His wife is Palestinian but she was born in America and has forgotten her roots. She wears pants and knows only a choppy little Arabic and speaks to me out of her nostrils. Treats me as if I were an ignoramus. I look backward to her because I wear the kind of dress that, in our social circle back home and among people who have taste, is the dignified thing for a woman to wear. There, she and her pants would be seen for what they are: tasteless, ill-bred, and unbecoming.
The thing about most Americans—and especially those with a xenophobic bent toward immigration—is that most expect that people from other countries just naturally agree with them that their country is more preferable. Every woman must surely want the freedom to wear pants, we’re all smarter than the rest of the world especially the more “primitive” countries, and deep down inside we really do expect everyone who comes here to learn English. The reality is that not everyone else in the world sees us in quite the heightened way we see ourselves. The title character begins her story with an assertion that many might expect to hear from an American eating Syrian food, but surely not the other way around: “The food here is terrible. The meat smells disgusting.”
There were scarcely any Arabs in Mickaweaquah, Iowa. The nuclear energy plant ("Safely Empowering Your Tomorrow Today!") was the only thing going on in town except a small iced-tea bottling operation, and Dr. Rashid and her husband were the only Arabs, and they weren't Arab. They were Arab-American. The hyphen said that they had been here a while. They were not the huddled masses of the Greater Jersey City Mosque, reeking of incense and henna and wearing their jubbas everywhere…
This is a story all about how appearances can be deceiving or, at the very least, how what seems to isn’t necessarily exactly so. The trip from there being barely any Arabas at all in this Iowa town to the difference between Arabs and Arab-Americans is a short one and deceptively so. The fact that is that in America that leap is both huge and meaningless, depending upon the perspective. And, of course, there is the irony that will unfold as the narrative plays in which all the characters actually are Arab—to one degree or another—despite the setting’s asserted scarcity.
Converts, Maryam thought. Just because someone was a Muslim didn’t mean you had to invite her into your car. A billion friggin’ Muslims in the world. She was focused on helping just one: her niece Reyan in St. Louis with the abusive husband.
“The Girl from Mecca” is, for the most part, a road trip adventure. Maryam is a Palestinian nearing forty who came to American when she was fourteen. Siddiqua is almost that many years older who was inspired to convert to Islam by the charismatic presentation of Malcolm X. The girl from Mecca is Ganna, the Egyptian wild card that every road trip needs to transform it from a simply a long drive into an adventure. Ganna has been presented as a fragile creature in desperate need of assistance. The tracks on her arms, the visible pink thong and the “itty-bitty top that said `Arab Hottie’” suggests they have been sold something quite different, however.
