The Beauty of Your Face by Sarah Mustafah
“Mama had never allowed her to get close. They circled each other for years, never breaking their orbits.”
Sahar Mustafah’s debut novel The Beauty of your Face is about Afaf, daughter of Palestinian immigrants growing up in America. This first line itself opens up many obvious themes and debates that form the cornerstone of one’s daily as well as intellectual space. Some of these such as identity, gender, nationality contribute important insights into the text and form a significant part of the novel. Apart from these obvious themes, the book discusses the idea of hate, religion and spiritualism, each acting as a foil for another.
The novel deals with alt-right radicalization and what compound hate leads to. The narration swings between the present and the past, Mustafah creates a story that “pays homage to Chicago-” Afaf’s present home where she grew up and to the home she or rather her mother belonged to- Palestine. The protagonist witnesses the break down of a family as each member drifts apart over the years even as each of them collectively face financial /identity crisis and prejudice. Characters in the book spend much of their time searching for a sense of belonging- in their own family, schools as well as communities.
As each character make their choice, the reader through the narration finds herself questioning universal and glorified ideas such as that of endurance and sacrifice. Very easily the novel can be described as a story of resilience and hope, but it is more a story of that highlights “a sense of our shared humanity-” the wavering and wrinkles the lies in peace and faith itself.
As the story goes on between one character’s disappearance and another’s indifference, the book unfolds family dynamics that has remained fractured too long and too deep. There is no happy ending and the book ends with many questions most significant being how long can one hold on to being different with all the hate that has surfaced?
“She wants to know. What has carried this man to this moment?”
