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GREENSBORO — Tamir wears a Superman T-shirt. Mike has an American flag and a Palestine flag wrapped in his hands. Mohammed, back turned, face in shadow, stands behind a slice of pizza.

Todd Drake found them all.

He called mosques around North Carolina and told them his idea: He wanted to use his Nikon camera to take portraits of Muslim Americans and tell their stories.

It was all new to Drake. He really didn’t know any Muslim Americans. And like all of us, Drake had heard his share of scary stories about Muslim extremists.

But as an artist, he had always zeroed in on communities he felt were far from America’s mainstream radar screen — from illegal immigrants to employees of an exotic night club.

Now, he wanted to embark on a project that would take him into another unknown.

At first, he was fearful. He had been warned about going into a community that saw any image as sacrilegious. And of course, he got questions. Like this one:

“Have you read the Quran?”

“No,” Drake would respond. “But I’m not trying to represent your religion. I’m trying to give you a chance to represent yourself.”

Some suspected he was a federal agent, Drake said, even after he told them he taught art at Rockingham Community College and worked as an artist in residence at the Center for Global Initiatives at UNC-Chapel Hill.

When distrust seemed heavy, Drake steered clear, and he followed a favorite phrase he saw as his life’s main lyric as a progressive Christian: “When you pray, move your feet.”

And move his feet he did. Drake put at least 3,000 miles on his Honda Civic as he drove from Asheville to the Outer Banks and found at least 25 people for his project.

He figured it would take six months. He was wrong. It took two years.

What he found surprised him. Drake likens it to his experiences in Boy Scouts. Drake is 48 , a married father of two and a former Eagle Scout with Jamestown’s Troop 68.

And in his travels for this project, Drake discovered the tenets found in Scouting exhibited by these warm, generous people, open to introspection.

Like Tamir.

He’s a prison chaplain and sharecropper’s son who lives in Statesville, and he wanted his portrait taken in a cornfield, in 100-degree heat, wearing a Superman T-shirt.

“My faith has gotten me to this point,” Tamir told Drake, “and I feel like a Superman.”

Or Mike.

Mike’s dad ran a convenience store in a tough side of Rocky Mount when he was killed. Mike was 10 . He’s now 24 . He says he’s lost his faith. In its place, he has substituted a wish he heard often from his father:

“Any good man will want no other man to be better than him except his son.”

That sentence is scrawled across Mike’s portrait, just above his hands wrapped in two flags.

Or Mohammed.

He runs a pizza restaurant in Greensboro. At first, Drake was exasperated because he didn’t know where to go with this portrait. So, finally, Drake asked, “What part of life do you want me to show?”

Then, Drake heard about the homeless who once dove into the restaurant’s Dumpsters for food. Mohammed told them to come inside. He gave them a drink and a pizza slice for free.

Mohammed says he’s been doing that for 15 to 20 homeless people a day for 20 years.

“That’s no way to be human,” Mohammed told Drake, “eating out of a Dumpster.”

That conversation led to the picture: Mohammed by a pizza slice.

Drake will unveil his work Friday at FaithAction International House. It’s a month-long exhibit that will travel around North Carolina to help what Drake believes is needed in his home state.

The idea that Muslim Americans are people, too. Just like us. 

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com