I was angry that my mother had gotten to live such a glamorous life while I was forced to study surahs from the Quran, not allowed to ride a bike for fear I might lose my virginity or learn to swim because bathing suits showed too much skin. Why didn’t she want me to have the same freedoms she had? She had Christian friends, but I wasn’t even allowed to play with my friends down the hall, Chelsea and Lindsay, because they were kuffar, non-believers. Day after day, they would knock on the apartment door. “Can we come in and play with Yasmine?” “No, not right now,” my mother would answer. I
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