is Pakistani American). Auntie Rima is probably affronted by that, maybe thinking it’s a planned emphasis on one culture—while I know that Mom and her friends just wanted to match each other and that they saw a deal at a desi store when they took a trip to Devon Street in Chicago together.
I need to exit this situation. “Oh, look. The line’s cleared around one of the henna artists. She’s the one I’ve been waiting for. I’m going to get my hands done.”
“And it’s time for my dance, I think.” Sausun holds Auntie Rima’s gaze. “You’re free to join us if you want to. We’re dancing to an old Arabi song you may know.”
Auntie Rima shakes her head.
I point out the henna artist near Mom and her friends to Sausun. “I’ll watch you guys dance while I get my henna done.”
“Let’s catch up later.” Sausun winks at me.
I nod and leave Auntie Rima.
Before I get to the henna station, though, I feel a hand on my back. It’s another of Sarah’s aunts, Auntie Razan, who’s older, maybe almost as old as Teta, my seventy-six-year-old maternal grandmother. She leans in to whisper to me. “Habibiti, don’t worry. You’ve brought so much joy. Don’t listen to Rima. She’s feeling things wrong. We’re so happy to be here together. There’s so much joy here.”
Then she strokes my hair and I feel like I’m with Teta and her warm love.
* * *
Mom comes to sit beside me while I’m getting hennaed.
“What happened over there with Auntie Rima?” she whispers. “I was going to come over when I saw your face, but then you left.”
“You don’t have to whisper, Mom,” I say, indicating the henna artist with my chin. “She’s got headphones on.”
“So what happened?”
I fill her in, and she shakes her head when I’m done.
“I’m sorry that happened.” Mom sighs. “But you know Sarah’s mom’s not like that, right?”
“Then why does she look so disapproving all the time?”
“That’s her personality. She’s like that with Sarah, too. She really loves Muhammad.”
“Mom, can I ask you something?” I draw my right hand, now complete, away from the henna artist and shift myself to lay my left one in her palm. She positions the henna cone in the middle of the back of my hand and starts the same beautiful design of paisleys swirling in and around a larger, slender paisley that extends from below my wrist to the tip of my ring finger. “Did your family treat Dad like that? Like how Auntie Rima is behaving?”
I want to know how this assumption about cultural superiority plays out in our family. Like, I know it’s there in the world; I’ve seen it with my own eyes—at school, at the mosque, the Muslim community—it’s out there, everywhere.
I’m not that naive.
But I want to know about its existence in my family.
Mom doesn’t say anything for a bit. Then she sighs again. “Most of my family didn’t want me marrying Dad. Except for Amu, who helped us get married. And Teta, who is Teta, always kind—you know how she is. But everyone else wasn’t very happy, especially Grandpa before he died. That’s why I’d only take you and Muhammad for visits. Why Dad wouldn’t come.”
“Why? Was it because Dad wasn’t religious? And your family is?”
“I thought that was why for the longest time. But then one of my cousins married a completely unreligious person, but he was Egyptian, too, and they welcomed him with open arms. And Dad saw that. And it was early on in our marriage.”
I shift again, uncomfortably this time. “What did you do?”
“I got angry. But I couldn’t change them. To them, it’s about the fear of losing something—culture, history, language—and not what the Qur’an says about why God created diversity.” Mom leans me against her gently. “So that we may come to know our differences and love each other for them. When you see the world as divided, when you’re prejudiced, it’s not about expanding hearts—it’s about shrinking your capacity to love. Which is really bad for our systems, physical and spiritual.”
Is that why Dad and Auntie Rima are like that? Their capacity to love has been restricted by the way they see the world? Even though Dad acts so generous, is so generous, in other ways?
How does it make sense that Dad, who has felt the effects of prejudice himself, is dishing it out now too? Is it because it’s the kind of prejudice, anti-Blackness, that’s been ingrained in our cultures, South Asian and