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Once a Marine – Vol. 1, Chapter 1

A brief summary of my military career and why I joined the Marines.

I joined the Marines on March 28, 2022 and served until August 11, 2023. That’s a total of:

1 years 4 months 14 days
or 16 months 14 days
or 71 weeks 4 days
or 501 days of active duty

I was separated with a general discharge (under honorable conditions) and given an RE-4 reenlistment code, which in short means that I’m not eligible for any waivers or reenlisting whatsoever.

My goal was originally was to serve one contract, finish my education during that contract, and then either become a police officer or a private contractor. Both have higher starting salaries but require a bit more time or money to get started, without offering what were, in my opinion, the most important benefits: education and housing.

I was homeless when I joined the Marines. My homelessness started in March 2020 with the onset of the COVID pandemic. The marketing firm I was working at was shutting down, my lease was ending, and I figured I could stay with my mom in New York, especially since she had kept telling me “come home” around that time. I had moved to Texas for work, but things didn’t really work out the way I had planned. Outside of my adoptive mother, I had no family of my own; I was single, never married, and didn’t have any children.

Islamic views on adoption are generally distinct from the practices and customs of adoption in other non-Muslim parts of the world. Adoption in the western sense of the word is not recognized in Islam. Raising a child who is not one’s genetic child is allowed and, in the case of an orphan, even encouraged. An orphan is a child who has lost one or both parents through death, however, it also includes child whom have been abandoned by both parents, even if the parents are alive.

I didn’t actually realize I was an orphan until after I served in the military.

I was born Daquan Tyrell Pean on March 16, 1992, to a woman named Danielle Pean and an unknown man.

Danielle was 15 at the time I was born. Like her mother and father, she was a Haitian immigrant who originally spoke French or Haitian Creole as her primary languages.

I was adopted on June 17, 1999 by a woman from Baltimore, named Jacklyn Shell.

Jacklyn was living in New York at the time she adopted me, but after the 9/11 terror attacks, she took me and moved back to Baltimore to be closer to her family, and I spent the rest of my childhood and adolescence there.

According to the Islamic view, the child does not become a true child of the “adoptive” parents. I learned that the hard way, after Jacklyn’s family politely informed me that I am not welcome at their home. It’s one of the reasons I dislike having “Shell” as part of my last name, and it’s one of the reasons I can’t wait to change it back to just “Pean”, despite “Pean” literally being the name I was born with.

In Islam, the child is named after the biological, not adoptive father. In my case, I am named after my grandfather. His name was Yves Pean.

The problem was that I didn’t know any of this when I actually enlisted in the Marines. My real birth certificate, the version I currently have in my possession was sealed, replaced by a doctored version that presented Jacklyn Shell as my biological mother and my name as “Daquan Tyrell Pean Shell” at birth, despite the fact that my name did not include “Shell” until a little after my 7th birthday. I was in the 2nd grade at the time, and I remember the conversations when people kept asking what I wanted my name to be.

I wanted to keep Pean, for the sake of my own identity, but I understood the convenience of having the same last name as the person serving as my mother.

When I tried to reenlist the first time, I needed to order a replacement birth certificate which was how I got my current copy, and how I learned my own backstory.

The story told by Jacklyn was this: My grandparents were both born in the south, Jacklyn was born in Baltimore, she moved to New York, gives birth to me and then we move back to Baltimore. She moves back to New York after I turn 18, leaving me to fend for myself.

The actual story is this: My grandparents were born in Haiti, my mom was born in Haiti, I was born in New York City, after my grandfather brought our family here. My mom is 15 when I was born and I have no father. My mom is deemed unfit to be a parent and I am placed in the foster care system. While in foster care, I am adopted by Jacklyn Shell. I am the second child that Jacklyn has adopted, and her third child overall. Jacklyn takes care of me until I am 18, after which point she leaves me to fend for myself.

While the end result is the same, the two stories have completely different beginnings. It’s important to know the full story as well because the first story frames Jacklyn as a crazy person who abandons her own children while the second story frames her as someone more benevolent who took care of multiple orphans.

Jacklyn is without a doubt the closest thing I’ve ever had to a mother. She’s a wonderful woman whom I am on speaking terms with. We aren’t family anymore, but I still appreciate her taking care of me. She’s been there for all of the most important events in my life. She’s supported me throughout all the stages of my life, good and bad.

Under traditional Islamic law (Sharia), adopted children do not automatically receive a fixed share of inheritance (Faraid) because legal inheritance is strictly based on biological lineage (nasab). Jacklyn does have a biological son, so the odds are that he will inherit her wealth, which includes her apartment in New York City.

Islam encourages caring for and protecting orphans (often through the framework of Kafalah guardianship), but it requires that the child retain their biological family’s last name and true lineage. Henceforth, I am Daquan Tyrell Pean, the grandson of Yves Pean and Odette, and an orphan by the way of Danielle Pean and an unknown man.

Recently, I’ve tried to reconcile with Danielle but to no avail. Trying to build and maintain a relationship with her did significantly more harm than good. From the bottom of my heart I hope I never have to speak to her again.

That being said, there was a lot of good to come out of the effort put into to building a relationship with her, because it improved my other relationships.

I was able to build a real relationship with my grandmother, Odette, and I had two wonderful (albeit short) romantic relationships while spending quality time with my grandmother.

There are three things I wish I could have done, and that I could potentially still do for my grandparents:

1. I wish I could have held a meaningful conversation with them, either in French or Haitian Creole.
2. I wish I could have gotten married and had children that learned French or Haitian Creole.
3. I wish they could have seen me in uniform.