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BetaChapters 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
Asma is told of the “self-defense” squads that have arisen in the Muslim neighborhoods. Young men with baseball bats would politely follow veiled women around to protect them. Asma decides to check this out for herself by taking a walk. She dresses up in her native Bengali garb, covering her head with a scarf. Young men immediately tail her. She notices that many of the young men are from the better schools, and she wonders if their parents know they are skipping.
Mo finds himself the subject of “public service” advertising done by the MACC. They create an ad with Mo at a drafting table, with one of his firm’s most famous buildings in the background. He feels uncomfortable representing anyone but himself, even for a good cause. He and Laila have a painful disagreement about this as Laila leaves for work. All her adult life, Laila has practiced law in defense of mistreated Muslims. She remembers the terror she felt as a child having to hide the fact that she is Iranian.
Sean is offered the chance to have his assault charges dropped if he apologizes to the woman whose scarf he pulled. He agrees to meet with her at the MACC, along with a group of other Muslim men and women, including Issam Malik. Debbie and her group hold a rally outside the center. Sean and the victim, Zahira Husain, go into a room together with televisions, and he does apologize. She turns out to be a Columbia University student who speaks without an accent. She says she chooses to wear the scarf—her family didn’t ask her to. Then she asks him to apologize publicly, and he agrees. But what begins as an apology to her and to his dead brother turns into a rant against Muslims being involved in the memorial. He is rushed out quickly, having met the letter of the requirement—but not the spirit.
Chapter 16 Summary
In the throes of his Ramadan fast Mo agrees to appear on Lou Sarge’s right-wing talk show. Sarge interrogates him before the show actually starts, asking him what kind of garden he has designed—an Islamic garden? A martyrs’ paradise? A jihadi playground? To each question, Mo calmly answers that it’s “just a garden.” On air, the callers’ questions rehash all the bigoted remarks and statements from the past. When Mo later asserts that he felt devastated on 9/11, like any other American, Sarge confesses that he’d only felt numb.
Claire’s 40th birthday arrives. After receiving homemade cards from the children, she thinks about the elaborate trip she and Cal had planned to “soften” the day’s blow. Then she gets a surprise gift from her old college boyfriend, Jack. She calls him, and he invites her and her partner for dinner. Having no partner, Claire quickly decides to fall back into his arms.
The mayor, standing firmly behind the Muslim community, invites a group of prominent Muslims to Iftar, an evening party celebrating the breaking of the fast. Mo and his parents are all invited. When Mo’s parents arrive at his dwelling, they are immediately disapproving. He is living unmarried and alone in a relatively empty space. They also disapprove of his crusade to defend the selection of his design for the garden. They say armed guards have been hired to protect their mosque, that Muslims all over the country are being endangered.
Just as Mo feared, MACC members show up at the dinner and are confrontational. Hands full and eating heavily to make up for the day’s fast, and to prepare for the one the next day, the group argues vehemently. Surprisingly, the MACC members blame Mo for not stepping down, saying that he is endangering the community by refusing to back down and causing the Muslim boys to turn extremist. Surprisingly, Mo’s father stands up for him, declaring that Mo is simply exercising his rights as an American. His father, who’d believed deeply in America when they’d first immigrated, later states that he had to stand up for his son.
Chapters 15-16 Analysis
The one major character in the book who seems to stand by his principles is Mo, and we see this when MACC tries to make him their “poster boy.” MACC is campaigning to bring the Muslim community into a positive light, but Mo doesn’t truly feel a part of it. Mo clearly identifies more with the American community than with the Muslim. He’d never even been to a MACC meeting before, and he is clearly uncomfortable. When they create a poster featuring him at a drafting table titled “An Architect—Not a Terrorist,” he is disturbed on a number of levels. Few architects use drafting tables anymore. Instead, they use CAD (computer-aided design) software. Putting one of his company’s buildings behind him brings Roi into the scene without permission, and the word “terrorist” written so prominently on the poster gives the viewer a psychic connection with exactly the kind of association they are trying to avoid.
Sean is given the opportunity to make right his hurtful tugging at Zahira Hussain’s scarf, and indeed he does apologize. But afterward he squanders it all by giving a tirade about how he won’t have a Muslim’s design for the memorial. If he’d paid attention, he’d have noticed that Zahira’s accent is just like his own. She is a Muslim American who has chosen to wear the scarf or hijab. She is a Columbia University student, way above Sean’s social standing, which further establishes her as descendant of immigrants who is trying to achieve the American dream—a better education, a chance at a better life.
Lou Sarge appears once again. Like Debbie Dawson, he is part of the novel’s comic relief. The host of an ultra-right-wing television show, he assumes his racist views are always right, and he badgers his guests, or tries to trap them, into saying what he wants to hear. He’s always jolly, though, which suggests that his shows are less about the issues and more about his persona. He is the Debbie Dawson of the TV world.
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