A Place for Us

Part 2 opens with a flashback. Hadia is seven years old the first time her father gives in to Amar’s pestering and lets the family sit outside on the Fourth of July to watch a fireworks display. A second flashback shows Layla as a young woman sitting outside on a balcony with her sister Sara. Layla confides that their parents have arranged a wedding proposal from a hardworking young man in America named Rafiq. In a third flashback, Hadia is in grade school; she is called out of class to the nurse’s office because Amar is there, pretending to be ill to skip class again. This is interspersed with a memory of the first time Hadia understands what it means to be a big sister, when she and her siblings are staying with Seema Aunty and her children while Layla is away from home for an unspecified reason. A fourth flashback shows Amar bored at a family friend’s party until he spots his friend Abbas’s younger sister Amira, on whom he has a crush. He reflects on the reasons he finds her compelling, from the fact that she is one of the only girls who doesn’t wear a hijab to her bold laughter to the fond questions she asks him—which all serve to reveal that they have quite a lot in common.