The events of Patmeena Sabit’s novel resonate with the sociocultural treatment of Muslim minorities in the United States in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. The destruction of the World Trade Center in New York by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda propelled the US government to launch its global “War on Terror,” an extended military campaign focused in the Middle East and Central Asia (al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan at the time). These events had a significant impact on the perception of Muslim Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and Central and South Asian Americans, as they became wrongfully associated with the terrorist attacks. This led to a rise in hate crimes against Muslim Americans (or Americans perceived to be Muslim), beginning with a 1,617% escalation in discriminatory attacks between 2000 and 2001 (Alfonseca, Kiara. “20 Years After 9/11, Islamophobia Continues to Haunt Muslims.” ABC News, 11 Sep. 2021). An ideological movement branding itself the counter-jihad, which painted Islam as a violent religion that threatened the existence of so-called Western civilization, exacerbated the prejudice driving such attacks.

Although the War on Terror would gradually lose favor by the end of the 2000s, Islamophobia remained part of American culture. In particular, Barack Obama’s critics weaponized racism and Islamophobia to stoke fears surrounding the possibility of his presidency, claiming (falsely) that he was Muslim in an effort to discredit him. As Obama’s second term came to a close, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump utilized Islamophobic sentiments to advance anti-immigration campaign promises. This led to a resurgence in hate crimes against Muslims, which rose by 67% between 2014 and 2015, the latter being the year in which Trump began his presidential campaign (Kishi, Katayoun. “Assaults Against Muslims in U.S. Surpass 2001 Level.” Pew Research Center, 15 Nov. 2017). In 2017, Trump enacted a travel ban that directly targeted several Middle Eastern countries, suspending entry for refugees seeking asylum in the US.

While Sabit’s novel doesn’t directly examine the impact of policy on the residency status of its main characters, the Sharaf family, it does highlight the bias that Afghan Americans experienced in a post-9/11 US, as well as the ways in which far-right groups leveraged anti-Muslim rhetoric (in this case, to harass the Sharaf family). As public sentiment starts to turn against the Sharafs, a recurring accusation is that they punished their daughter for being “too American.” This is ironic in light of the view of the Sharafs’ Afghan American peers, who believe that Rahmat sees himself as being more American than Afghan. Indeed, the Sharaf family is characterized as a case study in the “American dream,” climbing the social ladder through Rahmat’s industry. The novel thus underscores the hypocrisy of those who would exclude the Sharafs from their notion of American identity purely because of their racial and religious background. Toward the end of the novel, this sentiment reaches a fever pitch as news articles report the incidence of anti-Muslim hate crimes driven by popular hatred of the Sharaf family. As the Sharaf family’s peers reflect throughout the novel, they’re expected to give up their Muslim identity to assimilate into American society.