Reflection: The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood

     There is no doubt that books are magical; but the way some of them end up in our lives continue to astound me. And each of these occurrences are as unique as the stories they tell. It is a story wrapped in a story. 

For me, the tale of "The Bad Muslim Discount" written by Syed M. Masood began many months ago. After work, I often end up spending a few hours at the public library. This particular branch was in need of renovation and they decided to raze it to the ground to build a state-of-the-art library building. Since they couldn't put all the books in storage, they were giving away many for free. The cover art and the title of this novel caught my attention and soon enough we were on our way home. 


I have always had a soft spot for immigrant stories due to their sheer relatability. I think the reason why I resented reading books during school years was mainly due to them being unrelatable. I tried hard to draw parallels among these stories and my own life but often these effort were futile. This novel written by an immigrant like myself offered me a compelling yet somewhat relatable story. Like the protagonist Anvar, most of us immigrants are confused about our identity and label. We are inevitably bound to lose touch with the culture and heritage we experienced growing up in our home country, but we never fully evolve to fit into the new society. We remain a foreigner forever both to the people of the country we immigrated to and soon enough to the people we left behind. And we become stuck in the middle, not able to say for certain which group we really belong to. This confusion is evident in majority of the characters. Imtiaz Faris left his home country with his family because he felt that he was losing his freedom in his home land, only to become more isolated and alone in the new country his family started calling their home. 

What life has taught me is to take in the goodness from the new world while never forgetting the values and lessons the old world has embedded in me. I really enjoyed reading this novel and hope to come across more immigrant stories that paint narratives of this existential question and confusion many of us continue to face. And as more stories like these emerge, the people of both the old world we left behind and the folks in the new world we live in can understand this dilemma we face everyday. 

-Rithin

Hues and Dews Poetry 

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