FIFTEEN
The ringing of the phone broke through the silence at the dinner table.
I had had enough of answering pestering reporters and funneling my way in and out of the building through them. They were all looking for one story because they had beaten the rest to a pulp. Muslim harmed by Muslim, how do you react?
How do you?
I hadn’t even decided in my mind how to answer that. Our commonness didn’t make a good enough story. Like a sack of potatoes, we are all lumped together. Incessantly. Insistently. Now that makes a good story.
What was it the reporter from the Observer had said over the phone? He seemed nice at first, and I was amicable, offering all the answers he needed. About our lives, Faizan, his work at the restaurant, the enormity of my loss. And then the inevitable question
