A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Recently, Amar has begun to feel as though he had been born into a world not made for him. What did it matter that his birth certificate was from a hospital in this very city, that the only house he had ever lived in was here. Where are you from? the kinder question would be. As though he could not possibly be from here. As though it were he and not they who had misunderstood. He had given up trying to explain. India, he would mumble. Even though he had not even been there for more than two weeks total, and that by now both his parents had lived here longer than they had ever lived elsewhere. Sometimes this answer would satisfy them and sometimes he could see their faces twist in confusion, and they might even say, but don’t people from India have darker skin? Even at mosque, when listening to the speaker lecturing from the pulpit, he pulled little threads from the carpet and felt that none of this moved him, or was made to include him. There were moments. A feeling he got after praying, but never during, when the men turned to each other to shake hands, and when they settled into holding hands to recite aloud together the dua of brotherhood and sisterhood. Or when some of the boys said they were walking to a gas station nearby and they asked him to come. But then the moment passed. He pulled another thread. Outside, people could not pronounce his name and often asked if he had a nickname they could use, and in the mosque everyone nodded in agreement to speeches that just ...