We are a religion of peace, not terror. We are Americans, too.
Sahar Mustafah (2020, 24)

1The daughter of immigrants, Sahar Mustafah explores her Palestinian heritage in her writing. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Columbia College where she was a Follett Graduate Scholar. She was a Willow Books Grand Prize Winner for Code of The West (2017), was named one of the 25 Writers to Watch by The Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and is a member of Voices Protest and of the Radius of Arab American Writers. Her new novel, The Beauty of Your Face, was named one of the New York Times’ Notable Books of 2020. Mustafah lives in Chicago with her family. She devotes her fiction to narrating the experiences of Arab communities in the US diaspora, focusing on up-to-date themes and issues related to Islamophobia, struggle to assimilate anti-Arab sentiments, and anxious diasporic identities. Mustafah’s notable novel, The Beauty of Your Face, contributes to the literary canon of contemporary Arab American authors. Steven Salaita (2007), an Arab American literary critic, points out that this ethnic literary production is witnessing a rapid development and a remarkable artistic maturation, which started primarily after 9/11. The genre, moreover, primarily questions Arab American identity, providing complex understandings of it, mirroring the complex structure of this community. For instance, Mohja Kahf explains that the Arab American community is inclusive and can include both Muslims and non-Muslims and that American Muslims are not primarily Arabs (2007: 385). In other words, the term Arab-American is an umbrella that covers both identities: Muslim and Arab. This terms, as Carol Fadda-Conrey further purports, confirms “the connections among Arabs within the US as well as their transnational attachments to Arab homelands” (2014: 11). The two terms, Arab and American, Fadda-Conrey continues, “are reductive and conceal the complexity of identities, subjectivities, histories, and politics they entail. The sense of doubleness or splitting of self captured by the Arab-American label adequately denotes an inherent tension between these two terms” (2014: 11).

2This interview with Sahar Mustafah mainly evokes The Beauty of Your Face (2020) and in addition addresses general questions about Arab identity and diaspora in the US context. The Beauty of Your Face revolves around the journey of Afaf Rahman, a female character of Palestinian origin and the principal of a Muslim school in the suburbs of Chicago, in search of self-actualization and hoping to understand how her identity intersects with the faith of Islam. Her life becomes troubled after the disappearance of her oldest sister, Nada, and after a terrorist attack against her school by a white, Islamophobic American extremist. The novel explores her memories of the bigotries she faced when she was a child and the racist treatment that she experienced at school in her adolescent years, thus drawing attention to what it means to belong to a rejected minority in American society and to experience situations of racism, alienation, Islamophobia, and misrepresentation.

Ishak Berrebbah: In terms of readership, do you have any sense of who is reading your work internationally, and do you consider that audience when you are writing?

Sahar Mustafah: I know that I am being read internationally. Some of the most wonderful messages have come from some of the Gulf States and Arab states. The Beauty of Your Face has been published in England and also in Italy, and it was translated there. I know the reach for The Beauty of Your Face has been definitely wider than Code of the West. As a writer, I am always writing for my immediate community: Palestinians, Americans, and Muslim Americans. So these are the audiences who are in front of me as I am writing. When you are thinking about audience, it is easy to be worried about how something you are creating is going to be received. What I feel is certainly a responsibility with the creative process. I say responsibility because, when you look at the industry, we [Arab authors in the Diaspora] are still very limited. I think we are definitely getting better. In 2020, when The Beauty of Your Face came out, there were three other Palestinian authors whose books came out too, and two of us made it on The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books, which is amazing. The responsibility to represent my immediate community is something I take seriously.

I.B.: The Beauty of your Face tells us about the complexity of identity construction which seems troubled by diasporic mediations such as non-belongingness and foreignness, and a certain cultural misunderstanding that broadens the gap between communities, especially in the diaspora. How, in relation to your novel, do you comment on the construction of Muslim identity in the diaspora?

S.M.: My novel presents two experiences; I think forging the Muslim identity in the diaspora has to be collective. We see that Afaf’s father engages in this community of Muslims and then he brings Majeed and Afaf into it, so it begins with a group, with a community which is so important because if you are in a place that it is not native you would search and yearn for others who are just like you. There is that kind of communal instruction which is very beautiful. We see that with Afaf in particular. She embraces the virtues of Islam gradually; we see her not even wearing the hijab [veil] until she is an adult, but it is the community of Muslim women that embraces her first. I think there is also this individual aspect which exists in Afaf’s father because of that monumental event in his life; he realizes at this very human moral level that he just needs to do better for himself and for his children to thrive. I definitely think identity is layered and nuanced. My experience and my observation here, particularly in Chicago, and Illinois, is that we [Palestinians] are very much clans people and this forges new identity because we are in a new place but we preserve everything we brought with us, for sure.

I.B.: In reading the novel we can trace the history of Nurrideen School which was built to be a convent in 1929 and was named Our Lady of Peace, then became an orphanage, and finally a private Islamic school launched by a wealthy Muslim immigrant from Palestine. We can understand that the school brings together Islamic and Christian heritages, signalling a particular harmony. Given the political upheavals in post-9/11 America, does this mean that the novel’s agenda is to inform the reader that the two religions can co-exist in mutual understanding?

S.M.: I would say no, I think that’s an interesting interpretation. I was not at all concerned with this agenda of harmony. What I was interested in is presenting the evolution of immigrant cultures. So here we started with Christian Catholicism over the years, but immigrant culture has existed and has begun to flourish and took over the space. This is what the shooter believes and other peripheral white American characters—that Islam is taking over. I think I will definitely play with the idea that not everything can remain the same. It is about dealing with immigration; first, second, and third generations. Islam is present, and it has now occupied the space. Surely we can co-exist by the acceptance of each other. This particular community [Arabs] is here and they need to thrive and be with each other and to practice their religion. I am also paying a little bit of a tribute: my parents put my sisters and myself in a Catholic school in the very early 1980s because there were no Muslim schools, so they were very concerned about public education. We were the only Muslim-Arabs in the school. I must admit that I have always harboured that kind of fascination of Catholicism and I know I was probably bringing that in. There is that instance when Afaf goes to the confessional where she confronts the shooter face to face. That was quite deliberate and symbolic. At some level, I was speaking about how related these two religions are—monolithic.

I.B.: The Arab American critic Nadine Naber (2006) opines that Arab communities in the diaspora rely on their daughters to safeguard Arab heritage and cultural identity; if the daughter disregards this, then transmission of heritage through generations is at risk. This is apparent through how Nada is regarded by her family and relatives when she disappears and runs away. In relation to Nada’s disappearance, “Afaf imagines Sameera’s mother whispering with the other Arabic mothers: Shayfa, shayfa! See what happens when you give your daughter too much freedom. This country will snatch her up” (2020: 56). Are these cultural pressures and expectations a reason/factor that encourages Nada to leave? How can this reflect the experiences of Arab American daughters in reality?

S.M.: Let me first say that Nada is an amalgam of experiences that are engraved in my memory. When I was very young, my family was still living in Chicago. Before that, we lived in Palestine for five years. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were stories of girls who ran away in our Arab community and it was terrifying. As a young girl it was something that certainly I internalized and I ascribed to it a particular kind of shame. I think, for me, Nada becomes a comment on failed assimilation, this experiment of assimilation which is so destructive in a country like America. You are going to check your heritage, your roots, as soon as you put your feet on this land. Assimilation is that you are going to be absorbed into the greater white culture. That is incredibly harmful, and I think we have seen that sort of harm and trauma extend generationally. With Nada, she sort of embodies that failure of assimilation, but from a universal perspective, she is a teenager wanting to belong. I found the question of why girls like Nada would, in real life, basically take off compelling. And what were the stories behind that? I don’t want to stereotype and generalize because every family is unique; still, I feel that the pressure to preserve Arab and Muslim heritage felt even more intense for our parents and also grandparents because in such countries there is that lack of emergent culture and making spaces to celebrate who we are.

I.B.: Part of the assimilation process that Afaf’s family goes through is the celebration of American cultural events and traditions such as Thanksgiving (2020: 62) and Halloween (2020: 58). Do you think that this, in fact, can contribute to the loss of Arab identity and heritage? Or is it another angle from which to see a mere demonstration of their hyphenated identity, i.e. Arab and American?

S.M.: This is such a good question. Halloween and Thanksgiving are superficial. If we look at them in a superficial way, I think Arabs, particularly Muslims, don’t mind engaging because they feel paganistic, especially Halloween. I don’t think it is interfering with Islam unless we get really deep and say Okay that’s haram, but it is not for example going to mass on Easter Sunday. That’s a completely different experience. So for me, I would say that these were, for my family in particular, attempted efforts to make us feel the same as our white counterparts [in the USA] and not really anything more than that. If it is about exploring that hyphenated identity, I would say sure. For me, it is a contrived way of being American.

I.B.: I do agree with you in that it is superficial, but don’t you think that the celebration of such American traditions will enhance the superiority complex—will strengthen the superiority of white culture? I mean, it is about why Arabs celebrate American traditions but Americans do not celebrate Arab traditions? Americans do not celebrate Ramadan, Eid, or other Arab cultural events. Don’t you think that this enhances the superiority complex?

S.M.: Yes, I would absolutely agree.

I.B.: The novel demonstrates the culinary practice of the Arab community in the city of Kenosha (2020: 69), introducing Middle Eastern dishes such as maklooba and waraq dawali. What do you see as the relationship between Arab food and the immigrants’ identity in the diaspora? In other words, how does culinary practice play out in the construction of Arab American identity?

S.M.: I would say it’s probably one of the most immediate and accessible ways to preserve your heritage, so you are cooking these things on a daily basis. That is always going to keep you very close to that particular identity. I think it’s a really beautiful thing and it’s one of these aspects of the book that particularly non-Arab or non-Muslim readers really enjoy. Just like even opening up a book of fiction will immediately disarm a person, because you know, this idea of breaking bread has always been positive and inclusive, so I think the food aspect is definitely a positive one here. I thought of those communities and those nations who have lost that part of their identities because of genocide or appropriation, so it made me think how just more powerful it is that Afaf’s mother can continue to make these dishes. A flip side of that is when it becomes exoticized.

I.B.: In The Beauty of your Face there are references to the importance of women’s virginity in the Arab community and context, either in the diaspora or in the homeland. Afaf realizes that losing virginity is losing her parents’ trust and honour (2020: 86). Can we say that this is something that requires Afaf to refrain from celebrating her sexuality and that limits her freedom?

S.M.: I think, because she’s so young at this point in the novel, that she doesn’t even have a real solid understanding of what her virginity means, except in these specific terms of honour and so on. And I can tell you there was a concern of inflating the stereotype. I think I was speaking about a lived experience, when I was thinking about my immediate community and family members in terms of feminine identity, a woman’s identity. It is like the last vestige of her childhood that she wants to preserve. I don’t think it is a real concern for the subsequent generations.

I.B.: The novel sheds light on the Western gaze, particularly American, towards Arab women who are regarded as exotic, submissive and a symbol of eroticism. This is the case of Afaf: “to the white boys, she is something to conquer and explore” (2020: 97). How do you respond to the Orientalist cliché? Do you think Orientalism and stereotypes are still defining Arab identity nowadays?

S.M.: We definitely have that gaze, absolutely! I’m thinking, for example, of France and the clampdown on women wearing hijab [veil] in certain spaces, so it feels like the other extreme. I think it is a daily battle. I think it’s more about the battle against Islam, from this Judeo-Christian and white patriarchy. I would say that those clichés definitely still exist, but now we’re starting to see the idea of saving Muslim women from themselves, and from their men, and especially because the whole act of choosing to wear hijab or not is problematic, even for white feminists, and this is why white feminism has failed, I think. The clichés evolved intensively with 9/11.

I.B.: The community of Islam provides shelter to Afaf and her father and keeps them away from the socio-cultural atrocities that they experience in the USA. Religion, for Afaf, becomes hope. The narrator tells us that “she feels like a stranger who’s finally come home” (2020: 128). Such commitment, however, becomes a burden in that Afaf becomes more visible to and alienated by the American mainstream. How can we, in the US context, look at the role that religion plays in the lives of the Arab community?

S.M.: I don’t think I can regard it as a burden. I think that is projected onto visibly hijabi [veiled] women. When it is a choice, I don’t think it’s ever a burden, I think it becomes a brave act. I think it is an affirmation and validation, especially, because of discrimination and Islamophobia and bigotry. It feels like a more powerful and compelling commitment. It is so misconstrued as being something that Muslim women are forced to do. This is a book that doesn’t run away from Islam. I am so pleased that you included that quote of feeling like she’s coming home unlike what Nada did. I didn’t want to present Nada as someone who hates her Arab family or doesn’t want to be a Muslim. I was not interested in that. It only contributes to destructive stereotypes. I had this opportunity to present one life, and I think that Afaf’s life is very familiar, but then there are so many things that are unique about it because, of course, I didn’t want her to be representative of an entire community. Afaf reveals the power of religion, self-determination, and she is also a feminist. She has an emergence that readers can identify with. Ultimately, those who are not Muslim will say “you know I don’t need to be Muslim to appreciate that this is a book about faith,” and those things transcend the immediate things that readers are going to identify with, and then they’re going to be the things that are universal to our human experience, and that’s always nice.

S.M.: Well, I would say they are absolutely positive. The book gave me an opportunity to examine what it’s like to hold multiple identities. She’s having to navigate them. Sometimes they feel very separate at certain periods of her life, but inevitably they converge; they converge in this absolutely beautiful way when we see her right before 9/11 and then even post. It becomes even more important for her to hold her Muslim identity. The difficulty is that being visibly a Muslim is conflated with being oppressed and being submissive and this is what she has to battle against. For me, it’s always been positive, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t face challenges in the greater society and even within her immediate community in terms of patriarchal dynamics.

I.B.: The shooting at Nuredeen School, as described in the novel (2020: 195-197), is a pure form of Islamophobia, directing racist violent actions towards the Muslim community. Can we see this type of scene as a counter-narrative to the media and to American popular culture, suggesting that violence and terrorism are also a product of western ideologies? Can this terrorist shooting be regarded as an outcome of what Samuel Huntington calls Clash of Civilizations (1991)?

S.M.: Yes. This is probably the first book that addresses, at least in the context of an American society, a white shooter. This book was inspired by real life murders—the killing of Arab couples by their white neighbour. They were shot in cold blood. For that, many people across the country and in the world just rattled me, and as a fiction writer, I am interested in exploring our original story. So, what are all the choices and forces that bring us to these critical moments? I was thinking about this particular event; my mind starts to race and I think about what was the shooter thinking, where was this person coming from? What compels a person to pick up a gun and knock on their neighbours’ door and begin to fire? And then, of course, I’m thinking about the victims, how are their lives cut short? Who did they leave behind? And that’s how this book came to be.

I.B.: The Arab American literary critic Lisa Suhair Majaj, referring to Arab American authors, says: “we need to write texts –especially novels– that will translate political realities into human terms, and that will create a space for empathy on the part of readers who might otherwise remain indifferent” (1999: 76). As such, does the novel appeal to the reader’s empathy and aim at triggering some sort of empathetic engagement? For example, towards disadvantaged Arabs in the diaspora such as Afaf’s family and refugees such as Bilal (2020: 156)?

I.B.: In the novel you quote from Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth (1962): “so many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible” (2020: 165). What is the purpose? Does this mean that Juster’s works have had an impact on you as an author and on your writings as well?

S.M.: His book was one that I read when I was younger and he actually just passed away, just a few weeks ago. I really love this passage because it speaks to hope and optimism, especially when Afaf was feeling very alone when she was a child. I think…to me it’s just one of those bright spots that I wanted to add into the book, and it’s just a tribute to how much books meant to me, and that contributed to my writing.

I.B.: The structure of The Beauty of Your Face is very interesting. I see it as a form of episodes that divide the novel rather than chapters. Each episode is based on the rhythmic alternation between Afaf’s present and past and her memories. Why have you structured your novel in this way?

S.M.: Yes--it is episodic which is deliberate. I wanted to shift between the two perspectives that also structure the plot in an accessible way. I wanted to deliberately disrupt Afaf’s telling with the shooter’s pervasive violence as a reminder of that daily Islamophobic threat in our communities.

I.B.: Language is another significant aspect throughout the novel. A lot of dialogues between the characters include Arabic phrases, words, expressions, and sentences. This inserts a particular personal touch into the novel’s celebration of Palestinian heritage in the USA. Is this style of crafting the novel a reflection of your identity and belonging?

S.M.: Yes. And I’m grateful for an Indigenous Canadian editor of a feminist literary journal who years ago accepted one of my short stories and explained that she wouldn’t be italicizing any of the Arabic phrasing. It’s a very deliberate dismantling of the othering that happens in publishing. For the first time, I’d felt a sense of empowerment and ownership over my culture as I wanted to express it to a non-Arab/non-Muslim audience. Including Arabic phrases and other cultural expressions is a direct affirmation of my identity.

I.B.: In your collection of short stories, Code of the West (2017), it could be possible to sense that, even though implicitly, you are a nationalist—you echo your concerns about the Palestinian case and the Palestinians’ issues both in the homeland and the diaspora. Do you consider yourself a nationalist? Does this complicate your identity as an American citizen?

S.M.: That’s a really great question that I have never been asked before, and I’ll say immediately: to be Palestinian is so much, for me, more fraught than being a Muslim American and so when you use this term, nationalist, I don’t know if that’s entirely something that I would use to identify myself with because I am coming from a place of immense privilege—being born here in the United States, carrying that citizenship. So even when I lived in Palestine, at any moment, we could return home. It is what we did when the first Intifada happened, the first uprising. In 1987, we were only there for maybe five months and my mom is like “we’re done,” and our education was halted. We were constantly under curfew and we were able to get on a plane and to come home [to the USA]. Quite frankly, even coming through the American airport, I was so relieved after leaving an Israeli airport and going in the line that says “American citizens.” It is just a relief to me and I am really interested in that privilege. In fact, a novel that I’m working on now sort of explores that and what it looks like for someone who is a second and third generation Palestinian. I wonder what my claims to Palestine are: is it just because my parents are Palestinian? Can I claim that heritage because I have also lived there? I think the reason why it’s complicated and complex for me is because of the occupation.

S.M.: I am interested in the portrayal of native Palestinian men and their masculinities in America throughout Code of the West. The characters Riyad, Nizar, and Mahmoud, for instance, struggle to live peacefully due to their ethnicity and their difficult engagement in American life. Do you think that Arab men’s nativity and authentic identity are threatened by their pursuit to embrace an American life?

S.M.: I don’t see it as being different from any immigrant 2nd-generation’s experience of cultural preservation in this country. Their “engagement” as you called it is perpetually obfuscated by the demands of forced assimilation. American life requires that you negate, denounce, leave behind your origin stories and culture if you are to properly integrate into its white society. Assimilation is not a 2-way street in any country. In the case of my characters, it might seem gendered since the characters are male; however, I don’t see it as a predominantly male issue or battle.

I.B.: Code of the West introduces various stories that take unexpected turns. These stories tell us that although differences between people exist, either socially or culturally, they inhabit one world and share the same struggles at either a personal or communal level. Did you intend to humanize your Palestinian fictional characters in Code of the West for your readers? If it is the case, does it help to overture misconception and stereotypes?

S.M.: I believe storytelling is by its essential nature a way to humanize, to universalize pain and joy, to foster empathy, to bridge gaps between communities. Our stories disarm us, even temporarily, of our biases and bigotry. Hopefully, our narrow points of view are widened and our fear or rejection of others is dismantled during the course of a good story. This, at least, is my goal when I write about my Palestinian community.

I.B.: Alexa Naff, an Arab American literary critic and historian, claims that Arab immigrants of the third wave to the USA, for the purpose of leading successful lives, cared about assimilation and integration more than preserving their own culture and heritage. She says: “In their eagerness to succeed, the immigrant generation neglected to preserve their cultural heritage” (1983: 35). Within the context of your fiction, and given that this claim was made nearly four decades ago, to what extent is Alexa Naff’s opinion applicable to Arab immigrants in the USA “nowadays”?

S.M.: In Code of the West and also in The Beauty of Your Face, there is a tension between a native culture and the acquired culture. I don’t think that there is a tremendous sacrifice. We see the case of Nada in the 1970s and the 1980s, and I’m seeing my daughters now who are third generation. I don’t think they’re having to compromise to be successful. I think they are able to be in spaces to assert who they are, and it’s not just one identity. I think that’s what we need to also appreciate and to respect—our thriving. But that has taken work, and I think that has taken decades; we’ve moved from the so-called melting pot to diversity to now really authentic engagement and immersion of other cultures.

I.B.: Arab American identity has often been regarded as hybrid, heterogeneous, and dynamic, amongst other key terms, and it has evolved through generations. As a final question in this interview, what is your opinion about the “nature,” and also the future, of Arab American identity?

S.M.: I really think that we are just incredibly nuanced. I think we are also seeing this at the moment in how identities are at intersection and the power behind, aligning with other groups of colour and indigenous population, and I say this in the context of Black Lives Matter. So we are thriving and we are emerging, in all sectors of American society, and it’s really a beautiful thing. It doesn’t always come easy. When we are able to sort of penetrate those spaces, that just expands the opportunities to dialogue and to immerse ourselves in each other’s heritage. I think it’s such a validation. We are monolithic!

I.B.: You have stated that you are working on a multigenerational novel set in Palestine. Can you tell me a little more about it?

S.M.: Thank you for asking. The latest draft of my novel has evolved a great deal. I’m centering it on the experiences of three young, contemporary Palestinians (one American born) and examining the generational trauma of the Nakba as represented through a fourth character who carries the historical backdrop of Palestine starting in 1948.