As a child I was made starkly aware of our nonconformity when my friends would come over and ask why my parents were going out to dinner at nine p.m.—on a Tuesday. Why wasn’t my mother wearing mom jeans, but rather, formfitting leather Moschinos? Why did my father call me “daddy” and speak to me half in English, half in Arabic? At the time, they found it funny and harmless to tease me about my otherness; they’d even call me “the terrorist,” which I laughed along with, not fully processing nor having the courage to resist the insidious danger of such “jokes,” ones that just a few years later
...more
