It is a riveting debut from an important new voice. But when her job sends her to cover a national Islamic conference in Indianapolis, she’s back on familiar ground: Attending a concert by her brother’s interfaith band The Clash of Civilizations, dodging questions from the “aunties” and “uncles,” and running into the recently divorced Hakim everywhere.īeautifully written and featuring an exuberant cast of characters, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race. Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf In her novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), Syrian-American Mohja Kahf engages in the representation of an experience similar to hers, the coming-of-age narrative of a young girl in a Muslim community in the heart of Indiana. On returning to America she works in an eastern state - taking care to stay away from Indiana, where the murder of her friend Tayiba’s sister by Klan violence years before still haunts her. When her picture-perfect marriage goes sour, Khadra flees to Syria and learns how to pray again. Along with her brother Eyad and her African-American friends, Hakim and Hanifa, she bikes the Indianapolis streets exploring the fault-lines between “Muslim” and “American.” (Oct.Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy is growing up in a devout, tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes. However, Khadra's ever-evolving view of herself and her religion resonate and provide a valuable portrayal of an oft-misunderstood faith. Khadra is a compelling protagonist, and the supporting cast is varied and believable, but Kahf's authorial incursions-critiques of religion and society-are heavy-handed.
The mutability of ordinary cultural crossroads-along with the shock of violent ones, such as the rape and murder of one of Khadra's friends-force Khadra to continually question what it means to be "Muslim" or "American." After a short and disastrous marriage to an overbearing husband (he forbids her to ride a bike she has an abortion), Khadra travels to Syria-now mired in political and religious strife-and returns to the United States in the late '80s to continue searching for her own way in the world. The inevitable culture clashes ensue, from taunts of "raghead" and "go back where you came from" to the varying interpretations of Islamic code among the community's other Muslims. Khadra's devout parents raise Khadra and her older brother, Eyad, to be observant of Islamic customs.
In comp lit professor Kahf's fiction debut, Khadra Shamy recalls growing up in an immigrant Syrian family in 1970s Indianapolis.
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