WHEN BURHAN RAJA arrived in the United States from Pakistan in 1997, his welcome was an ass-whupping. One summer day, after registering for public high school, Raja, then 17, had just unchained his bike from a pole in Hyde Park when two towering thugs approached, one flashing a knife, the other brandishing a baseball bat. The slugger swung so savagely that Raja thought his skull might cave in; the immigrant teenager instinctively shielded his head with his right arm. "I was dancing around because one guy was trying to stab me while the other was trying to beat me," he remembers. Later that day, Raja found himself in the hospital.

Welcome to America, kid.

The United States has never received Raja, now a 22-year-old Roslindale resident, with open arms. Last June, when he arrived in the US after a three-month visit home in Karachi, police hauled him away for an outstanding traffic violation that had billowed into a default warrant and caused the INS to seize his green card — but not until customs officials interrogated him for six hours. "They were telling me, ‘You know about those bombings,’ " he says. "And I’m like, ‘There are thousands of people [in Pakistan]. My family is there. I went with my mom; I came back by myself.’ " He says that in light of post-9/11 paranoia, he understands where they were coming from, but couldn’t believe how aggressively they harassed him. "They even took me to an investigation room: me by myself, one table, and one chair."

Yet despite all this, Raja wants to work for the United States government. And this spring, he will: the West Roxbury High School graduate recently signed himself over to the US Army, or, as its recruitment Web site likes to crow, "the most powerful ground force in the entire world." Even though the young Pakistani won’t be eligible for US citizenship until June, he’ll be shipped off to basic training for active-duty enlistment this April — and in theory, he could be deployed to Iraq in less than six months.

So welcome Private Raja to the United States. He may soon be representing you in the world.

Burhan Raja keeps a lot of friends, and if you spend a few hours with him, it’s easy to see why. Winsome, beamish, and gregarious, he talks to homeless men, beautiful waitresses, and cats with equal respect. He provides pool-playing tips to a trailing opponent, drives out of his way to pick up friends, and offers to pay for dinner even though he’s jobless. He’s perpetually excited about new experiences — "I like life," he says simply — and unless he’s discussing something dour, he always appears ready to burst into laughter.

"He’s a cool cat," says Staff Sergeant Brian M. Favreau, an Army recruiter. "He’s a real good kid." Favreau doesn’t think Raja will have any trouble with prejudice in boot camp, given his gregariousness. "He’s going to be able to fit in at basic training. He’s going to be all right. Trust me, no one’s going to give him a hard time."

Raja’s round, shaved head looks like a pea — a bristly, light-brown pea. He has thick, black eyebrows that mug the rest of his face and long, fine lashes that curve like those of a porcelain doll. Metal rings spangle his skull — he has five ear-piercings (three in the left and two in the right) and a round tongue stud. He dresses in layers of clothing (puffy, quilted vest over V-neck fleece over T-shirt over long-sleeved top), layers of labels (gray Versace T over Ralph Lauren jersey), and layers of hats (curved-lip visor over knit skullcap). And although he stands just five feet four inches tall, he walks confidently, with his shoulders thrown back and his pecs pushed forward like a bodybuilder.

Raja doesn’t remember the first few years of his life, but they passed in the United Arab Emirates, where his persevering "pops," a tireless travel agent who sold fruit and newspapers to earn money during his youth, worked. When Raja was four or five, his father moved the family to Pakistan; Raja remained there for the next 10 years. During that time, his father relocated to the United States and remarried; in 1996, Raja and his sister Kanzah migrated to Malden to live with him. But the pair left after about a month — Raja says his stepmother didn’t want them there. A year later, they returned to Massachusetts to live with their father, who by then had split from his new wife and secured a place in Roslindale. "There was no furniture, no nothing," Raja recalls. "So we kind of built it, first brick up." Raja’s mother still lives in Pakistan.

When Raja first arrived in the States, he spoke fluent English, but what he’d learned from his private Pakistani school was British English. "Not only did I have to learn American English," he laughs, "but I had to learn the slang language." These days, Raja effortlessly slips urban argot into conversation. At night, he "chills" at his "boys’ crib"; naysayers are "hatas"; and his last trip to Pakistan was "off the hook." When he’s content, he’s "straight." When anyone travels from place to place, they go "up to there" or "down to there," but the direction of their trajectory doesn’t reflect geography: from Pakistan to America, Raja came "down to here"; he wants to move "up in Cali after the Army"; and his friend Whitney, his "dog," "wants to be up in Florida."

Most people assume Raja is Spanish or Puerto Rican. "Everybody gets surprised that I’m a Pakistani," he says. "People usually have a different idea of how Paki people look and act. I’m kind of different." Those differences, he says, include drinking beer occasionally (he prefers Heineken and Guinness), wearing multiple earrings ("Even the girls [in Pakistan] only have two"), and not being very religious. "I’m a bad Muslim," he says guiltily. "I distanced myself from my roots. I’m pretty American like that."

And in most ways, Raja is an average American twentysomething male. He plays video games, "chills" with his pals until early in the morning, sleeps until mid afternoon, devours steak subs, cruises in the car with Eminem playing so loud the seats shake, and readily admits to being bored with books ("I still got this Pakistani accent because I don’t like reading or writing — I’m more of a physical person"). He drove cross-country on a motorbike with his high-school friend Whitney, saw the Grand Canyon, and visited Vegas. Perhaps the most abnormal thing about him is that he watches a lot of the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. "That’s my shit," he says proudly. "I love that education on TV."

PRIVATE RAJA’s main weakness is for vehicles. He adores motorized machines, gargantuan pick-up trucks, two-door sports coups with sizable rims — and he gushes about them constantly. He navigates unfamiliar ’hoods by acquainting himself with auto dealerships and Kawasaki shops. He recalls an old job as an upscale valet — which allowed him to drive posh BMWs, Ferraris, and Dodge Vipers regularly — like a lost romance: "I really loved that job," he sighs. "Valet, that was the best job I ever had." Cruising down an interstate one freezing February night, Raja spots an ice-encrusted Humvee at the side of the road, its snout facing the traffic, and points. "That’s my wife, right there."

So far in his young life, he’s bought three motorbikes and one Lexus — and those pricey purchases are the primary reason why Raja, who still lives at home and hasn’t worked in more than a year, owes $22,000 to his father. That outstanding debt is, in turn, the principal reason he’s committed himself to the Army. "I’m trying to skip a step of life," he explains one snowy Monday, steering his sister’s Honda Civic around the glistening bends of the busy Jamaicaway during rush hour. "If I find a regular job for 10 to 12 an hour, I got to pay off my pops, pay for my education, and then find a better job. But if I go to the Army, they’re going to pay for my school, [help me] pay my pops off, and I’ll save some money. By the time I come out, I’ll be 25 with Army’s experience, a house, and a good job."

After graduating from West Roxbury High School in 2000, Raja attended Benjamin Franklin Institute to study mechanics, but quit after a semester because "it was like kindergarten." He wanted to establish his own car dealership while working part-time as a $1200-a-month valet, so he borrowed money from his father to buy a used two-door Lexus with 20-inch rims, a car he imagined fixing up cheaply and reselling for a profit that would cover the cost of a dealership license. With more money from his father, he bought three discounted motorbikes on eBay that he also intended to resell, plus a $1200, top-of-the-line digital camera.

("I’m supposed to support him," Raja’s munificent father says of the thousands of dollars his son still owes him. "I’m originally from Pakistan, and we take care of our kids no matter how old they are.")

Then "the bad stuff" started to happen. Within a matter of months, Raja lost his valet post (ostensibly for wearing a ’do-rag on duty), neighborhood "hatas" trashed his Lexus while he still had payments on it, $2500 in cash that he’d taken out of the bank to buy another motorbike disappeared in a robbery, and his digital camera was stolen. Compounding things, that old traffic violation caught up with him when he re-entered the country from Pakistan; as a result, his driver's license and green card were temporarily suspended, despite the fact that the case was later dismissed at a hearing.

Along the way, Raja began lending his idle friends hundreds of dollars. When one settled up his debts by giving Raja "his mom’s credit card," and Raja used it at Circuit City, he swears he didn’t know the card was stolen. "Why would I use a stolen card somewhere that I know has security cameras?" The "friend" ratted on Raja, who ended up in court, resulting in more than $6000 in legal fees and a year’s parole.

"I made stupid mistakes," Raja acknowledges soberly. "But maybe it’s good it happened. I probably would’ve still kept on trusting my friends the way I did, if it hadn’t happened."

Not surprisingly, Raja’s father seems downright giddy about his son joining the military. "I am very, very happy," he says. "He will learn something, make his future better, and get to work for our new country."

Raja’s 26-year-old sister, Kanzah, is similarly thankful. "I hate to put bumper stickers on my car," she says. "But the day he joined, he came home and showed me his ID, I was so happy that I stuck the army of one sticker on my car right away. Then I went to work and told everybody, ‘My brother joined the Army!’ It’s like I’m a proud parent or something."