With a good government job in Lompoc and a successful photography business at his home in Orcutt, Mohammad Gul Mohabbat was living the good life.

Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

That changed everything for the devout Muslim.

Neighbors, co-workers and even his friends turned their backs on Mohabbat after 9/11, he said. He and his wife, Sharifa, began receiving threatening phone calls and his photography business collapsed.

A shocking lesson about American fear and religious and cultural ignorance was hammered home when a customer, who suddenly realized that her photographer was Muslim, cowered and begged Mohabbat to spare her life.

In an attempt to rebuild his life, Mohabbat, 62, began calling himself "Jon," and his business thrived again.

"Everybody started loving me again," he said. "I was the same person, the same Muslim, the same human being."

But no one knew Mohabbat's real story. They didn't know the depth of his love for America or his ardent belief in the American dream.

"Before I became an American citizen, I shed blood for America," he said. "I became an American by choice, not by chance. I swore to defend the Constitution."

Mohabbat decided to tell his story.

The result, a 450-page hardback book published in September by Eloquent Books, of New York City, is entitled proudly "My Name is Mohammad."

Born into chaos

Mohabbat was born in the winter of 1947 on the dirt floor of a unheated military barracks in the mountains of Almara, Khost Province, Afghanistan.

It was a time of great political upheaval. His mother, Bibijan, gave birth in silence, while her three children slept, so that her unauthorized stay would not be discovered while her husband, Totisheh, a military officer, was away.

Alone and freezing, Bibijan Mohabbat cut the newborn's umbilical cord with a dull, dirty knife.

"It was amazing that we survived," Mohabbat said, retelling a story that he had heard many times. "Nobody knew about my existence for a few days, until my father returned home."

Mohammad grew up in Kabul, introspective and intellectually curious.

"I just wanted to know why I'm here, what's the purpose of life," he said. "I became more reclusive. Then, I thought I found the answer to all these questions."

The answer he found was in the circumstances of his own birth, and of the hardship endured by his mother.

"The answer was that human beings are miserable from the beginning to the end, and I had the proof for it."

Those youthful conclusions changed as Mohabbat continued his search for the truth. Again, he looked to the sacrifices of his own mother.

"Then one night I was sitting in my room thinking about life, and I had an epiphany," he said. "Even though a mother knows she is going through all this pain and misery, and she may lose her life, she voluntarily and happily accepts that risk to bring another life into this world."

With that knowledge, Mohabbat said, he gained new respect for women, and became closer to his mother. He also became closer to God. He became a devoted Muslim, attending the mosque five times a day to pray, and memorize verses of the Koran.

His dedication gained the attention of the elders, and his education flourished. When he was 16 years old, the young scholar received news that he had been chosen to represent Afghanistan as an exchange student in America.

Life on another planet

Mohabbat could neither speak nor read English. He knew nothing about America. He assumed that all Americans were atheists, even as he headed into the nation's "Bible Belt."

"Landing in New York City was like going to another planet," he said.

He boarded a bus and expected to be at his host family's home in a couple of hours. But the hours dragged on; the sun fell and rose.

"I was totally confused and lost about where I was going. I couldn't ask questions, couldn't order food."

Thirty-eight hours later, Mohabbat arrived in Kansas City and was met by the Nelson family, of Great Bend, Kan. - Alfred and Enid and their children, Rickie and Barbara, who were about a year older than their guest.

Over the course of the next year, Mohabbat would learn much about this strange new world. The first of many lessons was at a restaurant on the way home from the bus station.

Since he couldn't read the menu, Mohabbat took his cues from Rickie. He pointed at what the boy ordered and hoped for the best.

"I had no clue whether Americans ate lizards or snakes or monkey," he said.

High school was a cultural shock, too.

"A girl would touch my shoulder and say, 'How are you doing, Mo?" he said. "Electrical shocks would go through me. I had never been touched by a girl. Was I committing a big sin?"

Immersed in the culture, he learned quickly.

"Once I learned English, everything got easy for me. I had so many friends," he said. "I was on cloud nine. That was the best year of my life. I would never change that for anything."

He was at school when news broke that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. "I grieved with America. I was sitting in a classroom when we heard that he was shot and that he was died."

The assassination frightened Mohabbat. He knew there would be a change of power, and in Afghanistan that meant violence.

"I was shocked when I saw how peaceful power was exchanged, without violence," he said.

He and the Nelson family talked about religion, and together they learned the similarities between Islam and Christianity. He attended church with them on Sundays. Out of respect for his religion, the family stopped eating pork, and removed all alcohol from the house.

At Ramadan, when Mohabbat was to fast from sunrise to sunset, Enid Nelson rose at 2 a.m. to cook him a meal so that he would not go hungry.

"I fell in love with them, dearly. Not just them, my school, my classmates, my teachers, my community. It was a beautiful bond together.

"When the year was over, everybody was crying."

Mohabbat was invited to the White House with other exchange students to meet President Johnson. The president told him that he had lived in the heartland of America, to return home and tell the people of Afghanistan the good and the bad about America.

"I was very impressed with that," Mohabbat said. "He was not afraid to tell the world the reality of who we were."

In defense of America

A communist movement was under way in Afghanistan when Mohabbat returned. As an engineering student at Kabul University in the late 1960s, he found himself compelled, because of his knowledge of America, to defend it against those who portrayed it as greedy, corrupt and imperialistic.

As the movement became increasingly violent, he was threatened because of his outspokenness. Eventually, his pro-American stance would be used against him.

In the 1970s, when Mohabbat was an engineer working on the Kajakai Dam in Helmand Province, another political coup was staged in Afghanistan. He married, started a family and tried to live a low-key life.

But when the Soviets invaded his country, his defense of America came back to haunt him. He and Sharifa had a 1-year-old son and another on the way when the communists arrived in the night, beat them, interrogated them and searched their house.

"They came after me, thinking I was an American spy," he said.

When the communists found mementos from his time in America, including his yearbook, newspaper articles and a photograph of the White House autographed by President Johnson, they tortured him.

"My hands were tied behind by back. They used electric shocks, shoved sharp objects beneath my fingernails.

"They were going to execute me, then they put me under house arrest. I devised a plan to escape, and did, to India with my family," he said. "We had nothing but our clothes on our backs. The communists had confiscated everything."

Mohabbat changed his identity, gained weight, grew a beard, and acquired fake passports for himself, his wife and children, Masoud and Mahmoud. At the airport, security personnel interrogated him, but let him go.

He and his family lived in India for six months. Their visas expired, forcing them to hide from authorities, penniless and homeless.

"I was practically an outlaw," he said. "I was living in total poverty, until we were approved to go to America as political refugees."

Welcome home

The Nelsons, who had retired to Arkansas, sponsored Mohabbat's return in 1981. He was invited to Great Bend, where it was declared "Mohammad's Day," and he was welcomed as a hero.

He took an engineering job, working in Kansas and Nebraska, and in a few years moved to California, home of the largest Afghan community in America.

In 2001, he was working in Lompoc when terrorists crashed airplanes into New York City's Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvannia.

In the aftermath, Mohabbat said, he recalled the prompting of President Johnson to tell the good and bad about America. Until 9/11, Mohabbat had seen only the good. Now he was seeing the bad, as he listened to talk show pundits flame the fears of Americans.

"That's why I wrote the book," he said. "I owe it to Americans and to my community. I learned from the community when I came here as a little, ignorant child. It is time to give back to my community."