Migrants, particularly Muslim ones, are often cast as people whose lives are broken in two by moving to the West. In the United States and Europe, the post-9/11 focus on security and integration among Muslim minorities has meant that hyphens, such as those in “Muslim-American” or “British-Pakistani,” are read as breaks, not bridges. But migration can double a self as well as halve it. Salman Rushdie has called migrants “translated men.” Too often, it’s assumed “that something always gets lost in translation,” Rushdie wrote. “I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be
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