A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

“Is your dad a terrorist?” Brandon asks. Amar feels silent. And sick to his stomach, like his insides have twisted into a tiny fist, and when he looks up from the gray cement floor, the gray grout, the dark gum stain, it is to look at Mark, who is avoiding looking back at him. This is not anger. This is not fear. This is not an exchange he has been in before. He feels too ashamed to even have to say, no, he is not. “Mark, you know his dad too?” “Yeah, man.” Once when they were ten, maybe eleven, Baba took all of them bowling. Mark’s finger had been between the bowling balls when another one rolled out, and it jammed his finger enough for him to not want to bowl. Mumma wrapped ice from the soda machines in a tissue, Baba gave them a ton of quarters to go into the arcade to play games that were manageable with one throbbing hand, while Hadia and Huda took over their turns. They brought home ten sticky aliens and one glow stick. “Is he a terrorist?” Grant asks. “Shut the fuck up, man,” Amar says. Good. That was better. That sounded tougher. Mark is the only one of these idiots who has been to his home, has eaten dinner with them, and if there is anyone who will tell them that his father is not a terrorist, but just someone who wears white shirts to work, packs brown paper lunch bags, it is Mark. His father with his beard and his skin a little darker than Amar’s. His father did have a temper, one that was undetectable until it erupted, but his anger was hardly ever directed an...