Work Text:
BEFORE
Abed’s earliest memories are of his parents yelling about him, trying to figure out what’s wrong with him, blaming each other. He thinks it might stop when his mom leaves, but his dad just starts asking him directly, instead, what is wrong with you, Abed, why are you like this, Abed, why are you doing this to me, Abed.
It’s not much better when he starts school, because the kids there don’t even bother to ask what’s wrong with him, they just tell him directly: you’re weird, you’re dumb, you have no friends, and Abed’s not even sure if he’s allowed to be upset about that, because they’re probably right, they’re just telling the truth. They laugh at him when he taps or flaps too much, and after the first time he falls down screaming on the floor, the parent-teacher conferences start, and he learns that he has no one on his side.
That’s not entirely true, though, because he does know that his dad loves him. Despite everything, it’s Gobi Nadir who stays with him and cares for him, and it’s punctuated with a lot of frustration and misunderstanding, but he’s still always there, he still tucks Abed in every night and brings food home from the falafel stand and makes Abed a special meal on his birthday, whatever he wants, and every year Abed requests buttered noodles, and his dad rolls his eyes and then makes the best buttered noodles in the world.
All of it becomes routine, school and bullying and stims and meltdowns and teacher meetings and falafel and that feeling of not being heard, no matter how loud he shouts, which is how he learns to stop shouting. And in a way it’s good, because Abed loves routine, needs it, and even if it’s not an altogether pleasant existence, it’s a predictable one, and he finds comfort in that. He teaches himself tricks to cope with being shoved in a locker, gets used to running away when he’s being picked on. He turns into a pretty good runner.
By the time he’s in middle school, it seems like he’s almost got a handle on things. Not that he knows how to deal with all the things that happen to him, or the things that he does to himself, but he at least knows what to expect, because people aren’t very creative, his own brain isn’t very creative, and it’s just the same things over and over and over, the same obstacles, the same jokes, the same punishments.
Until it’s not.
THE DAY OF
It’s a Tuesday. Abed is 13 years old and he wakes up late for school. He throws on some clothes and grabs his backpack, runs out to the living room, and finds his dad glued to the television. He tells his dad that they need to leave or he’s going to be late, and Gobi waves a hand at him, tells him this is important.
Abed doesn’t understand, because he’s going to be late for school, and that’s what’s important, but his dad won’t budge. He just keeps telling Abed to be quiet, that a plane hit a building in New York, and Abed doesn’t get what’s so significant about that, because it’s not like this is the first time a plane has crashed. It’s sad but it doesn’t explain why his dad is suddenly obsessed with the news.
Finally Abed storms out and runs to school by himself, and he’s late, but it doesn’t matter, because the TV is on in his classroom, the TV is on in every classroom. On the screen is the same scene his father was watching, and it’s a building, and it’s smoke, and it’s chaos. It’s TV in school, which is usually Abed’s favorite thing, but this is Bad, this is Very Very Bad.
Before he can really comprehend what’s happening, the news switches pictures and everyone shuts up, and on the screen there’s a second plane, a second building, and they’re watching it as it happens, it’s happening right now, and the classroom is abuzz with people speculating and worrying and he thinks, should they even be allowed to be watching this on TV? Abed can’t handle it, it’s too much, none of this is what school is supposed to be, and he’s not even in the right class anymore, because first period should be starting but they’re all still in homeroom.
It’s Wrong and it’s Bad and when he runs out of the room no one follows him, they’re all too distracted by what’s unfolding on the other side of the country, and Abed appreciates it because he ends up on the floor in the bathroom with his hands over his ears and his eyes screwed shut and even when he starts wailing it doesn’t permeate the blanket of panic that’s covering the whole school, and for once in his life he’s allowed to have a meltdown all by himself, he’s not in anyone’s way, he’s not freaking anyone out, and when it’s over, he’s secretly relieved.
The day continues in chaos. When Abed finally goes back to class, no one has even noticed he left, even though they should all be in second period by this point. He sits at his desk and wrings his hands, taps his feet, savors the knowledge that no one in this room cares, and he’s so grateful for that, and then he hates himself for feeling that way, for feeling good on this day when everything in the world is bad. But he’s just so used to people pointing and staring and laughing and jeering at him, and it’s nice not to be the target of anyone’s attention right now. It’s nice to feel anonymous, invisible.
He takes a piece of paper and writes, “It’s a secret,” puts it in his pocket. It’s a reminder to himself not to ever tell anyone about this, about how he felt on this day that probably no one is going to forget anytime soon. The day when people died and lost family members and friends, and Abed felt safe in his classroom for the first time in his life.
When he gets home from school his dad is at work, and Abed walks to the falafel stand to apologize for the way he acted that morning. There’s a TV in the restaurant that they turn on mostly for soccer matches, but it’s on and tuned to the news today, and Abed isn’t surprised. There have been four plane crashes now, and people are losing their minds, and no one even knows what’s really going on. His dad is cooking, though, not watching, and he accepts Abed’s apology along with his offer to stay and help out for a little while.
Abed keeps to the kitchen so he doesn’t have to watch the news anymore. He doesn’t want to see it anymore. He doesn’t want to think about it anymore. He’s glad they don’t know anyone in New York, but he also feels guilty, because he feels like he has no stakes in this, like he should be more upset about it and he’s not. He doesn’t understand what he should be feeling, and it makes him uncomfortable, and school disruption aside, it doesn’t really affect him at all.
Until it does.
AFTER
The country learns a new vocabulary, one that includes words like al-Quaeda and terrorism and Osama bin Laden, and they enter Abed’s consciousness seamlessly, and he has no idea that they are going to follow him forever, that people will shout them and make jokes about them, and it will never, ever, ever end. He doesn’t know, when it starts, that the world is different now. Abed’s world, but the rest of the world, too. The Post-9/11 World.
Living in a post-9/11 world as a neurodivergent Muslim Polish-Arab teenager isn’t easy. It’s pretty hard, actually, and terrible, and Abed is surprised because he was already getting bullied for things he couldn’t control, and he didn’t expect for a whole new set of things to be piled on top, so now people don’t just call him weird or retarded, they call him a raghead and a terrorist, too, and they make jokes about his “family back home,” and his “uncle Osama,” and they definitely don’t listen when he tells them he’s Palestinian and he doesn’t even have any uncles.
It’s not just the names and the implications, though, and it’s not just Abed. The mailman shows up at their door one day looking embarrassed, and he hands them a stack of letters that have been torn in half, telling Gobi and Abed that they suspect someone didn’t like the name “Nadir” on the envelope.
They stop speaking Arabic in public, because people stare at them now when they do, some even glare at them, as if they’re doing something wrong, as if they’re making some sort of statement, as if they’re being anti-American. The falafel stand suffers, and Gobi manages to keep it afloat, but there are a few difficult years and he puts in a lot of long hours and he’s angry all the time, even angrier than usual.
It’s a bonding time for them, though, despite the fear and anger, and Abed feels closer to his dad than he ever has. They’re a team, they’re in this together, they only have each other. They don’t really talk about It, though, about This Thing That Happened, the thing that Changed Everything. Gobi tries, but Abed doesn’t want to, he changes the subject. There’s nothing they can say that will change it, and he doesn’t want to think about it if he doesn’t have to, and his father keeps reminding him to be proud of his heritage and who he is, and it’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s just that it hurts, and it’s so much easier just to try to disconnect.
Abed keeps waiting for it to get better, and it doesn’t, really, it just tapers off a bit. He notices when Hollywood starts making more and more villains Middle Eastern, and when he’s a senior in high school a bunch of his classmates enlist in the military so they can “go kill Arabs overseas,” in their words, and he doesn’t know why they all feel the need to tell him about it, but it doesn’t feel good. He feels conspicuous all the time, and eventually he gets used to it and doesn’t notice as much, but it’s still always there.
The looks are still there, too, and especially the jokes, and Abed never really learns how to react, because he can never tell what people mean when they make terrorism jokes at him, if they’re trying to insult him or trying to be funny, and even if they are trying to be funny, he doesn’t think it’s funny, but he doesn’t know how to convey that, because then he usually just gets called a buzzkill.
It gets exhausting, because it’s never ending, and eventually Abed stops responding altogether, and he reaches that point not long before he enrolls at Greendale. Greendale gives him a chance to start over, and he finds himself a part of a study group of five people he really likes and one who he tolerates, and Pierce is the only one that goes out of his way to make terrorism jokes and 9/11 jokes and Abed just ignores them, he doesn’t even respond, because he doesn’t see the point. There’s nothing he can say that will make it okay, nothing that will take back Pierce’s joke or make it funny, and he’s sick of having the conversation.
It’s the same reason he doesn’t correct Pierce when he mispronounces Abed’s name for the 500th time, because people are always mispronouncing his name and it doesn’t matter how many times he corrects them, they don’t listen. They already have an idea in their head of how it sounds, and Abed doesn’t have the power to change that idea. He’s done trying.
Instead, he does his best to ignore the things Pierce says and how he says them, and he focuses on his friends who are great and supportive and fun, and they’re his first friends, and they’re his real friends, and they don’t even leave him when things get difficult, when he has meltdowns or doesn’t know how to react to things, and they don’t make stupid jokes about his race. When they insult his religion, he’s pretty sure it comes from a place of ignorance and misunderstanding, not malice, and that’s something he can work with.
He surrounds himself with these good people who love him, and he loves them back, and he remembers how he felt in the classroom in 8th grade, the one day when he could stim in front of his classmates and no one cared, when he could have a meltdown without anyone noticing, and he feels that again at Greendale. Only now, it’s not because the people around him are distracted by a national tragedy, it’s because the people around him don’t mind, they love him for who he is, and they let him be himself.
It teaches him that there’s still beauty in the world, even when things feel bad and people do bad things and other people react poorly to the bad things. That despite all of it, there’s still hope, there’s still potential for change, for good change. That there’s always a chance for things to get better. It’s a thing he didn’t know before, and now he doesn’t know how he ever survived not knowing.