The Beauty of Your Face / Sahar Mustafah / 2020
For those of you immediately put off by the title, you should know it’s a reference to a Palestinian folk song:
“Maghrib has come, the sun went down,
The shine is left on your face.
Maghrib has come, your face
shines more beautiful because of the sun.
I would like to warm myself
in the beauty of your face.”
The song is one our protagonist Afaf’s mother-in-law sings to her grandson as a lullaby. Sahar Mustafah notes that it’s a song from a country she fled. The Maghrib is one of the five mandatory prayers, and technically the first of the day, as an Islamic day starts at sunset. As a title, this reference draws our attention to the comfort and beauty Palestinian and Islamic culture offer Afaf and her community. It is an allusion to the resilience of the community in the face of warfare, migration, and systemic racism.
The Beauty of Your Face is a profoundly American book. Mustafah ambitiously covered the history of Afaf’s family from 9/11 to the present day, where an all-girl Muslim school suffers a mass shooting by a white supremacist. At the same time, Mustafah does not pander to a non-Muslim audience. Islamic terms and practices remain unexplained and untranslated: all of it is easily found on Google anyway. While many popular coming-of-age stories about Muslim teens tend to center on youthful rebellion against the religion and assimilation into white culture, TBOYF centers the perspective of a devout Muslim woman and balances her perspective with that of her agnostic brother and mother. They foil one another effectively, as well as capture realistic family dynamics in contemporary religious households.
In a way, the TBOYF feels designed to teach non-Muslims about Islamophobia and invites the reader to more deeply engage with the way Islamophobia and intergenerational trauma impacts family dynamics, identity development, and communal behavior within some Muslim communities. As much of the narrative becomes a review of the ways Muslims are oppressed in the US, it also shows how community members draw strength and resilience from their traditions. TBOYF feels like the story of how Afaf becomes a woman strong enough to serve as a principal of an all-girl Muslim school and face down a white supremacist terrorist. In this way, the book is also a map for young Muslims to figure out what to cherish most about their cultures.
The text dips into the white supremacist’s backstory a bit, but his story serves more as a plot device to build tension as he inches closer and closer to the school, rather than revealing anything new or profound about white supremacists. This feels appropriate here. This is a story about Muslim resilience and beauty, not about white ugliness and hate.
As an ex-Mormon and child of Salvadoran refugees, I relate deeply with the family dynamics as portrayed by Mustafah. I am so glad this book exists. I recommend this book to anyone interested in feminism, Islamic or Middle Eastern literature, and writing about the American dream.