Jan 15, 2021 – The Boy With a Strange Hat

Disclaimer: Some names have been changed to protect their identity, but the events shared below are true.

Once there was a little boy named Deep, meaning light, who started school in a new country (the US) for the first time. Each day his principal asked him to remove his head covering called Patka. The principal said she was curious about how he tied it. Each day, he obliged, not recognizing the principal’s fear. He wished that ended there. But in the next grade, the curiosity reached a new height. He would get pushed into the girl’s bathroom, teased by others who didn’t look like him.

That was it.

The boy who loved kulfi, crushed ice, missed his friends from Punjab he had left behind, broke into tears when his mother applied oil into his hair. His father had had enough of it, too. Enraged, he grabbed scissors and chopped off Deep’s hair. The bullying ended with his former identity.

The year was 1998, before 9/11.

On 9/11, a resident roamed the halls of the Veterans Hospital in Pittsburgh. Unlike Deep, Dr. Singh grew up in the United States with a turban. A vet yelled at him that day, refusing his care. Dr. Singh’s turban equated him to a Taliban.

Today, Dr. Singh, a cardiologist , has had many experiences such as being refused entry into nightclubs without removing the turban. He tells me he has learned to live with it.

Twenty years have passed since 9/11. You would think the fear and mistaken identity cases would be better. Dr. Singh shares how racial profiling, in fact, has become worse since 2016. Fall of 2020, an innocent run turned into high school children yelling Allah Hu Akbar at him. He isn’t even a Muslim. My husband is, ironically, who is clean-shaven.

Deep and Dr. Singh’s stories tug at my heart. Because many other individuals didn’t have time to react, decide whether they will keep their identity or gel in because they were murdered.

Pained, I wrote LAND OF DREAMS in February 2017. America had elected a new president who won on the message of hate. Muslims from specific Islamic nations were banned from entering the United States. I worried harder for those who were already here, who were not even Muslims but looked different. I worried and bled on paper.

In HOUSE OF MILK AND CHEESE, Siana Singh is a first-generation immigrant. She loves her American friends. One gunshot changes that: the shot that takes her father’s life.

This story is about Siana, who goes from rebelling against her Punjabi family to rebelling against injustice.

I hope you will join Siana’s journey, read this book, tell your friends about it because the message behind this fiction is real.

image source – Ivanovgood from pixabay

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