Love, Hate and Other Filters

by Samira Ahmed

But I want to be in New York already. You know, a place where I can live and do what I want and not be the Indian girl or the Muslim girl. A place where I can just be me.”

“Oh, my God. I want my future life to be a cheesy romantic comedy.” He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You want it to be an epic.”

Greek tragedies with their revenge, suffering, and extreme sorrow are roughly equivalent to dealing with my mother, so an intervention from Zeus or Athena seems a fair ask.

We both have truths that we’re hiding from practically everyone else, except each other.

me. “You want to go to the woods to live deliberately. You want to suck the marrow out of life.”

“Filming is the way I see things. Really see them. I can capture what is important to me at a particular moment. That way, I keep it forever.”

“Movies can remind us of who we are or were, show us what we can be.

“Movies are the only real magic that I can make,”

And the Muslim? The Indian? That girl, she doesn’t even get the dream of the football captain. She gets a lifetime of being stopped by the FAA for random bag searches every time she flies. She gets the nice boy, the sensible boy, the one her parents approve of and who she will grow to love over years and children and necessity.

The camera in my brain lets me run all the scenes of my life in slow motion. I freeze-frame every time Phil touched me. The perfect afternoon when he held my hand. The impossible instant when his face hovered inches above mine. He could have kissed me, but didn’t. He couldn’t even bring himself to say any words, express a single emotion.

She just feels so alone, like she’s lived her whole life in “quiet desperation” as Thoreau would say, instead of sucking the marrow out of life.

I know I’m not the only one hoping for this. I know millions of American Muslims—both religious and secular—are echoing these very same words at this very same moment. I know I’m not a very good Muslim, but I hope my prayers are heard. Prayers for the dead and wounded. Prayers for ourselves. Prayers for peace, hoping that no more lives are lost to hate.

I’m scared of being the object of fear and loathing and suspicion again. Always.

“These terrorists are the antithesis of Islam. They’re not Muslim. Violence has no place in religion, and the terrorists are responsible for their own crimes, not the religion and not us.”

Terrorists have their own ideology. Who knows what hatred compels them? They’re desperate and unthinking and ignorant followers—” I interrupt my mother. “Too bad none of that matters. We all get painted like we’re un-American and terrorist sympathizers, no matter how loudly we condemn terrorism and say it’s un-Islamic. It’s guilt by association.”

we all have secrets, hopes that stay locked deep inside, trapped by our fears of the world’s judgment.

And for those who bear the brunt of hate because of the color of their skin, or the sound of their name, or the scarf on their head, or the person they love; for those who are spat upon, for those who are told to “go home” when they are home: you are known. You are loved. You are enough. Let your light shine. I wrote this book for you.