The Bad Muslim Discount

The novel follows two parallel narratives spanning roughly two decades, tracing the lives of Anvar Faris, a Pakistani boy who emigrates to California, and Safwa, an Iraqi girl displaced by war, as their paths converge in San Francisco.

In 1995 Karachi, ten-year-old Anvar kills his pet goat, Mikey, as a ritual sacrifice during Eid al-Adha, the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God. His older brother, Aamir, speaks the required words because Anvar forgets. Afterward, their father, Imtiaz Faris, tells Anvar the real sacrifice is the emotional toll, and that one should "never take more from the world than you can give back to it" (1). Months later, Anvar's mother, Bariah Faris, tells him he is damned for questioning whether the Prophet's Companions could have bathed daily in a desert, a moment that breaks religion's hold on Anvar and shapes his identity as a skeptic.

As 1990s Karachi grows violent and religiously conservative in the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan War, Imtiaz decides to emigrate to California. Anvar's grandmother, Naani Jaan, teaches him checkers as a metaphor for life, urging him to take risks and be careful in love. At the airport, she warns him not to look back, but he does, reasoning that "anyone who didn't look back . . . was stone already" (24).

In a parallel narrative set in Baghdad, ten-year-old Safwa recounts her mother's sudden death from cancer. Her father, Abu, a tall, rigid man who fought alongside Americans in the Afghan war against the Soviets, orders Safwa to the kitchen on the fourth day after the death, declaring the mourning period over. Her gentle older brother, Fahd, intervenes by quoting the Prophet about mercy. When the American invasion begins in 2003, Fahd develops a fatal blood-clotting condition, and Abu loses his job. On Eid al-Adha, Abu is arrested by American forces. Dr. Yousef Ganni, a Christian family friend with the same pale green eyes as Safwa, brings her the news.

In California, fourteen-year-old Anvar meets Zuha Shah, the daughter of his father's friend. She introduces him to reading, and their conversations evolve into a deep, secret friendship. When Zuha suggests Anvar take her to prom, he devises an elaborate scheme to distract his mother and sneak out. At the dance, neither knows how to dance, so they sway together. Anvar kisses her under a streamer he calls mistletoe and tells her she should fall in love with him.

In Iraq, Dr. Yousef arranges for Safwa to be driven to her aunt, Khalti Rabia, in Basra, since Fahd is too ill to travel. The driver, Hasan al-Qurayshi, is expecting a daughter he plans to name Azza, meaning "gazelle," and tells Safwa he wants his daughter to be "free. A little wild. Alert, always, and fast enough to escape when the predators of the world come chasing after her" (83).

Anvar and Zuha attend San Francisco State as English majors. When Anvar's grandmother dies, Zuha comes to comfort him, and they sleep together for the first time. Their relationship deepens, but a pregnancy scare pushes Zuha toward religious observance, and she breaks up with Anvar. He transfers to Boston University, where he undergoes a crisis of faith and concludes that God must exist, not from evidence but because a world without God is "too large, too cruel and too indifferent" (114) for him to bear.

Meanwhile, Safwa learns Fahd has died and Abu has been released from detention. Abu returns transformed, with missing fingernails from torture. He takes Safwa to a remote village near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and begins beating her. An old woman named Bibi Warda, a villager who has known Abu since the Soviet-Afghan war, intervenes. Abu confesses that his American captors tortured him in ways that changed something inside him, then leaves for Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, entrusting Safwa to Bibi Warda.

In the village, Safwa meets Qais Badami, a young man who shares her desire to reach America. He propositions her: fake passports and visas in exchange for sex. Safwa submits. Qais then asks Abu for Safwa's hand in marriage, framing the journey as his bride price. Abu agrees without consulting Safwa. Privately, Qais reveals the marriage demand is a trap, telling Safwa she belongs to him until he decides otherwise.

After law school, Anvar defends Taleb Mansoor, an American citizen targeted for extrajudicial killing by the U.S. government. Taleb is killed by a drone strike without trial, shattering Anvar's faith in the legal system. He moves into Trinity Gardens, a San Francisco apartment complex. The building is run by Hafeez Bhatti, a landlord who chews paan, a South Asian betel-leaf preparation, and offers discounted rent to Muslims. At a mosque youth group, Anvar meets a woman wearing a niqab, or face veil, with striking pale green eyes. She introduces herself as Azza, the name she chose after the driver Hasan's hoped-for daughter. She has arrived in San Francisco with Abu and Qais using false identities.

Bhatti separates Qais from the apartment Azza shares with Abu, but Qais harasses her nightly while Abu works as a security guard. Azza begins visiting Anvar at night, and their relationship, initially physical, gradually deepens. When Bariah announces Aamir's engagement to Zuha, Anvar is devastated. He attends the engagement party and reconnects with Zuha, and their conversations reveal that both still love each other.

Determined to destroy Qais, Azza fills journals with fabricated accounts of him planning a terrorist attack and mails the evidence to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). When agents arrive at Anvar's apartment, his fingerprints on the envelope connect him to the anonymous tip. Azza tells the agents a version of her story that frames Qais as a terrorist. After the agents leave, Anvar discovers the journals are faked: An entry is dated before he and Azza even met. She admits the fabrication but insists the abuse was real.

Torn between Azza's wishes and his conviction that Qais cannot be condemned for a crime he did not commit, Anvar warns Qais from a pay phone. Qais calls Abu, who comes home early and catches Azza trying to flee. Abu beats her severely, revealing that Safwa is the product of her mother's affair with Dr. Yousef Ganni. Azza arrives at Anvar's apartment barely recognizable from her injuries. Zuha helps care for her while Anvar calls Aamir to treat Azza's wounds. When Aamir insists on contacting the police, Anvar threatens him, and Aamir warns there will be a price.

At Friday prayers, Aamir exacts that price: He tells Abu, also known as Abu Fahd, that Azza is at Anvar's apartment and that Anvar has been sleeping with her. Zuha helps Azza escape before Abu Fahd arrives, but Abu Fahd waits inside the apartment with a revolver. He fires twice, missing, and demands to know where Azza is. On his knees with the gun to his forehead, Anvar quotes the Prophet Muhammad's response when an enemy asked who would save him. Abu Fahd's certainty shatters, but before he can lower the weapon, DHS Agent Awiti Hale arrives and shoots him. As Abu Fahd dies, he raises a finger toward heaven, trying to recite the shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, but cannot speak. Anvar recites it for him.

In the aftermath, DHS identifies the fabricated journals as fake, and Qais escapes. Anvar reconciles with his family. Bariah admits she does not understand her son and, for the first time, tells him she and his father love him. She gives Zuha an engagement ring on Anvar's behalf.

The novel closes after Donald Trump's election and the January 2017 Muslim ban. Anvar and Zuha marry in a small ceremony. In a final chapter, Azza, now calling herself Zahra, lives in a snowy town working at a café. A shy café regular named Henry Bowman flirts with her each morning. When he asks if the falling snow is lovely, Zahra, who once told Anvar there was nothing beautiful left in the world, silently acknowledges that it is.