Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi and Shazleen Khan

Twins Zara and Zeeshan Aziz live in New York with their parents, Dr. Bilal Aziz and Dr. Rasheeda Aziz. The entire family are traveling to a pediatrics conference in Florida.  There, Rasheeda will receive the pediatrician of the year award, the first Muslim woman to be given this recognition.

Zara and Zeesh do not get along and their constant bickering is overwhelming their parents. When they arrive at their hotel in Key West, Zeesh steps on Zara's suitcase, causing her to fall. Fed up with the two of them, their father takes away their phones. He tells them they "need to figure out how to be friends." Both are upset: Zara because as an animal activist she won't be able to post pictures on social media, and Zeesh because he won't be able to watch the NASA space videos he loves.

At the Tortuga Hills Resort in Florida, the two siblings unsuccessfully attempt to find where their parents have hidden their phones, even trying to crack the code for the safe in their room. It seems they will have to put up with one another. 

A kayaking trip sees Zara find a sick leatherback turtle on the beach. His eyes appear to be infected and the turtle seems lethargic, making Zara believe he is sick. She decides to name him Sunshine. When they return to the resort, Zara asks the concierge if there is an animal hospital nearby, telling him she has found a sick turtle on the beach. He offers to call a local vet to come to the beach.

While Rasheeda and Bilal attend the conference and award ceremony, Zara and Zeesh struggle to get along. Making the situation even more challenging, is the misunderstanding and racism they experience from people at the hotel. Can they learn to understand one another and work together while also supporting each other when others around them do not?

Discussion

Saving Sunshine is a story about sibling rivalry set within the experience of being Muslim in America. Twins, Although Zara and Zeesh are American-born, they experience bias, misunderstanding and racism. Their parents, Bilal and Rasheeda who were born in Pakistan, are searched at the airport, something Zeesh notes happens almost all the time and makes him angry. At the reservation station, the ticket agent struggles to pronounce their names while at the hotel, the concierge asks where they are from based on how they look, He also assumes the Middle East is a desert, demonstrating his ignorance. When this angers Zeesh, his father tells him he has learned to discern people's intentions rather than assuming the worst.

Zara also experiences ignorance and misunderstanding over her headscarf. When the concierge compliments her on her headscarft, this triggers a memory of a year ago when she when she wore the hijab to school for the first time in sixth grade. Zeesh wasn't supportive, not defending her when his non-Muslim friends make fun of her. Like Bilal, Rasheeda encourages Zara not to get angry at every person who taunts her, explaining that the hijab is about sacrifice. But once again when Zeesh makes some new friends at the resort and they comment on her hijab, he does nothing. 

While dealing with prejudice and ignorance, Zara and Zeesh gradually come to understand each other and work to save Sunshine with the help of a local vet. Dr. Anthony Sergio guess that they are from India angers Zeesh . But Dr. Sergio tells him that everyone is from somewhere and that people are just curious and generally mean no harm. 

As they spend more time together, the two teens begin to understand one another and become more supportive. On a walk at the beach in the evening, Zara begins to see the beauty of the stars and is eager to visit the Wendell Family Observatory (strangely on top of what looks like a lighthouse). Zara understands that Zeesh is missing his NASA videos so she hopes this will fill that void and Zeesh is thrilled. Later, as they are eating burgers, Zeesh's new friends arrive. When they insult Zara for wearing her hijab, this time he defends her, much to Zara's shock. When Zeesh gets himself into trouble, after running away in anger from their parents, Zara comes to his rescue. Zeesh returns the favour by working with Zara to help her rescue Sunshine during a violent storm. 

Saving Sunshine offers plenty of positive messages such as not making assumptions about people, and about working together to help each other . Zara and Zeesh's parents both tell them that they try to understand what people's intentions are instead of assuming the worst and responding angrily. It turns out that this is what both Zara and Zeesh must, in order to better understand each other.  When their parents remove the distraction of their cell phones, they are forced to focus on their relationship as brother and sister,  This leads each to understand what is important to the other, and to act with kindness. The colourful graphic art, done with Procreate and inked and coloured on Paint  Tool SAI, reinforce this message.

Saving Sunshine also offers non-Muslims the chance to explore how insensitive words, meant with the best of intentions, can be hurtful and divisive. 

Book Details:

Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi
New York: First Second      2023

221 pp.

A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi

Eleven-year-old Maryam (Mimi) Scotts has just arrived in Karachi, Pakistan for her summer holidays. (Her mother had lost her teaching job at the Houston Art Institute last year.) Mimi's father left them when she was five-years-old. Mimi's dad is a journalist who travels internationally working on stories. She has followed him online and knows that recently he was working in China. On the flight to Karachi, Mimi decided she was going to "write" to her father about her trip by addressing entries in her journal to her father whom she misses terribly. 

After haggling over the fare, Mimi and her mother take a taxi to her grandparents' home which turns out to "a sprawling white house with a balcony on the second floor and huge windows covered with metal bars." She politely greets her grandparents in Urdu; while her Nana (grandfather) seems friendly and warm, Mimi is intimidated by her Nani (grandmother).

Sakina Ejaz lives with her amma, abba and younger brother Jamshed in a poor neighbourhood in Karachi. She rides every morning with her abba on the back of his motorbike to work at Begum Sahiba's house where she helps her father with his cooking duties. This day the house is expecting guests who happen to be Begum Sahiba's daughter and granddaughter - Mimi and her mother.

After greeting her Nana (grandfather) and Nani (grandmother) Mimi and her mother are taken upstairs by Sakina who is shocked when Mimi talks to her. People don't usually talk to her in Begum Sahiba's home and Sakina doesn't speak English very well. Her poor English is the reason she failed the admissions test to New Haven School. Fortunately, because of her high science and mathematics marks, she has been given another chance at the exam on July 27th. Sakina loves to read and has a small secret reading space in a half room behind their toilet in her family's small house. She's serious about going to school even though she has never attended and she knows her parents need the extra income she earns for their family to survive. But while she practices her other subjects, Sakina struggles to master English. She needs a teacher and Mimi might just be the person to help her.

The next day when Mimi complains about Pakistani fruit being boring, Sakina has her try mango and offers her a deal. Mimi agrees that mango is the most delicious fruit ever. She questions Sakina as to why she has never been to school. Sakina tells Mimi that she learned math, science and some English along with the children who were tutored in the home her abba previously worked at. Sakina makes a deal with Mimi to have her teach her English. 

Gradually the two girls begin to trust one another and become friends. Mimi helps Sakina improve her English while Sakina helps Mimi learn more about Karachi and Pakistani culture. Then Mimi overhears her mother and grandparents talking and learns her father may be working in Karachi. Deeply hurt at her mother's secrecy, Mimi's determination and desire to meet her father only intensify. Meanwhile Sakina's family faces a crisis when her father's diabetes becomes unmanageable and they are unable to afford his medication. This means even if Sakina passes the exam, their poverty may mean she will never attend. Can the two girls help each other achieve their most heartfelt desires?

Discussion

Set in the bustling city of Karachi, Pakistan, the hometown of author Saadia Faruqi, A Thousand Questions is a story about two girls whose misconceptions about each other's lives and cultures are challenged. Through friendship they learn about each other's culture, find what binds them together and work to help one another.

Mimi Scotts, a young American girl visiting her grandparents' home in Karachi appears to have a charmed life with her stylish American clothing and the opportunity to attend school. But Mimi is a girl who has been mourning the loss of her father ever since he abruptly left when she was five years old. We learn later in the novel that he left after being offered "...this really exciting assignment in Iraq, right in the middle of an insurgency. It would have killed my career not to go."  What followed was one assignment after another that Mimi's father felt he couldn't refuse. He abandoned Mimi and her mother. This absence becomes a huge hole in Mimi's life and is deepened when Mimi discovers that her mother has been keeping a secret from her while in Pakistan: that her father is living in Karachi. It's hard to accept Mimi's mother's excuse as to why she kept this secret from Mimi. While it's understandable that she would be angry with his abandonment, nevertheless Mimi has the right and the need to have a relationship with her father, no matter what she may think of her ex-husband. It's this lack of empathy and understanding that makes her the least likeable character in the novel.

Eventually Mimi confronts her mother about what she has done over the last few years. Mimi challenges her mother."You're just....hiding. That's it. You're hiding from everything painful in your life, not even caring that you don't have the right to keep information from other people." She tells her mother to stop pretending and to acknowledge her pain, that she has "...a hole in my heart where he used to be, and I can't just forget that." 

In contrast to Mimi is Sakina Ejaz who is a servant in Mimi's grandparents' home. Sakina has a mother and a father but her life is hard. Her family has no money for school and she works alongside her father who is cook for Mimi's grandparents. She wants to become a teacher and help others but struggles with deep internal conflict: her desire for an education amidst her responsibility to earn money for her family.  This conflict is especially heartbreaking as it is a very real one for many girls in the developing world, who are either married off young to pay off debt or who must work to support their families. 

At first Mimi sees Sakina as the servant girl in her grandparents' home. But her view of Sakina changes as she gets to know her better. She admires Sakina's maturity and responsibility.  "Her life is so different from mine, I suddenly think. She actually works for a living, contributes to her family, has an opinion about grown-up things." This is in contrast to Mimi's life where everything is provided for her. Mimi's view of Sakina's life changes again when she goes to visit her. She tells Sakina, "I used to think I was better off than you because I had more stuff, but it's not really true." While Sakina has less "stuff" she has an intact family, including a father who is involved in her life. Sakina too has her own misconceptions about Americans. She tells Mimi she's lucky to be rich and living in America but Mimi tells her "Rich? We have no money in Houston. It's only here that we seem rich."

Despite their differences in culture and opportunities, the two girls form a friendship and begin to work together to help each other: Mimi helps Sakina improve her English so she can pass an entrance exam into school and Sakina takes Mimi's journal to her father's office which leads to him reconnecting with Mimi. The story weaves itself between these two narratives: Mimi's desire to find her father once she learns he might actually be in Karachi and Sakina's desire to attend school despite her father's illness and their poverty. Both girls' situations evoke sympathy and this story serves to demonstrate that people everywhere, no matter culture or race experience troubles in life. The message is that we all need to work together to help one another. Faruqi offers a balanced story, having her characters point out that both America or Pakistan are countries with similar problems such as poverty and government corruption, although both are likely worse in Pakistan.

A Thousand Questions  offers young readers a contrast in cultures and shows that with empathy we can bridge the differences that exist between people. The novel ends on a hopeful note, with Mimi and Sakina both experiencing positive changes in their lives and looking forward to continuing their friendship. This heartfelt novel will be enjoyed by middle-grade readers. The author provides a glossary of Pakistani words as well as some information about the city of Karachi in her Author's Note at the back.

 Book Details:

A Thousand Questions by Saadia Faruqi
New York: Quill Tree Books       2020
310 pp.