Internment

The novel opens with the acrid smell of burning books wafting into the upper-class neighborhood where Layla Amin lives. Layla knows “the funnel of smoke rising into the air” (3) is really a warning of things to come. Among the books being burned as a demonstration of America’s new zero-tolerance policy toward the Muslim community are books of poetry Layla’s father wrote. His verses describe heroic resistance to tyranny. Layla will emerge to risk her life to resist this government policy of scapegoating Muslims, but here her reaction is telling. She clings to the reassuring love of her boyfriend and the status quo that relationship represents. When she sneaks out to see David, the risk is greater than if she were merely some love-addled teen violating her parents’ curfew. The curfew is government-imposed and enforced by soldiers with guns. Her sneaking out reveals her happy ignorance of the danger she is in. When she returns home and settles down to do her homework, she closes her bedroom window against the smoke and pulls the curtains down.

That initial reaction marks the strategy many in the Muslim community attempt: ignorance, as they pretend nothing is wrong. Layla notices that reaction in her own parents as they sit down for dinner. This lack of awareness is surreal for Layla. As Layla murmurs in David’s arms when they rendezvous in secret, “I wish I could stay here forever. Is there a magic portal that will transport us to another dimension?” (8).

These opening chapters offer that desperate strategy for survival. When the agents arrive and tell the Amin family they are being relocated to a government internment camp, the initial response, much to Layla’s surprise, is cooperation. Her mother, steadfastly murmuring her prayers, sorts through clothes and dutifully packs; her father, an academic, waxes poetically on the situation, quoting John Adams’ dire prediction about how fragile a democracy can be. But he packs his necessities and counsels Layla to do likewise. Prayers and pretty words certainly help, but cooperation at this point is key to survival.

The Muslims crammed into the train station in the city and then herded into the train cars obey meekly and follow orders—even orders that run counter to everything for which America stands. “The dozen or so people in this car,” Layla notes, “are all like me, going through the motions, stepping forward mechanically, eyes down, trying not to call attention to themselves, unwilling to go screaming from the train and into the arms of Exclusion Guards with large guns” (52).

Key to appreciating the impossible circumstances into which the Amin family is thrown is the Stephen Crane poem that Layla ponders, even as she goes along with the flow of the Muslims into the camp: “There as a man who tongue of wood / Who essayed to sing” (53). In a novel in which Layla learns the importance of making her voice heard when democracy forgets its own premise, here she thinks of the Crane poem and the man with a “clip-clapper” for a tongue who wants to be heard, who wishes to sing, but who cannot and must be content with the desire to sing.

That opening position—having a voice but unable to use it or to be heard—defines Layla as she moves from her comfortable home and her feeling of being safe from the insanity all around her. Her parents, in offering little resistance to their captors and in their willingness to rely on prayers and poetry, elevate survival alone as strategy enough. Make the best of what has happened, they counsel Layla. That is a strategy Layla abides until she arrives at the camp, where she meets the quiet, timid Ayesha and the hotheaded firebrand Soheil. 

Ayesha, as beautiful as she is quiet, confides in Layla her struggle to adjust to the constant surveillance, the intimidating size of the camp, and the claustrophobic conditions of the trailers. Layla gifts Ayesha with hope—the hope is fragile and flies in the face of the facts, but it necessary to do more than endure. After meeting Soheil, whose anger is so obvious and whose reckless tongue promises to bring him trouble, Layla sees the heroic need to voice opposition. In these chapters, Layla moves from happy ignorance and protective isolation to the desperate strategy of cooperation and finally to the need to do something because survival is not enough. Ayesha and Soheil teach Layla that the only hope is in resistance. Her transition into freedom fighter has begun.