AT NIGHT, Private Raja’s rule is, stay inside. The longer you’re outside, he reasons, the more trouble you encounter; as evidence, he cites an incident from last year, when hanging out on the street with a "loudmouth friend" led to a gun getting pulled. Since then, he and his buddies have become what he jokingly calls "specialists of the house party." The people with whom he now surrounds himself are like-minded souls who "stay in one place and chill," folks like 22-year-old Fabi Petigny and 20-year-old Whitney Cherry, Jamaican cousins who Raja proudly says have "never even heard about anybody with a warrant against them."

Tonight, they’re at Fabi’s Brockton apartment, a clean, cozy place with Ebony magazine lying on the coffee table, a picture of Tupac Shakur staring from a frame on the wall, and Fabi’s pit bull, Jada, whimpering from behind a bedroom door. Huddled in candlelight around the kitchen table, as Raja chews on a sub and Whitney wipes Taco Bell sauce off his fingers with a paper napkin, it becomes clear that while Raja’s situation may be extraordinary in that he’s a noncitizen soldier from a place like Pakistan, his reasons for joining the military aren’t.

"I don’t think you get no respect as a black person in America," declares Fabi, who has enlisted in the Army and plans to be a cook. "I don’t think America gives you the respect that you need — you as a black person — if you’re not fighting for the country or dying for the country or doing something for the country. America doesn’t think you’re worth it."

"Definitely," says Whitney, tucking the sleeves of his red FUBU jacket behind him.

"I’ve seen it before," Fabi continues. "A young black guy, he’ll be walking around, looking regular — which most people might say is the hip-hop look — and people look at him all suspicious. If he puts up his [business] card somewhere and it says army, it’ll be a totally different vibe. The person behind the counter acts different. Like, ‘Well, he must be okay, he’s in the Army.’ "

"I feel that, too," agrees Raja. "[If you’re in the Army], they know your record is clean, they know you’re disciplined and all that."

"I’m definitely going to put my kids in the Army," says Fabi, a former Junior ROTC cadet who’s already fired an M-16 and attended an abridged version of boot camp. "I don’t think regular schools will respect them as black children."

The Army was originally Whitney’s idea. A soft-spoken, thoughtful kid who’s held more than a dozen jobs since he was 14, Whitney suggested the Army to Raja, who then enlisted while Whitney hesitated. Whitney eventually applied in early 2003 because, he says, "I don’t see nothing working for me." He hopes to be an electrician in the military, but he hasn’t been accepted yet: since Whitney has a GED rather than a high-school diploma, he needs to score 50 percent on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the multiple-choice entrance exam required of all potential recruits. Whitney’s first score was in the 40s, so he’s waiting to retake the test next month.

Initially, Fabi harangued the pair for considering enlisting in the Army. But now, after getting 61 percent on her ASVAB and filing the necessary paperwork, she too has joined. Fabi says it was the money that changed her mind. She studied business at Pine Manor College for a year, but quit when the quality of classes didn’t seem worth the $200-a-month loan bills her mother was being saddled with. Since then, Fabi has worked at various temp jobs and volunteered regularly at a local veterans’ hospital, but still feels aimless. "I tried to do the regular life, but it hasn’t really shown anything for me."

Sergeant Favreau, the recruiter to whom Raja referred Whitney and Fabi, says he doesn’t discuss politics with recruits — "I don’t follow them, so I wouldn’t even know what to say," he says plainly. But Raja and his friends still have feelings about working for the Army’s commander in chief, George W. Bush. "I don’t really like the guy," says Fabi, who not only admits that acquaintances have tried to discourage her from enlisting in the "white man’s army," but openly wonders if the CIA or the US government knew about 9/11 before it happened. "But it doesn’t matter who’s up there in power: I’m nothing but a pawn in this whole world, anyway. I don’t hold power in this country. I’m never going to hold power in this country. He’ll control me whether I’m here or there."

RAJA’S MAIN apprehension about enlisting in the Army is that the wrong person in Pakistan will find out. "I just don’t want the news to spread over there," he says one Thursday night at the Joshua Tree in Davis Square, biting into a chicken sandwich. "Next thing you know [the next time I’m there], somebody will come and arrest me or kidnap me or something." He doesn’t think that any of his peers in Pakistan would call him a traitor — he says his baggy clothes gave him away as a Westerner the last time he was there and he had no problems — but he worries that some anti-American extremist might find out that he’s a US soldier and try to use him as a scapegoat. "If they can’t find some other American, they can be like, ‘At least he’s in the Army. We can get him. Let’s catch him.’ " Unfortunately, Raja says, his mother and sister in Pakistan have already spread the news. "So now what I’m telling [my Pakistani friends] is that I’m not in the Army; I’m like a contractor working for the Army. I’m just going to fix the cars and that’s it."

"It all depends on the American relationship with Pakistan at that time," says Raja’s father, of potential danger for Raja on visits home to Pakistan. "If the relationship is good, he shouldn’t have a problem. If it’s not good, some people may have negative attitudes toward him. He may not be in serious danger, but you never know when some fanatic wants to revenge an injustice." Later, he adds, "The possibility is there — I won’t say that it’s not going to happen — but we are trying to keep [his enlistment] to ourselves."

"Even though a lot of people are telling me not to go to Pak, I’m still going to go," Raja insists. "If I die, I die."

The last time Raja visited his mother in Karachi, which was after America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he says he "lived like a king." Unlike his family here in the States, his Pakistani relatives have money, so he threw parties almost every weekend and had a friend’s bodyguard usher him around. "I knew a lot of the cops, so it was a safe environment," Raja says. "I remember there were a couple of bomb blasts in hotels when I was there. The first thing, the [police] gave me a call and said, ‘It’s bad outside, stay out of there.’ "

Despite the lavish living, Raja doesn’t plan to move back to Pakistan. "American money for Paki living — that’s good. But I don’t think it’s a great place to live. The traffic, the food ain’t good, the bomb blasts. And there’s a lot of domestic violence and people getting shot." He’s witnessed some of it firsthand. "I was coming back from school in the eighth or ninth grade, when I saw three people getting gunned down with AKs. I wasn’t scared, but it stayed in my mind for a long time. Still, today, I remember the way the [shooters] just got out of the car and started firing."

Two or three years later, Raja saw something else that would stay with him for a long time. "I was in the train, going almost 400 miles or so with my family, and the train stopped. All the sudden, the train started backing up. Everybody got out and I saw a big pile of meat with bones floating in it and sticking up. Somebody had committed suicide. It was like a human sandwich. You could see a half-face pressed in. I stood over by it and kept staring at that person until I got over my fear."

TO THE QUESTION "Are you afraid of death?", Raja always answers, "No, that’s part of life."

"We are not scared of death," Raja’s father says, by way of explanation. "We believe it needs no excuse to find you. No matter where you go, you will still meet your death when it’s time."

Sergeant Favreau reminds recruits that there’s always a chance that every soldier will have to go to war — "It’s the Army’s job, after all." But Raja swears he’s undaunted by the threat of combat. "It’s a risk," he concurs, lowering the car-stereo volume so he won’t be drowned out by Jay-Z’s rhymes. "I know I might die. I’m going to be a mechanic, but there might be a time that I’ll have to go and face all that. But I’m just trying to look at the big picture."

Later, he’s more reflective. "Going to war is a concern. Sometimes I think about it, but I’ve tried to have myself mentally prepared for any situation. Just in case something really happens, I won’t be surprised. If there’s a battle, and I have to fight in the war, I’ll just do my best. Even if I die, I won’t die over some stupid thing, I’ll die for some good reason." He pauses. "Two, three weeks ago, four or five blocks from the place where I chill [in Dorchester], a 14-year-old kid got shot. I’ve heard of so many people getting shot over stupid stuff, and I’d rather get shot for some good reason. I don’t think my life is worth dying over $50 or somebody trying to rob me." He turns down the music again. "I just hope the day I die, it’s quick, without any kind of pain, not horrible, and my dead body doesn’t get disrespected."

But Private Raja still believes his chances of being on the battlefield are slim. "My recruiters, they’ve been in the Army for like 13 to 17 years, and they’ve never been to war. But you never know about me. I could go into the Army, and the next thing, be like" — he lets go of the steering wheel and squeezes the trigger of an imaginary automatic pistol — "click-click-click."

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com