Lavender

Author's name: Sinan Antoine

By pure coincidence, or by accepting the lie that was quick to roll off the tongue, the young Iraqi Omar began telling Americans that he was from Puerto Rico. He realized upon arriving in their country that he had no business revealing where he came from, and this became even more urgent after the twin towers fell and anyone suspected of being part of the perpetrators became a suspect. It all began by pure coincidence, then, when he thought Puerto Ricans looked like Arabs. But as he was repeatedly asked, "Who are you and what country are you from?" he had to learn more about his alleged alternative homeland: its geographical location, its size, its history and present, its language and population, etc. While he was doing his best to be American, he had to invent the appropriate place from which he came. Only to another Iraqi, his friend Akil, for example, could he say, "I am Iraqi." As for the three women he had relationships with, one after the other, he repeated his Puerto Rican answers. Only when he had gone far enough towards his Americanness, and equally far from his Iraqiness, was he able to tell the last woman that he came from Iraq.