CHICAGO: Tucked away in Brooklyn, New York, sits the Arab neighborhood of Bay Ridge, where between the Egyptian meat shop, Libyan café, and apartment buildings live Arab immigrants and first generation Arab Americans in 2023's “Between Two Moons” by award-winning author Aisha Abdel Gawad. Twin sisters Amira and Lina, and their older brother Sami, navigate life in their southwest corner of New York among their Egyptian American parents, the Arab Cultural Center, and their neighbors in a coming-of-age novel, knee-deep in post-9/11 hate crimes, extreme police oversight and the mystifying journey into adulthood.
On the first day of Ramadan, just days before Amira and Lina Emam are about to graduate from Fort Hamilton High School, Abu Jamal’s café is raided. Despite the summer heat and 15-hour fasts ahead of them, Amira and her father Kareem watch from the fire escape as the police take away boxes and shisha pipes. They know he’s destined for an undisclosed location indefinitely. Down the street, Imam Ghozzi, the 80-some year-old custodian of the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge sweeps the sidewalk as if nothing is happening.
Amira and Lina’s brother Sami has been incarcerated since they were eleven years old and the girls teeter between hope and uncertainty when he comes home.
Between protests, prayers, Ramadan meals and pushing boundaries, Amira and Lina embark on a life that rotates around their apartment, to their father’s butcher shop, watching their brother and discovering themselves.
In an incredibly rich and vibrant story of first-generation Arab American teenagers coming into their own and holding onto their heritage, Gawad eases readers into life in Bay Ridge where people embrace their multi-faceted identities. Amira, Lina and Sami must discover where they fit in the context of New York as well as how to serve as the bridges between their Arab and American selves and the harassment, freedom, bouts of joy and pain that come with the territory. Gawad highlights the delicate balance needed to forge new and unique paths forward while the siblings keep each part of their identity alive and thriving.
