‘The Beauty of Your Face’ by Sahar Mustafah

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
Amanda Gorman

A Palestinian American woman wrestles with faith, loss, and identity as she comes face to face with a school shooter in this emotional debut novel. The book flashes back to track Afaf’s life as she grows up in an immigrant family often suffering from racial profiling and being labelled as ‘terrorist’ after 9/11. Afaf finds comfort in returning to her faith, but wearing a hijab results in even more bigotry and hate.

Afaf is head of a Muslim girls’ school. One morning, a shooter–radicalised by the online alt-right–attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the taunting she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.

Hopefully a new era of healing can emerge where understanding, anti-racism, and empathy find a way through, and books like this help. Reading is vital for seeing things from someone else’s point of view, and gives us a chance to examine our own biases. The author wrote the book to “combat a climate of hatred, fear, and despair. Our words, though sometimes slow and painful, are hope.”