One year later, just a few weeks into junior year, my life at Duke was still a whirlwind of activity, but I finally had a social routine that revolved around my Muslim friends. Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, when I wasn’t at practice or a competition, I spent time with members of the MSA. We’d do everything from bowling to volunteer work in the community. I made peace with the fact that my hijab made some of my fellow Muslim women uncomfortable. I became friends with the other members of the MSA, both male and female, who didn’t have an issue with it. If I had competitions, or if practice ran late, I’d have to take a rain check on the MSA. More and more I found myself wishing it were the other way around, though. I wanted to skip practice so I could hang out with my friends. For the first time in my life, fencing had become a source of stress. But it wasn’t the sport itself, it was the team.
Every year since joining the Duke fencing team, I’d been to the NCAAs and named All-American. I was almost undefeated on the collegiate circuit. There were only one or two other people on the team who shared the same work ethic. Many would have no problem missing practice if they had to study for a test, for example. At Duke, missing practice to study for a test was an acceptable excuse. But I never made those excuses, and I still managed to get it all in. Maybe that’s why my female teammates weren’t interested in being friends with me. I can’t say for sure. All I know is that the fencing team at Duke did not provide me with a feeling of team spirit. In fact, it mostly caused undue levels of anxiety.
If the only problems on the fencing team were about certain girls not wanting to be my friends, I wouldn’t have minded that much, but the real issues at play were laced with racial undertones. My friend Josh and I were the only Black fencers on Duke’s team, and we both were on the receiving end of endless numbers of “harmless jokes” and offhand comments that permeated our team culture. Our teammates thought it was funny, for example, to ask Josh and me if we really liked to eat fried chicken and watermelon for dinner. They weren’t even original with their racism. Josh fumed at their ignorance and eventually decided fencing wasn’t worth subjecting himself to that type of abuse. He quit the team before my junior year, leaving me as the only Black person on Duke’s fencing team. At that point, my feelings of isolation only intensified.
One time the team was traveling by bus to a competition at Notre Dame. Our coach hated to fly, so we always had to drive to our meets. We made a pit stop to eat at a Cracker Barrel restaurant about three hours into the trip, and everyone piled off of the bus. As we stood in the entranceway of the restaurant waiting for a table, the hostess came over and offered to find a table for two—for me and my friend. Because I happened to be standing next to the bus driver, who was Black, she assumed the two of us were together and not part of the Duke fencing team. Everyone on the team burst out laughing. No one spoke up to correct the woman’s mistake. Of course, the hostess wasn’t to blame for her error, yet the experience perfectly exemplified how I felt about the team in general. Like an outsider. Separate. Different. Out of place.
“I’m going to quit,” I said to Josh, who was telling me for the eleventh time how great his life had been since he’d left the fencing team. He had time to socialize, to join all kinds of clubs, and even take weekend road trips around North Carolina with his friends. It sounded like heaven. A freedom of time I’d never had.
“You? Quit fencing?” Josh said, while stuffing a French fry in his mouth. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I gave my friend a look across the table. “What? Isn’t it possible I want what you have? I’m ready for a real life. Being a college athlete eats up all of your time and energy.”
Josh carefully dipped a fry in a pool of ketchup before responding. “You’re not like regular people, Ibti. You have some kind of superhuman ability to work two hundred times harder than anyone I know. Win on the strip and somehow still manage to get good grades while double majoring. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you stopped fencing.”
I laughed. “Yes, I would.”
“Oh, yeah, like what? “Josh said. “What would you do to burn up all that energy you use to run around the golf course every day, lift weights, and train for three hours? You’d be going stir crazy.”
I didn’t want to tell Josh that he was probably right. I didn’t know what I would do. That unknown was the only reason I continued to fence. Fencing had been a part of my life for so long now. It was true, I couldn’t imagine it not being a central part of my life. But I also couldn’t imagine another year with people who made me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. It wasn’t worth it. I shrugged my shoulders and fiddled with the paper from my straw. “I’d find something. I mean I have three years of lost time to make up for,” I said.
“Like I said,” Josh repeated. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Josh’s words haunted me because he had identified the real reason I was still on the team. I didn’t know what I would do or who I would be if I quit the fencing team. If I wasn’t Ibtihaj Muhammad the fencer, who was I? Luckily my financial aid package didn’t require me to fence, so I was free to make this decision without worrying about my tuition. The real problem was, I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about it who could truly understand all of my issues. I didn’t want to call anyone back at the foundation because they would say, “We told you so,” if I brought up the idea of leaving the team. There was no one on the fencing team at Duke who had my best interests at heart, and Josh didn’t believe I was serious. I understood where he was coming from. I always came to practice ready to work, and my results on the strip reflected my efforts. Even I wondered, from a practical standpoint, if leaving the team was a good idea. And yet lately, every day I woke up and headed to the gym for weight training, I found myself wishing I were heading anywhere but there. I fantasized about leaving the fencing team and embarking on some other adventure. There were parts of the college experience I yearned to have, but that were impossible as a college athlete. Finally I decided to do something most college athletes can never contemplate: leaving campus to study abroad.
I called my parents and asked them if they would help fund a summer study abroad trip in Morocco where I could further my Middle East studies and practice my Arabic. I knew it was a bit drastic, but I decided I could kill two birds with one stone: put some distance between me and the fencing team and spend time in a new country while fulfilling credits for my major and minor. I emphasized the latter with my parents, and they agreed to cover the costs for the program. I didn’t know what would be waiting for me back at Duke when I returned, but I figured no matter what, I’d be better able to deal with it after this time away.
In Morocco, I lived with a Moroccan host family in the capital city of Rabat and took classes at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning situated in the old city or medina. I immediately felt a connection to the Moroccan people. It was a good feeling not to be stared at everywhere I went and to easily blend into the crowds. To not have to explain myself to anyone. I was another Muslim in a Muslim country. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t a minority. I probably experienced less culture shock in Morocco than I had when I first arrived at Duke. But even I felt completely overwhelmed at times by the foreign sights, smells, and sounds of this ancient coastal city. All five senses were bombarded by the frenetic activity of the shopkeepers in the medina as I walked to school every morning through the winding streets of the old city. The smell of baking bread and sweet spices mixed with the pungent coppery scent of raw animal flesh being chopped by seasoned butchers filled my nostrils. There was the constant background noise of motorbikes roaring in the near distance and the sound of voices communicating in a language I was desperately trying to learn but had yet to master.
After spending the morning in our intensive Arabic and Moroccan culture classes, my American classmates and I would play volleyball at the beach until the sun went down. On the weekends our Moroccan friends would take us surfing, and we would go on train trips
up and down the coast. The people were so nice and the food was delicious and, of course, halal. I felt truly carefree that summer. For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to enjoy and experience life without a timetable and rigid commitments. It was such a big difference from my life back at Duke, from the life I’d been leading since I was thirteen. In Rabat I was immersed in a culture that had only been accessible through words in a book or pictures on a screen. My major in International Relations with a focus on the Middle East was no longer an abstract area of study, it was what I was living, eating, and breathing every day for three months. My mind was stimulated, my spirit was full, and I seriously woke up every single day excited to learn something new. Fencing rarely crossed my mind.
One day toward the end of my time in Rabat, as I sat on the beach looking out over the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean, as the sun painted the sky a startling display of pinks and purples, I thought about what I wanted my life to look like when I returned to college. I made a mental list of what I wanted to prioritize in my life—things like community service and charitable work were on the top. Even though my time in Morocco had been better than I could have ever imagined, many times I had come face-to-face with extreme poverty and suffering and I realized how much privilege I had living in the United States. How much privilege I enjoyed despite the obstacles I faced as a woman. As an African-American woman. As a Muslim African-American woman. I knew I wanted to make time for helping other people when I returned home. I also knew I wanted to continue studying the Arabic language and find ways to practice so I didn’t lose the momentum I’d acquired in Morocco. The list went on, and as I rolled through what I truly wanted in life, I realized fencing hadn’t even made the list. When I thought about fencing at Duke, my stomach clenched, and a wave of dread passed over me. I curled my toes into the sand. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my life at Duke without fencing. Rather than the blank canvas I feared during my conversation with Josh, I saw myself volunteering with the MSA, shining in my classes, and having time for myself. I felt relaxed instead of pressed for time. I opened my eyes and knew I had made a decision.
When I returned to the United States and to Duke, I immediately informed my fencing coach that I would be leaving the team for my senior year. He took it pretty well, considering I was a standout on the team. He understood my desire to have at least one year of college where I could focus on something besides fencing and my classes. But the truth was, my coach really couldn’t do anything to stop me from leaving even if he wanted to. I hadn’t signed a contract, and I wasn’t fencing on any scholarship, so I was free to go, just like Josh had before me. I don’t know if he figured something must be amiss if the only two Black fencers on his team both quit, but I wasn’t interested in sticking around to help him figure it out. I had my own dreams to pursue, and making Duke’s fencing team a more inclusive space wasn’t one of them.
As I had imagined on that beach in Rabat, my senior year was full of activity, activities that I chose for myself instead of following a never-ending to-do list. I played pool with the members from the MSA after Friday prayers, I went to the mall in Durham with my friends, and sometimes I would just hang out in my dorm room listening to music. It wasn’t all official business, and that suited me just fine. For the first time at Duke, I prioritized my personal happiness. My senior year at Duke was the year I started to really figure out who I was and what was important to me.
By the time I hit graduation, I felt confident and comfortable with who I was, as a Black American woman and as a Muslim American woman. I had a deep and appreciative understanding of African-American history, and my faith had evolved and expanded to include the things in life I deemed important and acceptable. I’d moved beyond a childhood relationship with Allah, and my faith no longer required my parents’ supervision or interpretation. There were things I decided I could do as a Muslim woman that my parents might have frowned upon, like listening to popular music and having male friends, but I had proven to myself that these things did not alter my steadfastness or obedience to Islam. Although the MSA had been a critical part of keeping me focused while at Duke, I had now developed my own routines that reminded me of and kept me close to God.
All told, I felt like Duke had given me an excellent education in mind, body, and spirit. I graduated knowing so much more about myself and my history. I left Duke with a sense of pride and appreciation for my identity that I didn’t have before. By the time graduation rolled around, I’d decided I wanted to go to law school, with a specific focus in international law. I planned to work for one year while I studied for the LSAT, then I would apply to law school. I didn’t know exactly where I would land career wise, but with all things in my life, I knew taking things one step at a time was the way to go. I was confident that once I got into law school I would find the right path for me.
As soon as my diploma was in my hands, we packed my parents’ car with all of the stuff I’d accumulated over four years and headed home. One thing I didn’t love about Duke was its location. I was too far from my family, and I missed the diversity of New York City. And like most successful college graduates, I was ready for real life to start. As for fencing, I figured that part of my life was over. I hadn’t fenced competitively or trained for almost a year, and I had no intention of hopping back on the strip. Fencing had gotten me all the way to an elite university, just like I had planned. Now it was time to move on.
CHAPTER 8
If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success.
—MALCOLM X
I took the elevator to the twenty-third floor and smoothed the pleats on my pants. I’d selected my go-to interview suit, black trousers and blazer with a gray pinstripe blouse and black kitten heels. I felt and looked the part of a corporate executive. My makeup was minimal, and I carried a black leather briefcase with copies of my résumé. When the elevator doors opened, I put on my corporate smile and walked over to the woman sitting at the reception desk.
I was interviewing for a paralegal position in the mergers and acquisitions department of a prestigious multi-national corporate law firm. I was excited for this opportunity because this firm did a lot of international business in the Middle East and Europe. They had offices all over the world, and I could already imagine myself being transferred to the office in Abu Dhabi and using my Arabic language skills. I was getting way ahead of myself, but I knew I could kill it at this job if given the chance.
“May I help you?” the woman said to me, barely glancing up.
“Yes, I have an appointment at ten-thirty with Craig Finch in human resources,” I said.
“Name, please?” she asked.
“Ibtihaj Muhammad,” I said slowly.
Now the receptionist looked up at me. “Can you repeat that, please?”
I did.
“Just a minute.” She then picked up her phone and called who I presumed was Craig. “There’s a woman with the last name Muhammad here to see you. She says she has an appointment at ten-thirty.”
Without making eye contact, the woman told me that Mr. Finch would be out in a moment, and then she pointed to a bank of seats where I could sit and wait. I thanked her and sat down. I tried to not take her frosty demeanor as a bad omen. This was New York, my home city. People were notorious for not being overtly friendly. I reminded myself that I wouldn’t have been called in for an interview if the people weren’t interested in hiring me. As I sat there in a stiff, stately upholstered chair and tried not to sweat, I reviewed my talking points, reminded myself that I was more than qualified for the position, and sent a quick prayer to Allah that this time would be different. This time I would get the job. “Bismillah,” I said under my breath.
For three months after graduating, between studying for the LSAT, I had dutifully sent off dozens of résumés and applied for jobs at law firms and major corporations in New York and New Jersey that seemed like a good fit. The summer before graduation I’d completed an internship at a money ma
nagement firm in New York, so I added financial institutions to my list, too. So far, I wasn’t having any luck, though. No one was even calling me back. Most of my friends were in grad school or had found great jobs already, working at prestigious firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. But not me. Everyone said it wasn’t my fault; it was the economy. We were in the Great Recession. College students couldn’t find jobs, and thousands of people were being laid off from long-term careers. While I knew this was all true, it didn’t make me feel any better. I simply wanted my life to start already.
Finally, a tall blond man who looked to be in his mid-thirties came through the glass doors into the reception area where I was waiting. He wore crisp khaki pants, a light blue oxford shirt, and a navy-blue tie and blazer. He might as well have stepped out of a Brooks Brothers catalog. Except for his designer glasses and brown leather Italian loafers, he oozed corporate respectability. He walked right over to me and held out his hand.
“Ms. Muhammad, I’m Craig Finch. Thanks for coming in today.”
I stood up and took his hand. “Thank you.”
“Why don’t you follow me and we can get started.”
I grabbed my briefcase and followed him as he led me back to his office. To get there we had to walk through a maze of cubicles and offices. I tried not to be obvious as I scanned the faces around me to find anyone who looked like me, but I didn’t see more than two people of color and absolutely no other women in hijab. My heart sank just a little. This wasn’t the rainbow coalition work force I’d expected to see given the company’s global profile.
Craig led me into a separate department where the hum of activity felt different from the area where we’d been before.
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