After raising her daughters with “the simple values of honesty, compassion, and the protection of [their] honor,” Rasha’s mother suddenly finds herself detained without charge alongside them in a New Jersey jail after September 11. She is frightened and frail in detention, and although she grows close to a few of the other inmates, Rasha and Reem focus their energies on looking out for her.
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Rasha’s mother Character Timeline in How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
The timeline below shows where the character Rasha’s mother appears in How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Rasha
...works his way up at a discount clothing store in New York. Rasha asks her mother about Christmas and learns about her Muslim identity—while the family is not devout, Rasha’s mother...
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...a house in Bay Ridge; in September 2001, she begins college. On September 11, Rasha’s mother says she cannot go to school because the subway is broken—there has been an “accident...
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Rasha, her mother, and her older sister Reem go to Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, where they...
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Rasha watches her mother pray and befriend other inmates. Meanwhile, Rasha grows closer to her sister Reem, with whom...
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Helping their mother keeps Rasha and Reem sane—when a tyrannical counselor denies her the right to call her...
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...at dinner with her friends, Rasha is astonished to see the counselor who made her mother cry in prison sitting at a nearby table with his family. She goes up to...
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