NUNES: Over time, he recognizes that America isn’t exactly the country he thought it was back when he lived in Senegal. America is complex and imperfect. It has lots of problems.

GONZÁLEZ: There’s injustice and religious intolerance. There’s economic inequality. Police brutality. Racism against black people, like him. Saleh says he underestimated all of that before.

SALEH: And the reason why [is] because I wasn’t here. What I saw--it’s like I say: that’s what you see on TV. And on TV they don’t show you that much. They don’t show you the racial disparity and all that stuff, because, like I say, in sports, what do you see--black, white, on the same team, right? Team. Together. 

NUNES: So, I think you can look at Saleh’s story and have a couple of different reactions.

GONZÁLEZ: OK.

NUNES: One is: wow, isn’t our popular culture misleading and superficial. We project ourselves as something that we really aren’t, and a guy like Saleh finds that out when he gets here.

GONZÁLEZ: Definitely. In a sense, that’s true.

NUNES: Yeah, it is. But I think there’s also another side to it. Because popular culture and sports can also create these common experiences and cultural touchpoints for people in America, including immigrants. And that’s still important.

GONZÁLEZ: Four sure. You can’t dismiss that. Things like movies and tv shows and big sports games legitimately make us feel part of something bigger. And that’s another lesson Saleh learns in America. 

NUNES: Five months after 9/11, another major national event happens, and this one is going to change Saleh’s life forever--but this time in a positive way.

GONZÁLEZ: It’s February 3rd, 2002. 

NUNES: And for people who don’t remember, or weren’t paying as close attention as me at the time, this is the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the St. Louis Rams. 

GONZÁLEZ: The Patriots aren’t a football dynasty yet. They’ve never won a Superbowl. 

NUNES: Tom Brady is in his first year as the starting quarterback, and the Patriots are the underdogs.

GONZÁLEZ: And that night, Saleh is watching his very first American football game.

SALEH: I only watch like maybe the last quarter of the game. 

NUNES: But it’s the quarter you want to be watching. The game is tied with less than two minutes to go. And that’s when Tom Brady leads the Patriots down the field to set up kicker Adam Vinatieri for a shot at a winning field goal.

GONZÁLEZ: It’s a 48-yard field goal, the snap’s good. He gets the hold and Vinatieri steps in and drills it right down the middle to win the game, 20 to 17.

NUNES: Saleh is stunned.

SALEH: I just fell in love with the sport. I was like, “Oh, my God. Where was I the whole time? How come I never knew about this sport?”

NUNES: After the Superbowl, Saleh asks his friends: “When’s the next game? I have to see more.” He doesn’t realize the season is actually over until someone tells him.

SALEH: They say like, “Oh, no. You got to wait now until like September, October for the new season and everything. I’m like, “Oh, man. That’s a long time.” I remember the whole year, everytime I had to go like ask people, say like, “Hey, when the game starts, please let me know.” 

NUNES: Saleh becomes a verifiable football fanatic.

GONZÁLEZ: He watches all the Patriots games. He plays flag football with guys at work. He’s connecting with other people through this quintessentially American past-time.

NUNES: Saleh says his fandom even starts to get a little out of control. He begins scouting the other teams on the Patriots’ schedule. He’s watching football constantly. The game strategy fascinates him and he wants to know more.

SALEH: It’s like war game, tactics you have to use. It’s like chess to actually dominate the other team. I just kind of wish, I wish I came here earlier in college to play football, because I kind of have that feeling, strong feeling, that I would be good at it. 

GONZÁLEZ: So, when people think of moving to a new country and getting connected to their new home, sports and football might not be the first thing that comes to mind. 

NUNES: Right. But, when people are new to a place, they gravitate to aspects of that culture that resonate with them. Sports are really important to a lot of people; and football is the national game and it’s everywhere. So, for a guy like Saleh, it makes sense.

GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. You could say Michael Jordan helped bring Saleh to America, and Tom Brady helped make it feel like home. 

NUNES: Right. But Saleh’s journey in the U.S. also goes way beyond football too. After he moves to Rhode Island, he meets his future wife, they get married, and they have two daughters.

GONZÁLEZ: Saleh also learns English, which he says is thanks in large part to watching kids’ cartoons.

SALEH: I watch a lot of “Spongebob.” I used to watch like cartoon after cartoon after cartoon. Because that sense of humoristic situation and everything, it’s easier to remember a situation when it’s humoristic than actually serious. My kids, growing up, I used to sit down with them and watch Spongebob. And they like still hooked on Spongebob until now. So we all like a Spongebob family.

GONZÁLEZ: When Saleh isn’t watching Spongebob, he’s getting really involved in other things, like volunteering at his mosque. Eventually, he even helps run regular group pilgrimages to Mecca, and he volunteers helping resettle refugees when they first arrive in America. 

NUNES: Today, Saleh’s main job is working for a Muslim organization that provides international humanitarian relief after major disasters. 

SALEH: All the famine that hits the African country, we help send food there, build well, get water and everything. Religiously, it’s what we are asked to do. That’s what Islam is teaching us, you know: it’s just like you got to take care of your neighbor.

NUNES: Now that Saleh has a clearer sense of the problems facing America, he wants to be a part of helping make things better.

GONZÁLEZ: And he’s thinking of his daughters. Saleh says his greatest wish for them is that they can someday live in a society where people can overlook race, religion and social status. 

SALEH: Because those are the three things that I think are the source of most of the bad things going on right now in the world. But if they can go beyond that and strengthen their belief and have their faith in God and be good human beings, for me that’s just what I hope for them.

NUNES: Saleh is also happy to say that one of his daughters is as big a fan of the New England Patriots as he is. 

GONZÁLEZ: In fact, he says she may have surpassed him. 

SALEH: I used to watch the game when she was a young kid. When they used to get a touchdown, I used to lift her up and just do circle with her. It’s like, “Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!” And then we did it so many years, she’s actually a bigger fan than I am. We share that passion of football, which is special. 

NUNES: And it all started with one especially memorable game in February 2002.

GONZÁLEZ: Mosaic is a production of The Public’s Radio, edited by Sally Eisele with production help from James Baumgartner and Aaron Selbig. Our original music is by Bryn Bliska. Torey Malatia is the general manager of The Public’s Radio. I’m Ana Gonzalez.

NUNES: And I’m Alex Nunes. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the stories you've heard over the last few months, we'd like to ask you for a small favor: Share this podcast with someone you know. You can tweet about it, post it to Facebook, or email your family with a link. We'd like for as many people as possible to hear about Mosaic, and we know that when you share it with friends, that can make a big difference. You can share it from your podcast app, or find all the links at thepublicsradio.org/mosaic. Thanks!