Every face in the room is trained on mine, eyes wide, jaws slack.
Wells, Emilia, Mikey, Mr. Tucker … they all look incredulous.
The blood rushes to my ears, and my face grows warm, but I force myself to hold my head high. Why should I feel embarrassed? Why should I apologize?
“It tells me when to pray,” I say, gripping my phone as I hold it aloft, as much to show them as to keep my shaky hand steady. “Right now is Dhuhr. It goes off five times a day.”
My heart jackhammers against my chest.
The bell rings, and Mr. Tucker dismisses us.
I avoid making eye contact with anybody as I put my sheet music into my bag, purposely taking my time so I’ll be the last to leave the room.
Wells waits next to me, looking awkward.
I wave him off.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll meet you later.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. I need to stop by my locker.”
“I don’t mind…”
“Wells, it’s fine! I’m okay!” I fumble with the music, trying to jam it into my backpack. The sheets scatter around me.
He backs away—message received.
“See you soon,” he says tentatively, looking back at me before exiting the room.
What’s wrong with me that I feel so humiliated? I wonder. What’s the big deal?
I have no idea. But I feel embarrassed down to the core of my soul.
The embarrassment sticks until I’m out in the hallway, when I hear a student make a high-pitched la-la-la-la noise. Maybe it’s Mikey. Maybe it’s another loser.
There’s more laughter, then the smack of hands slapping together in high fives.
I think about how beautiful and pure and hopeful praying makes me feel, and my embarrassment is gone—replaced with anger. How dare they?
Later that night, in a fit of pique, I use the credit card my mother gave me for emergencies to order a pretty blue iridescent hijab from Amazon.
I’m done hiding.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next morning, Dua sends me a text.
Wanna go to the mall after school? We can talk shop
When I tell Wells after algebra that he doesn’t need to drive me home because I’m going out with Dua, he seems apprehensive. He knows about our tiff.
“Is that a good idea?” he asks as we stop by my locker.
“We have to clear the air sooner or later. It’s been awkward.”
“I’m not surprised,” he says, frowning.
“Hey,” I say, setting my backpack down and reaching over to grab his hand. “She’s not talking me out of dating you. Not happening.”
He looks like a vulnerable little boy. “My dad, your friends,” he says. “We’re like Romeo and Juliet.”
I burst out laughing. “Minus the poison, okay?”
I stuff my books into my backpack and then sling it over my shoulders, smoothing down my tunic—it’s similar to something I saw one of my favorite Muslim fashion Instagrammers wearing. I know it’s silly to be concerned about whether I look Muslim enough, but the truth is, I want to show the world I’m changing. That I’ve changed.
I’m not wearing a hijab—not yet—but lengthening my skirts and choosing modest tops seems like an easy place to start.
It’s shallow. I know it’s shallow.
But I also find it empowering. No one gets to see my skin—not unless I choose.
I don’t know. I’m still figuring the whole thing out.
“Has your dad said anything?” I ask Wells after we stop by his locker.
“About you?”
“Yeah.”
“Nope. That would require talking about someone other than himself.”
I think back to our dinner with Jack. There was something off about the entire situation—something I couldn’t put my finger on. (I mean, something other than the lingering stench of bigotry.)
“You and your dad don’t get along, do you?”
Wells face tightens. “Nope.”
“What about your mom?”
We exit the school doors, where I see Dua waiting across the street. I wave at her, pantomiming that I’ll be there in a minute.
He shuffles back and forth in his sneakers, looking antsy. Suddenly, I realize the question might be too intrusive. “I’m sorry. Not my business.”
“Have fun with Dua. Just be careful.”
He leans down, gives me a fit-for-public-view kiss on the cheek, and then lopes across the street toward the parking lot.
* * *
“Listen,” Dua says by her car. “I want to apologize.”
“You do?” I say.
“Yeah. It came out wrong. It’s not okay for me to judge you.”
“Thanks, Dua.”
“I mean, I wish you wouldn’t date. I really don’t think it’s Islamic, and if I’m being honest, it irritates me … but it’s not my business,” she says. “I kinda like ya, Allie,” she cracks, trying to lighten the mood. “And I know you’re going to mess up and it’ll take time to find your way, because I’ve messed up and it’s taken time to find mine. I’m still finding it, I guess. But I’m here for you while you get there, however long it takes. And if you never get there … that would be the worst, but it’s between you and Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, and He knows best.”
I can’t help it. I reach over and give her a hug. She immediately hugs me back.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “It means a lot to me.”
“You dork,” she says, and she smiles as we get into her car.
Dua tells me on the ride that she’s invited Fatima, Leila, and Shamsah to meet up, to get their take on the best fund-raising strategies. We meet up with the girls half an hour later by the food court, standing in line for chicken sandwiches.
“Ugh. I always feel guilty coming here,” Leila says.
“Why?” I ask.
“I mean, it’s hardly halal.”
“But it’s so good,” Dua says.
We’re camped out at a table when a group of guys walks by. I’m so engrossed in Fatima’s suggestions that I barely notice them at first.
I hear them before I see them.
“Go back where you came from.”
I look around in alarm, trying to figure out who said it.
Was it directed at us?
Yes.
A white boy in a baseball cap emblazoned with red fraternity letters is looking at us. His face is laughing, his teeth bared, but his eyes are unsmiling. He means it.
“Stupid ninjas,” says another boy. His pale biceps flex, and his right fist clenches against the waist of his khaki pants. On his wrist, an expensive watch gleams. I stare at him, deconstructing him to a series of details I could provide the police if I needed to: red polo shirt, ruddy cheeks, ruffled blond hair, watery blue eyes.
Leila stares down at the table, her eyes on her sandwich. She picks up a French fry and puts it in her mouth, chewing it slowly. She catches my gaze and shakes her head imperceptibly, hijab gently rippling from side to side.
The girls maintain their focus, suddenly extremely interested in their meals. Nobody talks. I keep the guy in my sight line as he walks around the corner with his friends, laughing.
Finally safe, we unpause ourselves.
“What was that?” I say.
Leila shrugs wearily. “Losers.” She sips her Coke.
“Does that happen a lot?”
Fatima nods. “Recently? Yeah. All the time.”
“What about at school?”
“All. The. Time,” Leila says.
Dua, Shamsah, and I exchange glances. The three of us don’t wear headscarves, and there are no visible markers of Islam. To most of the world, I’m simply a basic white girl with red hair. Until recently, the type of Islamophobia I’ve experienced has been secondhand—directed at others by people who don’t know they’re insulting me, too. But Fatima and Leila, by making the choice to veil, are inviting ignorance and unwante
d comments every single day. More than ever, I understand their decision to wear the hijab as brave and beautiful.
Dua speaks up.
“You know, when I’m in Jordan, I feel safer there than when I’m in America. When I visited my family in Amman, I felt I could walk on the streets by myself and nothing would happen to me, nobody would touch me. I don’t feel that here, even though I don’t wear a headscarf. It’s easy to get scared. And it’s gotten worse recently. But”—she lifts her chin defiantly—“we can’t let fear rule our lives. They’re the monsters, not us.”
So I guess I was wrong about it happening only to Fatima and Leila.
“That’s the first time anything like that’s happened to me,” I confess. “I mean, my family has had incidents, but it’s been different.” I explain how I helped defuse the situation on the airplane with my father over Christmas break. “It’s like, hello, white privilege,” I say.
Fatima nods. “I get it from both sides. Ignorant people saying stuff about my hijab—it never gets easier, but at least I’m used to it by now. But I don’t always feel one hundred percent in the ummah, either. The Black Muslim experience is erased so often—you have no idea. I feel like a second-class citizen in two spaces.”
“Love you, Fati,” Leila says, looking doleful.
Fatima reaches over to squeeze her hand. “Love you, too, Lei.”
Leila sighs and then leans back in her seat. “I wish I could get it through people’s thick skulls that I love wearing hijab. It reminds me of what’s important. Nobody is forcing me. It’s an honor.”
“Yes!” Fatima says. “It’s not an act. It’s a choice.”
“It’s you existing,” Dua says quietly. They nod in return.
As we finish our sandwiches, the guys long gone by now, an older white man comes over to us. His face is kindly, etched with concern.
“I saw what happened, girls. I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
Dua nods. I recognize the polite look taking over her face. And when she speaks, I know the Don’t Worry About It voice coming out of her mouth. “We’re okay. Thank you.”
“You girls don’t know them, do you?”
As he talks, I realize he’s primarily addressing me.
It reminds me of going out to eat with my parents, when the waiters always address my father and never present the check to my mother.
Even when my father was finishing his degree, and my mother was the breadwinner.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m reading into it.
But it certainly feels like the überwhite dude is talking to me, over my friends, because he identifies me as überwhite, too.
Dua and I exchange a glance. She reads it.
“We don’t know them,” she says. “But we’re safe. Thank you for asking.”
“I’m so glad,” he says. He’s still looking at me.
This entire exchange is miles over his head.
For multiple reasons, I’ll never forget it.
* * *
“But what did they say exactly?” Wells asks.
I repeat the story over the phone word for word, lying back on my bed and staring at the ceiling.
I can hear him frowning through the phone. I wait for him to diminish what happened. Instead, he says, “It’s horrible. I can’t believe it.”
“You can’t? I can.”
“Our country is better than this.”
“But we’re not.”
“You think it’ll be like this forever?” he asks.
“Like what? Racist?”
“Divided.”
“It’s always been divided.”
“Yeah, but it’s different now. It’s worse.”
I consider the question. “I don’t know if things are worse. It’s just—people who aren’t marginalized are finally paying attention. Maybe that’s insulting, but it’s still a good thing. Maybe it has to get worse before it gets better.”
“So wise, young Jedi,” Wells says.
I laugh, pleased. “On to something more fun, okay?” We talk about the end of the soccer season and his latest studio session before moving on to the MSA fund-raiser. “We’re trying to get to five thousand dollars,” I say.
“How much have you got so far?”
“Just past six hundred.”
“Ouch.”
“Believe me. It’s not like Providence is the national poster child for woke schools, but I thought we would have raised more.”
“Can I help?” he says.
“Sure you’re up for it?”
“Yeah, as long as we don’t tell my dad.” He laughs.
I don’t.
He clears his throat.
“Has anything else happened to you?” he says. “At school, I mean.”
“After my prayer app blared in class? Nah, that was enough. Although I do wonder what would happen if I … say … came to school wearing hijab.”
Silence.
Finally, he says, “You think that’s a good idea?”
“I’m not doing it. Just wondering.”
* * *
There’s something unspoken in the air between Dad and me.
I try to make up for it that weekend, canceling Saturday night plans with Wells to watch a movie with my parents. My dad’s face looks so happy when he hears I’m staying in that it makes me feel like the worst daughter on the planet.
“Should we watch Singin’ in the Rain?” I scroll through options on the Apple TV without waiting for his response.
“Ice cream?” he says.
“Obviously.”
He practically bounds to the kitchen. “I’m getting us all some ice cream,” he sings slightly off-key, to the tune of “Good Vibrations.” “Our Allie is craving ice cream … Al, Al, Al, she wants ice cream … bop bop.”
He does this when he’s happy. Makes up songs about real life.
Mom looks at me, grinning. “You did good, kid,” she whispers.
When Dad comes back, he’s carrying a tray laden with three different kinds of ice cream and a host of toppings, including cherries, strawberries, hot fudge, and whipped cream.
“Sundae bar!” He places the tray on the table next to his stack of paperwork and turns to me. “One Allie Abraham special?”
“Sure, Dad.”
“Coming right up!”
He places two scoops of chocolate ice cream in a bowl, topped with a dash of vanilla, sliced bananas and almonds, a mountain of chocolate syrup, and fruit garnishes.
We settle in at our usual spots on the couch, the old, familiar routine. Life is good.
But as I watch my parents giggling at Cosmo Brown’s pratfalls during “Make ’Em Laugh,” I’ve never felt sadder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“We’re home!” Dad says, ushering Teta through the front door. I mute the TV and rush into the foyer to greet her.
Whenever Teta arrives for a visit, gravity bends to her will. Gone are the Netflix dramas, the droning of cable news, the radio tuned to NPR over dinner. Instead, the satellite TV shows an endless parade of Arabic news, soccer games, music videos, and Turkish soap operas. Tea is brought. Pillows are fluffed.
Dad takes her bags, and Mom and I give her double-cheek kisses and hugs. Mom ushers her into the living room so she can put her feet up and we can serve her tea. Behind them, the colder-than-usual March air floods the house.
After dinner, the family gathers in the living room to begin a subtitled repeat viewing of Teta’s favorite old series, Aşk-i Memnu. (Dad always complains about it, but he knows the characters’ names and clucks disapproval over Behlül and Bihter’s forbidden romance, so he’s obviously been paying attention.) I’m zoned out, working on homework, when I realize Teta’s gravelly voice has become raised. She’s gesticulating wildly and seems to be talking about me. Despite our fawning and my facade, she must have realized something’s up. Dad frowns and shrugs. Then he sighs, leaving the room looking defeated.
“Ta’ali,” Teta says, waving me over to her.
I obey.
She pulls me in close, plopping me onto her lap and patting my back as if I’m a toddler. At times, I find this annoying—and always embarrassing—but it’s also weirdly comforting. I am loved.
“Baba,” she says, referring to my father. She makes an exasperated shaking gesture with her head, clicking her tongue, before launching into an Arabic sentence I can’t quite grasp.
Although I want to ask what’s wrong, want to have a meaty conversation with her, I respond the only way I know how: by politely smiling, laughing, and nodding.
My dad likes to tell a famous family story about when the king of Jordan came by the Ibrahimi compound in Nablus before he was born, back when my grandfather was governor of the area. The king said something Teta didn’t like—whatever it was, lost to the ages—and Teta responded by telling him off. The household staff froze, unable to believe anybody was speaking to the king this way.
The king simply laughed, saying he’d heard of Nabila Ibrahimi’s infamously sharp tongue. Nobody intimidated her.
I could take a page or two from her book.
Whether king or commoner, it didn’t matter. She bowed to nobody.
* * *
Every night after dinner, Teta goes into the living room while Mom and Dad clean up. After decades of cleaning up after other people, she’s earned the right to put her feet up. Our culture is nothing if not hierarchical.
Her routine is the same. While she relaxes, she flips through the Arabic gossip magazines she’s brought with her—what has Assala Nasri done this time?—as YouTube videos of Arab Idol stream through the Apple TV onto our flat-screen. Mom brings her coffee, Dad brings her dessert (either fried dough balls with honey, a Circassian specialty, or a rice pudding covered in pistachios), and after making her way through both, she calls back home to Dallas to video-chat with the family, who are always awake into the wee hours.
I come downstairs with a stack of homework, hearing Dad on speaker in the kitchen with Aunt Bila. From the tone of it, he’s giving her advice. I settle next to Teta on the couch, and she leans over to give me a big wet kiss on the cheek. “Ya rouhi,” she says.
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