Muslim in America
Lisa Falkenberg visits with anxious family.
Under the elegant chandelier in the Zakaria home, the long silences around the dinner table drown out the clink of glass and the scraping of silverware.
The Pakistani biryani sits alongside lasagna that was meant for the youngsters who don’t like spicy but was so inviting that most of the grownups got some, too. America, I think to myself. All we need is some salsa and chips.
But the minds of my hosts aren’t on food. They’re on the uncomfortable questions I’ve come to ask. Namely, what is it like to be a Muslim family in America today? How does it compare with a decade ago, or even 35 years ago, when 80-yearold patriarch Shafi Zakaria bid farewell to his native Pakistan for the multicultural nation he considered his destiny?
His 51-year-old son, Ali, a lawyer in a striped tie who joined us at his little brother’s home after work with his wife and two teens, answers with a story. He was 15 when he arrived in Houston, and one of the first things he did was enroll in a driving course. The instructor was the most authentic-looking Texan Ali had seen, an imposing figure in a cowboy hat and boots.
“Where you from?” Ali recalled the instructor asking. “Pakistan,” he replied. Then he asked another kid, who said he was from New York. The instructor turned to Ali and invited him to take the front seat, explaining: “Any Pakistani is welcome over a Yankee.”
We all share a good laugh, then Ali’s smile fades, and he mutters, almost to himself: “And then came Trump.”
It was the worry in Ali’s eyes that drew me to him at an ACLU event a few nights earlier. He’d just spent several days at Bush Intercontinental Airport, feverishly trying to help detained immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries caught up in travel ban mayhem. His sadness was palpable, and not just for the people at the airport.
His own children, who were born in America — in Houston
— had recently asked him if they belonged here. A future sonin-law had canceled his honeymoon to Thailand for fear that he and his wife would spend the joyous occasion detained in a foreign airport. His father, still recovering from two strokes, holds vigil in front of the cable news shows and calls constantly for updates or reassurance.
“I worry about the future of this country,” he told me.
Successful citizens
These aren’t refugees or green card holders from those seven countries. They’re successful, upper-income U.S. citizens who started businesses here, law practices, raised children, gave back to their communities, and lived the American dream — only to now feel like outsiders.
At dinner, three generations of the Zakaria family talk about the pain of seeing their religion portrayed on the nightly news and in political speeches as something violent or illegitimate or in conflict with American values.
Shafi fell in love with America watching Westerns while growing up in Pakistan. He made his fortune in textiles, gas stations and fast food and traveled extensively throughout Eastern Europe during his career. He saw familiar shadows in Trump’s populist, authoritarian style.
After the election, his fear led him to consider a move to Canada. But his children said no. This was their country, they said. And his, too. Plus, he couldn’t imagine leaving Houston.
“This is the best city, I’m telling you,” he says. “The best food also.”
‘We had no issues’
Shaukat, a Houston health care entrepreneur who along with his wife, Nihala, is hosting dinner, says for a long time in the United States, Muslims got “a free ride” from discrimination — many not really considered a different race and not vilified for their religion.
“We grew up in a very accepting society,” he says. “We had no issues going to the mosque, or telling our friends we were going to the mosque.”
Now, he says, they don’t want to invite attention.
Nihala, who was born in Chicago and raised in Houston, looks toward her young daughters. “They’re not going to live in the same kind of world we grew up in.”
The Zakarias don’t see any resemblance between their faith and the ideology of terror groups like ISIS. Shaukat says attempts to lump the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims together, and with terrorists, are frustrating, and they come from every direction — the childhood friends who hung out at his house 1,000 times now won’t stop posting anti-Muslim memes on Facebook; the highly educated nonprofit board member now wants him to issue a personal state- ment after every terror attack.
“I don’t need to answer for the guy in San Bernardino,” he says. “He’s a criminal.”
Like any family of faith, some of the Zakarias are more devout than others. Nobody drinks alcohol, the women don’t wear headscarves, but some pray five times a day. Fifteen-yearold Danyal, Ali’s son, draws suspicious glances if he stops by the drugstore in traditional garb. His 15-year-old cousin, Sumer, says she welcomes inquiries from her Catholic school classmates about things like why she wears leggings during tennis practice. Ali’s daughter, 18-year-old Tehreem, a University of Houston student, has witnessed a gaggle of older men yelling at students in hijabs, and she knows women who have stopped wearing them out of fear.
‘I’m here with you’
For Nihala, the first bitter taste of discrimination came long before Trump, on 9/11. She was working at a food service company that contracted with Houston ISD when news of the attacks broke.
“We watched in horror. The kids were in school; parents started calling. It was chaos. But you know, it was the first time …” she says, pausing. “One of my colleagues said to me, ‘Why are you guys doing this to us?’ ”
She bows her head and weeps silently at the table. After a few moments, I ask how she responded.
“I said: ‘How would I know? I’m here with you!’ ”
Happy to explain religion
Since then, she and her husband have known neighbors who wouldn’t open the door to them, a firefighter who lived across the street who refused to buy Girl Scout cookies from their 9-year-old. But she says she finds hope in strangers who gave them a chance.
After the most recent move, she recalls sending out a text inviting new neighbors to a house-warming breakfast. The San Bernardino shooting happened an hour later. She wasn’t sure anyone would come. They did. And one stayed afterward, at first making small talk about James Bond movies, then eventually feeling comfortable enough to ask pointed questions.
“She asked if Muslims really want to kill everybody,” Nihala says. “She asked me about jihad.”
Nihala says she was glad to explain the true definition: a personal struggle of faith, to make all the prayers, to fast, to share the message of Islam.
‘What is jihad?’
At the far end of the table, Shaukat is snickering. The teens on either side of him, his daughter and nephew, wear sheepish grins.
Shaukat explains: “They both just leaned over and asked, ‘What is jihad?’ ”
The table erupts in laughter. “We don’t use those words,” Nihala says.
“And he goes to the mosque every day,” Shaukat jokes.
“He would actually have to go inside the mosque, and not just be outside playing basketball,” Danyal’s father, Ali, prods.
“No, I go inside,” the boy says. But he says they spend time talking about how to make a difference in the world, not jihad. He sees himself, even at 15, as a sort of ambassador, with a duty to set the record straight on his faith and exemplify its message of peace — efforts that he knows will never make the nightly news.
“If we don’t do it,” he says, “who will?”