By Heidi Simmons
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Jahar’s World
By Janet Reitman
Magazine Article
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“…the thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone.” These are words from songwriter Shel Silverstein, sung by the band Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show that was popular in 1973. For the August cover of Rolling Stone, it is not a smiling rock-star, but a terrorist. It is hardly a thrill, more of a shock. It is teenager and Boston bomber Jahar Tsarnaev. Under his pensive, forlorn and direct picture, it proclaims in bold caps: “The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster.” The inside article by Janet Reitman is titled “Jahar’s World.”
Reitman is an award-winning journalist. Her Rolling Stone article on Scientology was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2007. From that significant report, she went on to write the book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. The book is one of the first written on the subject in such depth. Reitman spoke about her book and Scientology at the Rancho Mirage Library in 2011.
A straightforward journalist, Reitman is observant and meticulous. A good reporter, she’s objective and appears to have no preconceived ideas or agendas. Reitman seems only interested in wanting to know the story to satisfy her own curiosity.
And that’s exactly what she does in her investigative article on the surviving brother Jahar Tsarnaev. Reitman drops us into his world to give the reader an up-close glimpse of this pathetic lost child, whose life was not his own. But he wasn’t always that way.
She paints a picture of an outsider. An American citizen, Jarhar 19, struggled to find his place. A smart kid with a scholarship, he was not engaged or challenged by his college class work. He had no close friends after high school — they had all gone on to better colleges. His family no longer lived in the country. He felt like an outsider and alone.
It is a story that begins with an immigrant, refugee, family trying to carve out not only a life, but also a narrative. They claimed to be Chechen, but only the father had lived there. The children were all born in Kyrgystan. They never experienced fighting. And they were not religious Muslims.
Jahar was the youngest of four, with two sisters. The eldest, his brother Tamerlan, was killed before being captured. The brother is key to this tragedy. Perhaps sliding into mental illness, he told a friend he thought there were two people inside him.
With the whole family living in a small apartment in Cambridge, Boston, the Tsarnaev parents were challenged to find their place as well. They did not have steady work and they had a big family to feed. Proud people, they took public assistance. Their familial relationships became strained.
The mother, when she first arrived in the U.S. was hip. She wore miniskirts and popular hairdos. As she saw her eldest son struggle, she thought it was a good idea that he become a devout Muslim. She encouraged him against her husband’s wishes, and gradually became devout herself. Based on their culture, Tamerlan became head of the household. Jahar’s westernized sisters were, without warning, sent out of the country to arranged marriages by Tamerlan
Jahar’s parents divorced and also left the country. Tamerlan tried to join the civil war in Dagestan where they told him to go home. It was not his fight. They were Muslims killing other Muslims and he was just an American. Tamerlan never was an American citizen.
Without any other family, Jahar lived with his brother who became an ever-greater influence on him. Tamerlan was a guy who had lost touch with reality and his baby brother could do nothing about it. From here, the story ends badly.
When this issue of Rolling Stone came out last week, several retailers decided not to carry the magazine. They were offended by the cover with Jahar or so they said after customer complaints. Some said it glamorized terrorists. Apparently, Jahar looks too much like a sexy rock star — not a monster or a terrorist. Really? What do terrorists look like? Is there a profile? It is for this very reason the story is important and should be read. Thank goodness for bookstores and libraries.
I doubt the Tsarnaev boys ever heard the Dr. Hook song. And it’s probably not the fame Jahar ever imagined or wanted. He didn’t at all seem like the type. There is a line in the song, “Wanna buy five copies for my mother.” I wonder how the boy’s mother feels now? Hopefully Reitman is working on a book about this subject. She’s the right person to get into the story and show us around even when it’s uncomfortable.
Rolling Stone has long been known for its investigative journalism. Reitman’s story gives some insight about the challenges of young men, immigrants, education and fitting in. But mainly it is about how religion becomes a scapegoat. Isn’t it better to have a picture of what went wrong? And why not on the cover of Rolling Stone?
