JEDDAH: Twelve years in the making, Hafeez Lakhani's debut novel, “Abundance,” follows two generations of a Muslim family’s negotiations with the American dream.  For readers in the Gulf — where migration is woven into life through expatriate communities and families spread across continents — the Bharwani family’s journey and struggles with heritage, identity and belonging may resonate meaningfully. Published in the US by Counterpoint Press this year, “Abundance” follows the viewpoints of Ramzan and Sakeena who build a life in Miami around a Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s franchise, and their three children Fareen, Kawal, and Adnan as they grapple with the turns their lives have taken. When Sakeena is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, the crisis pulls the family’s unspoken beliefs about fate, sacrifice, and success, into open view. “My father was born in a Gujarati village where hardly anyone wore shoes,” Lakhani told Arab News recently, discussing how his family history inspired the work. “The family first made its way to small cities in India, then to Hyderabad, where I was born, before immigrating to the US when I was 4.” Growing up in Miami, Lakhani watched his extended family build lives through the kinds of small businesses that have long sustained immigrant communities, from convenience stores and dry cleaners to gas stations. Some found stability, others struggled, but they laid the foundation for opportunities for their children. “My choice of American comfort foods as a livelihood was rooted in the power I see in small businesses allowing immigrant families to plant roots in the US,” he said. His study at Yale University and an early career on Wall Street is an achievement he describes as possible only because he was “standing on the shoulders of these giants” that immigrated before him. With a multi-perspective narration that captures how each member fits into the puzzle of their family — not shying away from the more sensitive and personal moments in their lives — much of “Abdundance” is about how parents who crossed continents hoping to give “more” to their children discover that prosperity carries its own costs. “I hope to illuminate that while we can break our backs working, we cannot fully control how those risks pan out,” Lakhani said. His own life shadows the character Fareen, the elder daughter who wants to make music, and instead finds herself absorbing a “subconscious pressure” toward more conventional achievement to honor her parents’ sacrifices. “My writing is akin to Fareen’s music,” he said. “It’s what brings joy, but can we find a way to pursue something idealistic and pure despite the practical pressures toward conventional success?” By the author’s own account, the novel began as three unrelated short stories. “It was only after my mother’s health emergency that I realized that a similar family crisis could become the ‘engine’ to fuse those stories into a novel,” he explained. After being diagnosed with a fatal liver disease, his mother, a “lifelong believer in naseeb, or destiny,” felt skeptical of having a transplant and wished to live out her life as she believed was intended for her. The word naseeb translates from Arabic as a “portion” or “share” and represents everything that God preordains for a person, from sustenance to trials. While she did ultimately agree to a transplant — “allowing her to live nine years longer, though in poor health” — her initial response inspired the novel’s central question: “How much of our lives do we control and how much is destined for us?” Lakhani lends his mother’s conviction in naseeb to Sakeena when she faces her own life-altering diagnosis, but he lets the narrative run its own course rather than recreating memory. The title also gestures toward the novel’s meditation on faith and what it truly means to live an “abundant” life. The Bharwani family elders repeatedly offer the prayer, “Kamani ma barkat ape” meaning “May you find abundance in earning.” At its heart sits the word barkat, the Gujarati form of the Arabic barakah, carried into South Asian languages through centuries of Islamic and Persian influence. Yet, Lakhani does not let the family’s pursuit of abundance sit un-interrogated. “Abundance is for so long the family’s goal — as opposed to scarcity — but can one go too far, potentially breeding unhappiness, in pursuit of abundance?” he noted. In a world increasingly obsessed with measurable success, in the form of income, promotions, property and prestige, the novel asks what if the greatest blessings are precisely those that cannot be counted? The character Adnan’s counterfeit Air Jordan venture extends this theme and becomes, in the author’s own framing, a miniature of migration itself: “I see migration as the ultimate attempt at controlling one’s destiny: take the greatest risk of one’s life for the possible benefits on the other side.” Lakhani hopes that “Abundance” inspires readers in the region and the wider Muslim diaspora to explore “new layers of meaning in their own relationship to home.” And at a time when Muslim characters in English-language fiction are often written around conflict — political, religious or cultural — he has chosen to center the ordinary texture of Muslim family life. “My wish is to add to the complexity of how non-Muslim readers see the vast depth of experience possible in Muslim stories,” he said, adding that he also wants readers to “relish in the incredible scope of Muslim identity that can manifest in just one family.” Discussing the future of contemporary Muslim literature, he said: “The next frontier, of course, is to write stories where the characters may be Muslim, but where their ‘Muslim-ness’ need not be put front and center.” Younger Muslim writers are indeed moving away from treating faith as something requiring explanation or defense, to craft Muslim characters whose religious lives exist as naturally, and unquestionably, as their friendships, careers or family relationships. Describing himself as someone with “a deep love for America,” he noted feeling “afraid to exercise my American freedom of speech due to cases currently unfolding where citizens are being denaturalized.” Lakhani’s next literary effort will tackle ongoing uncertainties around belonging in the US, exploring “what might happen if the ground that you stand on, that you once thought was firm, is completely pulled out from under you.”