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  She started to visit Sharon and Karim more often to talk about Islam. They kept a Quran on their coffee table, and every time she visited, Mom liked to flip through the pages, searching for a message. At the time, she didn’t understand much of the Quran’s writings; the poetic language went over her head, but still there were enough verses that jumped off the page and spoke to her:

  “Islam is the religion of mercy.”

  “And whoever holds firmly to Allah has [indeed] been guided a straight path.”

  “Allah does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear.”

  These simple lines filled my mother’s spirit. She fell in love with Islam and the peaceful guidance that it offered. She started thinking about God as Allah. She put her short skirts away and started rethinking what she wore. By wearing long pants and long skirts she was in control of how her body would be perceived. By the time my mom started college at Rutgers University, she knew enough about the religion to know she had found her salvation. She was reinventing her life, rewriting her story. She knew that she wanted Islam in her future and all the honor and beauty it brought. It lifted her soul and gave her more to believe in than what was in front of her. She liked the idea that there was more in the world than the eye could see, that Allah had put us here with purpose, and she was devoted to honoring her newfound relationship with Him. Her soul, her heart, her life was now Muslim.

  Unlike my mother, my father, Eugene, discovered Islam from his family members. He didn’t have to seek out a new religion on his own; he simply had to follow in his brothers’ footsteps. One of twelve children raised by a single mother, my father was the third eldest of the eight boys. All of his older brothers had joined the Nation of Islam before my father hit his teen years. The Nation of Islam appealed to many Black men in Newark because it offered spiritual guidance in the midst of all the city’s recklessness, and it came gift-wrapped in a Black nationalist agenda that uplifted Black men in a world determined to break their spirits. But as Abu matured, he found himself attracted not to the nationalist rhetoric used by certain factions of the Nation of Islam, but by the spiritual guidance and the irrefutable guidelines on how to live a God-conscious life.

  Because Abu’s parents separated when he was five, my father was attracted to Islam’s emphasis on the family and the important role of the father in the family hierarchy. So, along with a group of other friends, Abu founded a new mosque in East Orange, New Jersey, where traditional Islamic precepts would be observed. It was there that he first saw my mother, who coincidentally had come to my father’s mosque to officially take her shahaadah, or declaration of faith. She seemed so earnest in her love of the religion and so dedicated to learning everything she could in the class for new converts, my father was immediately attracted to her. Sometimes he would peek into the classroom where she was studying and he would just watch her studying as she pored over the verses from the Quran, her glasses sliding down her nose.

  My father acted quickly, as he knew a woman as beautiful as my mom with such a naked love of the faith wouldn’t be on the market for long. He asked some of his friends to find out all they could about this new convert, and he soon found out her name was Denise, but she had chosen the name Inayah when she converted. Following Muslim tradition, members of the mosque formally introduced my parents, and they went on only a handful of dates to see if they made a good match. They did, on both sides. My mother liked my father’s quiet sense of humor and that he had an entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to running the mosque, he also owned two small restaurants in Newark. Complementary to her understated beauty, my father fell in love with my mother’s enthusiasm for life and her love of children. She was an obvious nurturer and immediately made my father feel comfortable in his own skin. My father didn’t hesitate to make his intentions known, first to my mother’s parents and then to her. They were married a short time later, first signing their Islamic marriage contract in a traditional nikah ceremony, and then later they celebrated with a more formal occasion.

  As part of their new life, my parents now went by their chosen names Inayah and Shamsiddin. Their new names symbolized their dedication to Allah, and that dedication extended to all aspects of their lives. They were not going to be Muslims in name only. In contrast to the way they were raised, my parents mutually agreed to raise their children following Muslim traditions. It was their gift to us. All meals would be halal, prayer would be observed five times a day, and hijab would be observed for the girls when they came of age. No matter what, family and faith would always come first. My mother vowed her children would never end up victims of the streets. My father vowed his children would always have a father in their lives. And so they found a spacious second-floor apartment in a quiet residential section of Newark and a private Islamic academy for the children to attend. Even though it was a struggle to send three children to a private school, my parents were both willing to sacrifice for their children’s spiritual education. Both of my parents wanted more for their children than what Newark—a city still licking the wounds from its past—would be able to provide, more than what Newark had given to them. So they started saving their money, and in just a few years they had saved enough to buy a cozy four-bedroom home in Maplewood, New Jersey.

  The picturesque suburban township of Maplewood felt about as far away from urban decay as one can imagine. I was five years old when we drove into town, passing block after block of colonial-style brick homes with tidy lawns and manicured gardens. When Abu stopped in front of our new house, the first thing I noticed was the forest-green front door. The compact three-story home was painted a stark white with frosty mint–colored shutters draping the second-story windows. I wondered if there was a yard in back, because the small, square front yard didn’t look big enough for a good game of tag. Abu told us kids—my older sister, Brandilyn; my brother, Qareeb; me; and my little sister, Asiya—to get out of the car so he could show us something special. The four of us scrambled out of the back seat and followed my dad down the long driveway to the back of the house. There in front of us was a huge in-ground swimming pool. The pool took up a large portion of the backyard space, but I wasn’t going to complain. I wanted to jump in the water right then and there.

  “Can we go swimming, Abu?” I begged.

  “Ibtihaj, you don’t know how to swim,” my father said and laughed.

  “I know, but I can do a cannonball, can’t I, Qareeb?” I said, trying to get my older brother to vouch for me.

  “I don’t want any one of you kids even near this pool without me or your mother next to you,” my father said. “But I’m going to teach you all how to swim. That’s one of the reasons why we bought this house. My children aren’t going to be statistics, another Black kid drowning because no one ever taught them how to swim, no way.” And that was Abu—strong, focused, determined in his moves.

  I didn’t know anyone who had a swimming pool in their backyard. In fact, most of my friends lived in apartments like we did, so no one even had a backyard. If we wanted to play outside, our moms usually took us to the park, but even then, they were always worried, telling us to keep our eyes open and pay attention to our surroundings. But everything about Maplewood seemed different than Newark. Newark was gritty, with a lot of pavement and dilapidated buildings. Maplewood was pure, full of trees and parks. Parts of Maplewood literally looked like a stand-in for a 1950s movie set, particularly the downtown area with its restaurants, cafés, bakeries, and bookstores. It looked like a storybook town to my parents. The park in the center of town was designed by John Olmsted and Frederick Olmsted, Jr., sons of the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and had a duck pond and white wooden gazebos dotting the area. My parents knew they made the right decision to raise their family in Maplewood. In addition to all of the family-friendly amenities, including good public schools, libraries, and a community center, Maplewood was also an anomaly because of its racial and economic diversity.

  In the early nineties when my family
and I arrived in Maplewood, the city was approximately 59 percent white and 33 percent Black. There was only one other Muslim family in town, but the women in that family didn’t wear hijab like we did. But the lack of other Muslims didn’t stop me from finding friends and feeling right at home. My first and best friend was Amy.

  Amy had big round brown eyes and long black hair that she always wore in two lopsided ponytails. I remember soon after we moved in, Amy crossed the street with her mother and came to say hello. Then while our mothers talked, Amy asked me if I had a bicycle.

  “Yeah, I have a bicycle,” I said. “It’s purple and pink. Pink’s my favorite color.” After that, it didn’t take Amy and me long to set up a routine. First, we’d grab our bikes and ride up and down our driveway, talking about all the things we were going to do that day, and when we grew bored of that, we’d head over to her backyard and play until our moms called us in for dinner.

  One time, not long after we moved in, Amy and I were sitting in the grass in her backyard and she asked me, “Ibtihaj, how come your mom always wears a scarf on her head?”

  No one had ever asked me that before. All my friends in Newark from my preschool and the masjid where we went to pray all had moms who wore hijab. In fact, I didn’t have any friends except Amy who had a mother who let her hair out in public.

  I had to stop and think for a minute before I could answer Amy’s question. “My mom wears hijab because we’re Muslim,” I said as I pulled up a handful of grass and then tried to weave the blades together into some kind of tapestry.

  “What’s a Muslim?” Amy asked, a frown wrinkling her suntanned face.

  I looked at my new friend and wondered why she didn’t know what it meant to be Muslim. “It’s our religion.”

  “When you grow up are you going to wear the same thing on your head like your mom does?” Amy asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, I guess so. Sometimes I wear a scarf now for special occasions.”

  “That’s cool,” Amy said, obviously satisfied with my answers.

  In my room, I plopped down on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my sister Asiya. Asiya was only five, but she was a good listener. My mom always joked that Asiya was a good listener because I talked so much.

  “What’s the matter?” Asiya asked me as I picked up a Barbie doll from our stash. Playing with our Barbies was always my default method of passing time. I could lose myself playing with my dolls any day of the week, imagining a fabulous life for them with their cool clothes and ever-changing hairdos. As I found a new outfit for the honey-colored Barbie in my hand and combed her thick black hair, I recounted my tale of woe to my little sister.

  “I hope Mommy can convince Abu to let me go to Amy’s sleepover party,” I said to Asiya. “Amy really wants me to be there. I’m her best friend.”

  “But we never sleep over anywhere,” Asiya said, as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

  I shook my head at my sister. What did she know? I turned back to my Barbie and continued dressing her. A short time later, I heard my mother calling me.

  “Ibtihaj, come here, please.”

  Asiya looked at me, and I smiled. I hoped my mother had good news for me. I padded down the stairs and saw my mother waiting for me, still seated on the couch. Faizah was asleep in her rocking seat next to her. It appeared my father was gone.

  “Where’s Abu?” I asked, desperately scanning the first floor for him.

  “He left for work,” Mom said and told me to come sit with her. I leaped over to the couch and snuggled in close to her. I loved my baby sister Faizah, but she took up a lot of my mother’s snuggle time, so when I got my chance, I took it. Mom was warm and soft and she smelled like comfort. I loved that we looked the most alike, with our matching golden skin and hazel-colored eyes.

  My mother looked me in the eye. “Ibtihaj, you know your father and I make rules to keep you and your siblings safe. It’s not safe for you to sleep over at other people’s homes when we don’t know who all is going to be there.”

  “But it’s Amy’s house. They live across the street. You know them,” I said, trying not to whine.

  “I know,” she said, “but rules are rules.”

  I hung my head in defeat. Amy was going to be disappointed, and I was going to continue to be the odd one out on Monday when everyone was talking about it at school.

  “But”—she wasn’t done—“I convinced your father that since we do know Amy and her family, and since they do live right across the street, you can go to the birthday party.”

  “Yes!” I shouted, jumping off the couch.

  “Don’t get too excited,” she said. “I said you can go, but we will pick you up around eight-thirty, so no sleeping over.”

  To me this was still a win. I just wanted to be there.

  I squealed, thanked her, and dashed over to Amy’s to share the big news.

  Amy’s party was fun, but it wasn’t as exciting as I’d expected. Most of the girls from our third-grade class were there, and we played in Amy’s backyard until the sun set. Then Amy’s mother called us all in for pizza and soda. After that, Amy’s mother brought in a big sheet cake decorated with big pink-and-yellow flowers, and we all sang happy birthday and watched Amy open her presents. By the time my mom came to pick me up, the rest of the girls were changing into their pajamas and brushing their teeth because Amy’s mom said the lights were going off in one hour. So the only thing about the sleepover I was going to miss was the sleeping part.

  When I got home I told my sisters and my mom about the party as we sat around our big wooden kitchen table.

  “Did you have fun?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied honestly, “but they didn’t actually do anything that special. We just played in the backyard and ate pizza.”

  “That’s it?” Asiya asked, looking disappointed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I expected something more exciting.”

  “Well, now you know what goes on at sleepovers,” Mom said. “I hope you’re happy.”

  I shrugged. “I like sleeping over at Auntie’s house better. She’d never make me sleep in the basement. That’s where the girls are sleeping at Amy’s house.”

  My mother laughed. “Ibtihaj, you are funny. All of this begging and pleading, and you’re talking about girls having to sleep in the basement.”

  I laughed, too. “I’m perfectly happy sleeping at home in my own bed with my own family.”

  “Well, at least your dad will be happy about that,” she chuckled.

  CHAPTER 2

  Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar.

  —MICHELLE OBAMA

  My childhood wouldn’t have been full of adventure if it hadn’t been for my brother. I’d follow Qareeb anywhere and everywhere. He was only eighteen months older than me and was the brains behind many of our heroic exploits and the person I most wanted to be like. I made it my life’s mission to keep up with him, even if I knew it would land us in trouble and me sometimes in tears. Whether he was daring me to jump off the top bunk of our bunk beds or racing me down the block, I was always one step behind him, trying my best to keep pace. I even started school a year early because I saw my brother getting ready for school, and I really wanted to go with him. He wasn’t going to leave me behind. I had the quiet determination of my mother, he had the boisterous nature of Abu and his brothers, but we were best friends. And even though our adventures almost always ended up with me getting bruises, bumps, scars, and even stitches, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Our older sister, Brandilyn, didn’t try to keep up with Qareeb and me and knew to stay clear of Qareeb’s rambunctious energy. Asiya was too small to keep up with us, so for a while it was Qareeb and me against the world.

  “Can we do it one more time?” I asked Abu, as I wiped the water from my eyes during an evening pool race. I had almost beat Qareeb that last time, and I knew I could do it if I had one more chance. I was so close. I g
lanced up at the sky and could tell the sun wasn’t going to be up much longer. Asiya had already gone inside to change, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

  “I don’t wanna race again,” Qareeb said. “I’m tired.”

  “What? You’re scared I’ll beat you this time?” I asked, knowing Qareeb could never turn down a challenge.

  “Psst,” Qareeb said, sucking his teeth as he adjusted his goggles.

  Abu was laughing from his lawn chair on the side of the pool. “Let’s see if you’ll let your little sister beat you after all, Qareeb,” Abu teased. Qareeb dog-paddled over next to me, and we both stood with our feet planted on the swimming pool floor waiting for Abu’s signal. I fixed my gaze on the opposite end of the pool and put my foot against the pool’s wall when Abu yelled, “Go!”

  I moved my arms as fast as they could go, cutting through the water like chainsaws. My legs were like motors, up and down, up and down. I moved just like Abu had taught me. I kept my head down so I could glide faster through the water. I couldn’t see where my brother was, if he was in front or behind me, but I didn’t stop to find out. I just kept moving. When I slammed my hand on the edge of the pool at the deep end, I heard Abu screaming in triumph, and I knew I had done it. “You did it, girl! You beat Qareeb.”

  I paddled over to the ladder and hauled myself out of the pool and leaped into my father’s open arms. Abu wrapped me up in my towel and patted me on the head. “Ibtihaj, you did just what I taught you,” he said proudly. “You kept your head down and you used those long legs of yours.”

  I was ecstatic and spun my head to look for Qareeb. He was sitting at the edge of the pool, and he looked angry. Abu waved at him to come join us anyway. “You’re going to have to work harder to beat Ibtihaj now, boy. She’s tasted victory.” Though Qareeb looked far from happy, I smiled anyway and bathed myself in Abu’s praises.