It's inherently difficult to get an accurate sense of Adnan's personality since we don't know him personally. When we hear stories about him from Sarah, Rabia, and old school friends, we are seeing him through their eyes. If they find him sweet, the story shows him that way, and we see him as sweet. If they think he's annoying, we find him annoying. If they call him shady, we start to think he's shady.
Adnan's own words are not helpful in sorting out what kind of person he is. Yes, they help place his actions in context, but everything he says is, obviously, from his perspective, and every choice he made was the right choice for him at that time. Adnan also has an agenda when describing himself. The sections he provided for Adnan's Story are carefully written with perfect grammar. He spent time writing these excerpts so he could share information that shows him as a good person and also does not disrespect others. I don't doubt the truthfulness of anything he writes, but I believe he writes blandly and clinically, which detracts from the audience's grasping of the full picture.
I don't know Adnan. I can't say with exactitude what kind of person he is. However, I've gathered a ton of information from Sarah, Rabia, and others, and I'm trying to assemble their observations and judgements into the semblance of a real person.
I've heard a lot about how Adnan was nice. He was kind. He stood up when people's parents entered the room. He offered to help out. As a young teen, he made sure his geeky friend wasn't picked on during sports. He made sure to spend one-on-one time with his little brother. Despite only casually knowing her, Adnan made sure to dance with his prom date during the court dance, not with the girl crowned princess to his prince. When they were dating, Adnan wrote Hae notes all the time. He baked her brownies and surprised her with carrot cake. Even after they broke up, he picked up lunch from McDonalds for her. When Adnan was arrested, he repeatedly reassured his mother that he was and would be ok.
He was good in school and excelled in extracurriculars. He describes doing unexpectedly well on a biology quiz. The guidance counselor wrote a glowing college recommendation letter describing how Adnan participated in a national robotic vehicle competition. He worked as an EMT after doing well on the qualifying exam, further reinforcing his interest and strength in science.
Adnan was an athlete as well. He played football and ran track, though wasn't necessarily a star in either. He enjoyed basketball and riding bikes. In prison, he was motivated to work out and stay in shape.
When Adnan found out Hae had died, he was upset. He cried on and off, seemed unable to focus, and also seemed zoned out. He sought out friends, and they grieved together.
As far as Adnan's shortcomings, there's not much on the record from friends and family. There's the story of how he stole money from the mosque as a youth. To me, it seems like the big, embarrassing, bad choice of his childhood (don't we all have one?), and if the dialogue on Reddit is anything to go by, similar things happen occasionally across the country in various different cultures. Adnan also seemed to be annoying, perhaps for being too nice. Saad found it frustrating that Adnan hung out with so many other, "lesser" friends. He aggravated Aisha when he tried to crash girls' night. He irritated Hae for apologizing too profusely after his parents made a scene at the Homecoming dance.
Then, almost in opposition to the upstanding descriptions, there are all these facts that just seem to exist without coming from anywhere. Adnan smoked weed. Adnan hung out with drug dealers. He accompanied friends to the homes of people he didn't know. Adnan snuck out after his parents were asleep and went to parties. He drank alcohol. He rented motel rooms and parked in secluded lots so he could have sex with Hae. All of these are sensitive topics, and most are difficult to explain almost two decades later. It's "stupid kid stuff," yet it's also illegal, immoral, and dangerous. I wish I knew how Adnan was first introduced marijuana, what led up to his first time with Hae, what made him want to attend parties...
I am very different from Adnan. As a child and teen (and even as an adult), I was "good" to a fault. I didn't have a lot of friends, so I spent most of my time at home with my family. When I did go out, I never lied about where I was going. I attended exactly one party as a minor, and I didn't drink when I was there. (I was in college at age 17, and it was meant to be a French cooking party for the French class, but it was actually a typical college party.) I've never used drugs.
I'm also quiet, maybe to the point of being sullen, and rather anti-social. I welcome surface level conversation with my coworkers and friends, but I'd rather be at home working on a drawing or writing an article than going out for drinks. I like to think I'm nice, but I also don't hesitate to admit that I don't ask "how are you" because I usually don't care.
In that sense, I think Adnan's almost the opposite of me. However, the descriptions of his personality do remind me quite vividly of my friend, M. Describing her to you won't necessarily help you understand Adnan any better, but I'll give a little to show the similarities.
M is busy with school, various sports and clubs, and dancing with the local ballet company (that's how we know each other). She's overscheduled, but makes all her commitments. She specifically chose not to participate in one of the company's ballets because she didn't think she could make all the rehearsals. However, when another dancer had to drop out, M stepped up and took her place.
She always asks people how they're doing and follows up on it later. M never calls anyone out for lying (even when it's obvious), and she gracefully let it go when it looked like someone in the theater dressing room stole some of her makeup. I want to tell M all the time, "You're so cool; you're such a good person." When people say things like that about Adnan, I think that's what they're talking about.
Now, M's not perfect. She uses profanity, talks about slacking on homework, and gossips about other peoples' relationships. Once she shared a fairly cruel joke involving a person with a speech impediment. I have no idea what she does in her rare free time. If it happened to involve sex and drugs, I don't think it would detract from her overall goodness.
Where there are gaps in my knowledge of Adnan, I try to compare him to M. It's that less-than-perfect-ness that creates a real person rather than a cardboard cutout. Some of the notes Adnan wrote to Hae reveal a sillier side of him. The "I'm going to kill" note he passed with Aisha is crude and funny. (Just to refresh, Hae wrote Adnan a note accusing him of being "cold" for approximately 3 hours of the school day, and Adnan later showed it to Aisha. They wrote notes to each other on the back, all of which jokingly incorporate their health class lesson and accuse Hae of being pregnant and needing an abortion.) It bridges the gap between "good kid" and "bad kid." I've never done something like that, but I think M probably has.
I think this balance is part of being a smart, healthy young adult. It's challenging to keep all the balls in the air and please parents, teachers, friends, and yourself. There's a game of strategy built into it: How can slack on my parents' rules to please my friends? How can I let down my friends to please my parents? What do I actually want to do? What is going to be beneficial for me in the long run? In terms of education? In terms of social connections? I took the easy way out, failed the game miserably, and decided to make all my choices in favor of my school work and family. As a result, I had a 4.0 GPA, very few (very casual) friends, and an unhealthy attachment to my parents. Adnan and M played much differently. When Adnan was lying to his mother so he could go to a party, or extricating himself from his friends so he could go to the mosque, he was making constant, tiny adjustments so he could keep a general positive experience in all areas of life. This takes an extreme level of intelligence and forethought. I think it's indicative of someone who will be extremely successful in higher education and go on to have a family and a lucrative career.
The one thing I do have in common with Adnan is losing a friend. When I was 18 and in college, I was home for winter break and watching television alone sometime mid-morning. There was a story on the local news telling of two young adults found shot to death in a car. One of them was my friend L. You don't need to know the whole story of what happened to L or how it affected me, but I think the highlights are important.
I remember feeling shock at first. It was very physical, sort of like the feeling that follows getting startled by a loud noise or someone jumping out from behind a door. Then I was sad. I don't remember if I cried right away, but I was really emotionally affected that she was gone-that it was possible for her to be gone. After some time (not more than a couple of hours), I wanted to make sure it really was her, and I looked up some things online. For at least the next day I would regularly forget what had happened and feel the deep physical shock and dread all over again when I remembered she was dead. I did cry, more so when I was with other people and trying to talk to them about it. I also spent some time privately mulling things over, terribly overthinking the whole situation, and feeling a mixture of sadness and guilt that could leave me either silent or sobbing. Now, years later, I'll sometimes see something that reminds me of L, like a McDonalds coffee cup or an Animal Humane sign, or I'll walk by the store in the mall where she worked, and I'll start to feel a little sad again.
We hear all the time on crime shows and news reports that you can't judge someone on how they express their grief. However, the way Adnan mourned Hae is similar to how I mourned L. Adnan and Hae were certainly a lot closer than I was with L, but the likeness is there. It's how a young adult deals with the unexpected and violent death of a friend. No matter what the school nurse thinks or what the prosecution thinks, everything Adnan did following Hae's death is feasible. And at least for me, that makes him seem innocent.
After Adnan was incarcerated, everything about him becomes much more documented-based and less conversational. However, I can take all the things I think I know about him and pretty much fill in the blanks.
When he was first arrested on 28 February 1999, Adnan was interrogated for several hours. The police notes say practically nothing, so it can be inferred that nothing of note happened (other than that a minor was arrested and questioned for a period of at least five hours with no access to food, family, or a lawyer). Adnan didn't admit to anything, and he also didn't become angry or violent. It's in character for him to be respectful to authority figures, even if he disagrees with them. It's how he treats his parents.
In prison, Adnan accumulated a stack of certificates and awards and just one write-up. He completed numerous activities and programs, and even won something called the "Distinguished Gentleman's Award." For the kid who got good grades and played football and ran track and worked as an EMT and built robot vehicles and helped out other people's parents, I'd say it's typical.
As for his one demerit, I think I have an explanation for that one as well. If a prison is operating appropriately (that is to say, no drug running or the like), there's not a lot to get into trouble with. Adnan's particular temptations-marijuana, parties, and girls-don't exist in a maximum security facility. However, though mostly upstanding, Adnan's shown himself to be ok with breaking the rules in order to do what everybody else is doing. Thus, his cell phone. I can imagine Adnan thinking, "Well, it benefits me. I want it. Other people seem to have it. No one seems to be getting in trouble. Why not?" Maybe that's how he thought about pot when he was still a teenager.
I don't know what happened the day of 13 January 1999. Like I said earlier, I don't know Adnan. I promise I'll do an essay later on what I think actually went down that day, but for now, I feel comfortable asserting that Adnan is innocent. He seems the type who's legitimately concerned about his friend's dental work and divorcing parents. He might have made jokes about abortion or mouthed off about his annoying ex, but I don't think he is a killer. I don't think he deserves to be in prison.
I think even if Adnan smoked marijuana and stayed out late and lied to his parents, he would have been successful in school and gone on to be a good citizen. To be honest, I kind of feel the same way about a whole host of other people(Jay Wilds and Burke Ramsey among them): Just because you might have made a bad choice and done something, even something massively tragic, it doesn't mean you're a terrible person who deserves to be jailed for life. Growing up and going to school and having a job and a family and staying on the right side of things is more indicative of a worthwhile person than the strict absence of criminal behavior.
It's still inherently difficult to get an accurate sense of Adnan's personality. But I think I'm starting to figure him out.
