The Other Americans

by Laila Lalami

Kids whose first instinct wasn’t to ask “What are you?” but “What do you play?”

The fault lines usually appeared when I was asked what church I went to, or when my mother spoke to me in the school parking lot, or when the history teacher asked a random question about the Middle East and all eyes turned to me for an answer.

How hard the believers make it to get into heaven, I thought, when they have all this right here.