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By Root 786 0

in Amsterdam. In the terminal we came across a perfume shop where there was a six-foot cardboard cutout of a topless Nordic goddess. When we neared her, Pops put his hand on the top of my head and swiveled it to face her. Shorter then, I was eye to supple thigh. “Look at this naked woman,” he said. “America is filled with this kind of un-Islamic thing. Look all you want now so you don’t sin later.” The story about the naked woman had become a family legend. It was often retold—sometimes with the woman alive, sometimes as two women, and sometimes as a couple having sex in public—all to remind us that we had known about America’s un-Islamic inclinations before we even got here.

“And what about halal food?” Ammi said. “We’ve worked so hard to maintain halal all these years, like good Muslims. That wasn’t easy.”

I remembered that too. Back when we lived in Brooklyn, before my first day of school, Pops sat Flim and me down in front of Ammi and explained the byzantine world of halal meat. No pork, no bacon, no sausage, and no pepperoni; beef and chicken were also out in this country, because they weren’t slaughtered in the Islamic manner; fish was permissible, but we were supposed to tell the cook that it shouldn’t be prepared along with pork, beef, or chicken. And if we had eggs or pizza away from home, we were instructed to make sure that it wasn’t flipped or cut with a utensil that had touched pork, beef, or chicken. Finally, we had to make sure that our food was cooked in vegetable oil and not in lard or oils made from animal extracts.

“Remember that time you and I went to the farm?” Pops recalled fondly. “It was when we lived in Washington state. We went to Deer Park and put those chickens upside down in the metal ports and then took their heads and…Bismillahi allahu akbar,” he said, making a slicing motion with his hand. “We did all that hard work so that we could eat halal like true Muslims.”

“And we always made sure you had an Islamic education,” Ammi said. “When we couldn’t even figure out the subway map in New York and Pops had to be at work in Staten Island, I used to take you for Friday prayer at the masjid at Coney Island Avenue. And then we enrolled you in the Islamic school for the summer!”

“That wasn’t a school,” I replied. “That was a fat woman’s nasty apartment. And the only thing related to Islam that she did was to split the boys and girls into separate rooms and tell us to convert every non-Muslim to Islam.”

“Well,” Ammi said. “At least there was a masjid in the building.”

“Not really,” I said. “The masjid was the basement of our apartment building near the water heaters. All the paint was peeling and the carpet was gross. It smelled like fungus feet, remember? And sometimes when the imam did prayer the dryers in the laundry room buzzed and scared the hell out of everyone.”

“Well, it’s important to be reminded of hell from time to time,” Ammi defended.

“Then what about when we lived in Arizona?” Pops said, mulling over our numerous moves across America. “We took you to that qari at the beautiful masjid in the Mojave Desert that the doctors built. Man, that was some masjid wasn’t it? It even had a one-way mirror separating the men and women—very smart.”

“Qari Fazal?” I scoffed. “He was an illiterate villager from Pakistan who secretly wanted to beat all the students—and he would have, except I kept reminding him that if he did he’d go to jail.”

“Stop being so negative,” Ammi said. “What does criticism achieve?”

“I just want to change my name!”

“You really want to change your God-given name?” Pops asked.

I nodded.

“So what do you want it to be?” Pops asked. “Have you thought of something?”

“I want to be Amir. Just Amir.”

“Amir,” Ammi said tentatively, looking at Pops. “Am-iiir.”

There was a long period of silence. Outside even Rocky Balboa became quiet.

“Why do you like this name?” Pops asked finally.

“Well, because it’s not odd! All types of people have this name. I’ve met Jews and blacks who have it. I know of some popular businessmen with the name. Americans recognize the name more. It