Interviewed by Christine Maul Rice

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos…to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream. —John Cheever

I think on the breadth and scope of novels by Toni Morrison or Louise Erdrich or Gabriel García Márquez or Zora Neale Hurston or James Baldwin—and hundreds of others—that, for me, put the world into context. And context—in addition to lyrical prose, achingly real characters, and a driving narrative—is what Sahar Mustafah’s novel, The Beauty of Your Face, offers. It reaches into the grab-bag of what it means to be American to focus on one family’s experience, stripping away the worn pretense of America-as-savior, laying bare a more brutal reality: America struggling to right itself with the weight of racism, hate, misinformation, and xenophobia.

The novel’s opening salvo captures Afaf Rahman, principal of a Muslim school for girls in the Chicago suburbs, at the moment she realizes that an active shooter has entered her school. From there, the narrative reaches into Afaf’s past to dissect the events leading to this pivotal moment.

The Beauty of Your Face also offers a glimpse into the Islamic faith and Arab culture, a faith and culture often mischaracterized and misunderstood. Mustafah’s emotional generosity allows her to deftly juggle the novel’s complexity with bracing honesty and a level gaze.

Sahar and I go back to our time at Columbia College Chicago and I caught up with her to celebrate the launch of The Beauty of Your Face.

CR: Let’s start with food. I love the food in the book! Waraq dawali and so many other familiar foods that my family and I make. Do you cook those dishes? If so, what is your favorite dish to make? To eat?

SM: Yes! I love waraq dawali, but it’s one of those meals that my adult daughters know I only prepare when I’m not teaching/on break from school, and in which they have time to join me. So, they consume waraq typically more in the summer time!

Food is a perpetual element in my writing. I heard many compelling stories sitting around my mother’s kitchen table rolling grape leaves and stuffing zucchini, and many germinated into my work of fiction. My mother recently passed away and it’s given me profound pause as I contemplate all the ways we lose someone. I took for granted how much that engagement with her—cooking, preparing meals—kept me close to my mother’s heritage and experiences as a woman, mother, and wife.

I don’t have a single favorite dish as much as a general category, i.e. rice and vegetable-based stews. I love lima bean stew and kufta in tomato sauce.

CR: I’ve been fortunate to have read your work for a few years now—since you were a graduate student at Columbia College Chicago. In 2017, we discussed your debut short story collection Code of the West (Willow Books). At that time, I wrote:

As a reader, you need to understand this: Once you dive into one of Sahar’s stories, you’ll be swept away. There’s no coming up for air until the final word.

I had the same experience—albeit more complex—reading The Beauty of Your Face (W.W. Norton & Company). Like Code of the West, this novel levels its gaze at a Palestinian American family, a family, like so many, plodding through relationship and money problems, the disconnect between parents and teenagers, and alcoholism but, unlike the image of American we’ve come to know, they also struggle against being “other” in an increasingly divided America.

The Beauty of Your Face is an ambitious and startling novel. The narrative stares down national vs. cultural identity, radicalization, race, school shootings, religion, absence (both emotional and physical), among other issues.

I’m curious about how the idea of this novel came to you and how it changed as the narrative revealed itself.

SM: First, thank you so much for reading and continuing to support my book, Chris. What a journey this has been since Columbia College!

Regarding the seed of the novel, the reality of gun violence in school has long been on my mind since Columbine, early in my teaching career. In Code of the West, I’d written a short story addressing a situation in which a young boy brings a gun to school in response to bullying. However, that violence is quite different from the one by which I frame the novel. I drew inspiration from the real life hate shooting of Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, her husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, and her sister Razan Mohammand Abu-Salha in 2015. The event still shakes me up. I wanted to grapple with the stories behind an awful crime like that. Fiction gave me a space to explore very human characters and the forces that brought them to this moment in time.

An exploratory draft failed in the sense that I hadn’t quite gotten close to characters and to the heart of a compelling story. When I started over, I narrowed my focus and Afaf was born. She allowed me to better anchor the novel and explore a single life full of complexity and nuance.

CR: Your characters navigate a constant tension between keeping traditional ways and assimilation. At one point, Afaf hits a fellow student and her mother picks her up from the principal’s office. Once they’re home, you write:

Mama commences her railing. “Ya rubbi, Nesreen! She hit someone! Is this how normal girls behave?”

Afaf escapes into her room, slamming the door behind her. Her clothes blanket the floor and she kicks through them, plops facedown onto her bed, Mama’s voice seeps through the door in rising snippets. She picks up a paperback novel from a stack on her nightstand—Flowers in the Attic—and tries to read, but she can’t concentrate.

Mama’s words echo in her ears: Is this how normal girls behave? Afaf too, wonders how normal girls behave. Are they like Kelly and Angela? Beautiful white girls beyond reproach? Or more like Nada, who pretended to be the perfect daughter until she disappeared one day? Did she let the boys feel her up, too?

Afaf tosses the book aside. In the corner of her room the old record player sits on a tarnished console, a crate of albums beside it. She pulls out ABBA and slides it onto the spinner. It still works, but the arm jumps sometimes in the middle of a song. She doesn’t mind—every scratch and cut of static strangely consoles her in a way her Walkman eludes her. She turns up the volume and lies down on her side, hands tucked under her cheek. Her thoughts begin to scatter and drift under fluttering eyelids. Mama’s voice on the phone fades and her body gradually loosens—she’s so tired. Before the end of “Dancing Queen,” she’s fast asleep.

Your attention focuses on the push-pull of heritage, what’s expected, what’s misunderstood, what’s just plain difficult about being the ‘other.’ Can you talk about the intersections of life and art in The Beauty of Your Face? In what ways did your experience mirror or differ from your characters’ experiences?

SM: Art, which takes a different shape for each character, sort of saves the family members from utter destruction. Baba’s oud, Afaf’s books, Majeed’s baseball serve as coping devices and outlets for their pain and grief. Unfortunately, Mama is without art—Edna from The Awakening comes to mind for me—and motherhood isn’t an adequate imperative or fulfilling part of Mama’s identity.

In terms of music and art, my home was rather devoid. I do have vivid memories of a record player and even sheet music for “When the Saints Go Marching In” though we didn’t have a piano and none of us played an instrument. Looking back, those items feel like such an optimistic bridge to assimilation—or perhaps a jarring disruption of heritage! My father made us laugh and that felt like a gift.

Like Afaf, I found books on my own. My earliest memory is an illustrated kid-version of Treasure Island. I must have exhibited a strong proclivity for reading because I was placed in high-ability groups, providing me with wonderful books. This is unlike Afaf’s experience in which bigoted teachers automatically place her in low-ability groups based on her racial background. Fortunately, it doesn’t diminish her love of books in which she finds escape and solace.

CR: Your characters! I worried over your main character Afaf, felt sick about Nada, wanted Baba and Mama to find some kind of happiness or peace. Which character(s) was the most challenging for you to get onto the page?

SM: I’d probably say Mama was most challenging though I deeply enjoyed writing her. She is at once a beautiful and destructive mother to Afaf. She expanded my respect and understanding of mental illness and grief. I’ve always been interested in how agency is narrowly assigned to Arab women. Muntaha defies cultural expectations of good mothering and submissive wife, reminding us that our mothers were other people first.

CR:  Early in the novel, you write:

Mama drives in stony silence past blocks of bungalows, spring flowers blooming in rectangular planter boxes. Yellow and purple tulips pose in the afternoon sun, elegant, indifferent. Afaf fights back her angry tears, bites down hard on her bottom lip. She pulls a book from her backpack. Lately she’s been obsessed with George Eliot, her favorite so far is Silas Marner. The story captivates her: a golden-haired child wanders into an outcast’s life. What if her parents had abandoned Afaf, left her on someone’s doorstep? Would life have been better? She wonders if one alteration in a person’s life can undo everything that’s happened, like pouring red dye into a bucket of clear water. What if she’d never been born? Would Nada have disappeared? Might Baba have still been unfaithful? Or maybe you’d have to go further back, when Baba first saw Mama in her green mokhmal dress, strumming his oud to the symphonic clapping of the other guests. And instead of saying yes, Mama turns down his proposal and never sets foot in this country with a young daughter, thwarting loneliness and loss. And Mama wouldn’t be Mama, but Muntaha Saleem, the oldest daughter who’d never wanted to get married. Only no one outwits naseeb, as Khalti Nesreen used to say to explain so many tragic stories. It’s already been written, habibti.

As a reader, that moment felt especially weighty. Regardless of the dire circumstance of the novel’s beginning, that moment felt like a turning point for Afaf, as if her life has become somewhat hopeful in the midst of difficulty.

SM: I’m glad you felt hopeful. Admittedly, I resist the burden of hope in much of my writing, which can be challenging in a larger white publishing industry. But, I think your optimistic reaction might stem from following a particular life (or lives) as it unfolds on the pages, bearing witness to loss after loss, absorbing heartbreak after heartbreak. Still Afaf finds her way and survives, arguably, the worst situation imaginable. Though we might only be floating as we cling to wreckage, still we are floating.

CR: Perhaps it was a shift of focus…but I did feel like Afaf would find her way after that.

SM: Yes. I suppose it’s a matter of possibilities Afaf conceives for herself—not necessarily on a conscious level in that particular scene, but which gives readers a glimpse into change coming in her life.

CR: The last time we spoke, you said:

At 44, I’ve grown more sensitive to what appears to be submissiveness on the part of Arab and Muslim women when it’s really about survival. And that requires strength.

In this novel, a few of your characters turn to organized religion while others shun it. Spirituality and religion are issues that continue to take your attention. How did you prepare to write about Baba’s and Afaf’s embrace of Islam?

SM: I wanted to be mindful that an experience of religious awakening is deeply private and unique, though Afaf’s experience is gleaned from various women in my life and their stories of being Muslim. I also wanted to present a complicated narrative in which a single family can experience a fissure over religion, defying a stereotypical or predictable telling.

CR:  Afaf’s experience of embracing Islam as a young woman—going from not wearing the hijab to wearing the hijab—boiled down one character’s experience but served as an example of what many Muslim women who wear the hijab might experience on a daily basis. I want to thank you for that. Your writing gave me a more nuanced understanding of what our fellow citizens experience every day.

The pilgrimage to Mecca was, for me, a beautiful window into that very holy experience. It made me rethink my own spirituality.

Were you surprised by Baba’s turn to religion?

SM: It was a natural course for Baba, I think, when confronted with a life-threatening event, which might be a familiar experience for some people. I wanted to depict how we cope with and overcome loss and what it might look like for different folks. Baba sees beauty in many things, stemming from his music, and Islam becomes an extension of that quest and need for peace and beauty in the face of tragedy and loss.

CR: I read that there was some debate about your writing from the school shooter’s point of view. That was a risky choice but one that, in the end, seemed inevitable. Can you talk about what went into your decision to write from the school shooter’s point of view and how you and your editors decided to keep those moments in the novel?

SM: My editor from W.W. Norton was on board with the shooter’s point of view. I faced opposition during the querying phase of my manuscript. One agent simply responded with “Dear Sahar, I can’t stomach reading this. Good luck.” I felt a sharp silencing of my narrative, and it nearly derailed me in terms of my confidence. Other prospective agents and editors were more interested in the “immigrant story” which I don’t consider a complete characterization of my book, but it’s certainly a marketable one. Luckily, I eventually found the perfect agency to represent my book and my editor at Norton helped me shape the shooter’s POV in a meaningful way.

Though I do offer a humanizing POV—which I hope also prevents a contrived, case-study rendering of a domestic terrorist—I wanted the shooter to embody the bigotry and daily threat to Muslims in this country and globally, particularly for visible hijab-clad women. No matter how much I humanize the shooter, he remains impervious to Afaf’s humanity. And that is a terrifying and tragic reality in this political climate and since 9/11. As you put it, it’s inevitable that I write him into this book, but I wanted to do it in a way that’s complex, offering understanding and not justification or dismissal of the shooter’s horrendous actions.

CR: Her response does confirm the fact that many publishers (or, perhaps, agents as gatekeepers) want only certain stories, stories that fit the narrative of America as sanctuary, one that welcomes immigrants. There’s a disconnect between that America and our current reality. It’s wonderful when you find the agent and publisher who will go to bat for your work.

The statement, “…I can’t stomach reading this” comes from such privilege and, at the same time, confirms that the writing, as Betty Shiflett used to say at CCC, “cuts to the bone.”

It obviously didn’t set you back. Did it fuel you in unexpected ways?

SM: Yes. Once I got past that initial disappointment and frustration, I discovered what had only been anecdotal from other writers of color: emerging above the white gaze and the constraints of a white publishing industry. It gave me tremendous pause as I considered the burden of defending my artistic choices which do not conform to the expected narratives. In very powerful ways, I reflected on why I wrote this book and why it deserved to be read.

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