“Benazir is dead.”

I look up quietly from my Elle magazine, sitting at Zarqa’s Salon in Karachi, Pakistan, awaiting a henna temporary tattoo on my hands for my cousin’s wedding the next day. Zarqa, the parlor owner, is talking on the landline phone. My cousins and I turn to each other in alarm.

The news unraveled quickly from Zarqa. Benazir Bhutto, an ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan and candidate for election on January 8th, was shot before her killer committed suicide and killed twenty others with a bomb in Rawalpindi, a city very close to Islamabad. My cousins and I rushed home, half-pedicured and half-hennaed.

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Sitting on the roof of the farmhouse where my father grew up, about four hours outside of the hustle and bustle of Karachi, we stared at the moon and the starry sky. Eating sugar cane stalks with our teeth so that we greatly resembled a herd of panda bears that had discovered piles of bamboo, I celebrated Eid-al-Adha among scores of family members, some of whom I had not seen since I was fourteen years old.

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“There is something poetic about being in transit.” A friend said that to me once. If that is true, I have been poetic all my life.

Today, I leave my American home for my other home, Pakistan, a country that we have been following for weeks now on our news stations. A country that has headlines like this, or this, and this.

I am more prepared than ever. I have filled my suitcases with Advil and Tylenol, hoping that pills and shots will prevent me from contracting diseases Americans haven’t heard about since the 1850’s. While I'm gone I will not even take a sip of unboiled water.

I am prepared to live for the next three weeks the way I live here, constantly justifying my other half.

I am prepared to be in transit, on two Turkish Airlines flights, for the next 24 hours. Don’t worry; I have a lot of books.

It is Friday. Thank goodness it’s Friday. Because if it is Friday, then that means nationwide, Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is over.

In this week, I have been challenged emotionally and intellectually. But not in a good way. Not in a way that strives to better myself, or to seriously consider the world’s problems (and the world has so many problems).

This week has been Terrorism Awareness Week at DePaul – a week full of dangerous generalizations against Muslims. I had thought the event on Monday was terrible enough, and this week could not get any worse. Unfortunately, Wednesday’s night proved me dreadfully wrong.

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As I was walking through our Student Center a week ago, I passed by a flier that caught my eye. In large white letters on a blood red background, it said, “Terrorism Awareness Week”. Next to the word terrorism, there was a crescent moon and a star -- a symbol I see in my mosques, in my home, on my Qur’an.

This Monday, I went to the event that was advertised underneath the main title, “War with Iran?”. Three speakers were present: the first a man named Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian. The second was an author, Robert Spencer, who’s latest release is titled "Religion of Peace: Why Christianity Is, and Islam Isn’t". The third, a professor at DePaul, Scott Hibbard, who presented a rebuttal to the first two arguments.

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Sitting under the gold and white ceiling of Carnegie Hall this past Friday, I felt my jaw drop in surprise. It was a cool New York evening, and I was there for one specific reason: to see my favorite author.

She sat in a throne-like chair, answering questions as all two thousand of us lucky attendees sat at the edge of our chairs. A young girl walked up to the podium with her question printed out in her hand. She stood trembling in front of the microphone, and she said specifically what I would have said had I been given the chance -- how much these books have changed her life, and how they have inspired her to no end. Then, she asked the question. The Question that got The Answer everyone has been talking about for the rest of this weekend:

“Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?”

And yes, everyone, it is as few (very, very few) have predicted: Dumbledore, the wisest, most trusted and influential wizard in the entire series, is gay. And I could not adore Ms. Rowling more for it.

No matter your view on the issue, one cannot deny how much this does for British literature, or the gay community around the world. As an English major, I’m reeling with thesis topics already.

The best moment of the night, however, was not this, but when a young girl and her mother walked up to the stage, and the mother said:

“Thank you for answering the question so honestly, but” (looking at her daughter), “I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

I have always been intrigued by the definitions of words. One time, when I was younger, my mother caught me with a red copy of Webster’s Dictionary, looking up the largest word I could find to memorize.

As I grew older, I learned new words but forgot to question their meanings. Words that we used all the time, words said on television or on the radio, words in books I never bothered to look up anymore.

Last year, I took a class "Islam and Global Contexts." My professor asked us what “terrorism” was. We were all a little taken aback. We had heard this term so often, yet none of us could pinpoint what it actually was. Phrases were formulating on the tips of our tongues, but none were specific enough and others were too vague.

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The preparations going into Ramadan were always more mental than physical. Knowing that you are not going to get to eat anything until exactly 6:59 PM or whatever time the sunset happens to be on that day. A friend of mine said this past week that he never feels hungry during Ramadan, and on a normal day, he would have needed some coffee at least by his first class.

While I don’t agree with him (my hunger happens in waves, attacking me around lunchtime, resting until right before iftaar, or the opening of the fast), I can completely understand what he’s talking about. For some reason, even though I’m still hungry, I won’t have any sort of inclination to combat the hunger or thirst. I let it mull around in my stomach, enticing it even while I’m cooking my iftaar food (which always end up being a little too salty because you can’t taste anything).

And then there are the precautions that you end up developing. Waking up at suhr, the meal before the fast in the time before the prayer at sunrise, and drinking half a day’s worth of water and eating as much protein as you can to last you through the day. Taking a nap after class or work and before sunset, letting your body rest a little to catch up with the rest of you. All of the little physical things that assist you mentally.

Sometimes, Ramadan gets difficult for me, it’s true. There were times, when I was younger, when I had found it cruel or pointless. When I lapsed into these moments, my father’s voice would come into my head. He always used to say that we should think of the child that keeps his or her fasts every day of the year. That this child does not even get to eat when the sun goes down. There are millions of these children all over the world, whose malnourishment fully exceeds my own. And then even though throughout the day I may face slight bouts of dehydration, it is nothing compared to the mass of people in the world facing hunger and thirst, whether Muslim or not.

It is that time of year again. Ramadan begins Thursday. I am once again filled with excitement.

Why, one would ask, would I be remotely excited about starving myself from sunrise to sundown every day for thirty days? Well, besides the spiritual cleansing, the time I give myself to nap the afternoon away during this month, and the thankfulness that I feel that I actually have food at the end of the day, I can’t really say.

It might be the food, for Ramadan food is what I always look forward to -- the savory pastries my mother sends with me to my apartment and the cookies I treat myself to after the sun sets.

It could be getting up before the sun, drinking tea while watching the city wake up, watching an empty street turn into a bustling environment.

And, perhaps the most plausible reason, it could be Eid-al-Fitr, “Little Eid” as it’s called my family, the celebration after a month of hard work in Ramadan. A day filled with food and family. Some of the best parts of growing up were on Little Eid, wearing itchy Pakistani clothes and playing tag in various houses of relatives.

So the autumn chill could not have come sooner in Chicago, because, for Muslims, holiday season is here.

We wore T-shirts that said “We are all Professor Finkelstein”, chanting together in humid Chicago weather. That morning, we had sat around the Quad, soaking in the sun as well as Finkelstein’s words. He mentioned a song that I quite like by the Brazilian Girls called “Die Gedanken Sind Frei”. The thoughts are free. No matter what you take away from people, they will always have their thoughts.

Three hours later, Professor Finkelstein resigned from his position as Political Science professor at our university. It is a great loss to our university. I regret not having signed up for one of his classes when his career here was more stable. I think I would have learned a lot from them.

Just from this one free class in the Quad, I realized the importance of our thoughts. People will try to keep you quiet, insult you, and in other ways discredit you. But they cannot take away your thoughts. That is where their power over you stops.

I will take that lesson with me as I attempt to reverse the detrimental image of Islam in many areas in the world today. This image of Islam that has been deteriorating since this month six years ago. The truths that I hold about Islam will always exist, and I should continue to fight for them. I am not the first person to fight for these truths. Nor am I alone. And it is for that that I am thankful.

There’s this music in the beginning of that Simon & Garfunkel song, “America”. For some reason, it’s nostalgic and hopeful at the same time. Perfect feeling for a song named after our country.

I haven’t seen all of America, but that song makes me want to. It makes me want to drive through Kansas farmland, find the hidden treasures of North Dakota, and watch the stars in Idaho.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I barely remember America before September 11, 2001. It seems so different from today. The pre-America and the post-America, separated by only a few hours in time.

I have this strange sort of nostalgia for it. The Pre-9/11 America. Maybe it’s because I’m too young to remember the troubles before the ones we have now, or maybe it’s because before then I was a child. But I want it back. I think a lot of us do. There were less things to worry about. There was less to be afraid of.

But along with the nostalgia, I have that hope. Just like that thirty second intro to Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”.

I wonder when I walk down the street, do people see me as an outsider? Do people look at me, and think of all the terrible things people who look like me, who speak like my parents, who worship as I worship, have done to this country?

I wouldn’t blame them. September 11, 2001 was not an easy thing to take. The deaths of over 3,000 people was not easy to take, especially when you think it has been done for no reason at all, or when you cannot know what you did or your people did to deserve such a thing. I know, because that is how I felt.

And I look at terrorists, and I question how they could do such a thing. To my people. To my American brothers and sisters. But the difference between me and the other people of this country, the different between my brothers and sisters here and me, is that I can look at America and I can ask them the same question. How they could do so many things to my Muslim brothers and sisters, to my Pakistani brothers and sisters.

The fight between these two ideas, between the ideas of the American democracy and terrorism has really been the war between my two families. Because the innocent people behind those ideas are the people I identify with. The college students of the America and the Afghan refugees who have been driven out of their cities are both my family. They are both my background, both my homes.

And here I am, feeling like a traitor constantly.

There are three weeks left until September 11, 2007. Six years since that day. Have things really gotten better since then? Maybe for you, but not for me.

The summer between my sophomore and junior year feels like it should be more chaotic than it is. I feel like I should be running from unpaid internships to low-paying office jobs, traveling back and forth between friends and family on the weekends. It feels like I should be reading more books I’ve been meaning to read, watching more movies I’ve been meaning to watch, and going to a ton of summer concerts in Millennium Park.

In some ways, it has been that summer, that traditional college summer where you think you are taking a break from it all, but in reality you’re still not getting any sleep. If that is traditional anymore, I do not know. Maybe college summers were never supposed to be that way.

At DePaul, we often prided ourselves on being the untraditional university, making students live college life through the city’s eyes, relying on Chicago for their summers and school years. There was always an experience, that fact is something any DePaul student cannot deny, but not that of college, rather of Chicago. We are not the traditional college town, surrounded by corn fields and the Greek system. But then I wonder, what is the traditional college experience? My friend Brittany sent me this article, an essay asking that same question. Asking even more questions, I should say, that have not been asked of the college experience recently.

And I’m left wondering what college life is around the country, what the traditional college student looks like and acts like. And whether or not I fit into the category.

As of today, there are ten days remaining until the seventh and final Harry Potter book releases internationally. Ten days until the entire series will end. A part of me will end with it.

Harry has followed me through so much. He has followed me from when I was a shy, eleven-year-old sixth grader to now, a twenty-year-old college student. And everything in between. All the terrible times I have had, I have picked up one of J.K. Rowling’s magical books, and escaped. And not only did I escape, I learned that “What will come, will come, and we shall have to face it when it does” (Goblet of Fire). Rarely was there a time when Harry was not there when I needed him.

Stephen King recently wrote an editorial about saying goodbye to Harry. I find myself unable to do so. Because he describes in his article children who have grown up with Harry, reading on their back porches or, in my case, their grandmother’s empty beds from when she went to Pakistan. And he mentions that in some measure, when they close Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, they close in essence a great part of their childhood.

I am not ready for that. I know that in ten days, when I pick up my copy of the book, and in eleven days, when I will have finished reading it, I will not be ready to close my childhood. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for that.

Last night, before the thunderstorm, I sat in Grant Park, mesmerized by the fireworks being shot over Lake Michigan. Amid the claps and cheers that followed, I felt a certain sense of community with these people. Even though there were nearly one million people there.

Here we were, celebrating the beauty of our country. The country that has shaped who we are, and what we will do. For a moment, we could forget that we are fighting a war that most of us don’t believe should be happening. For a moment, we could forget our differences.

And no matter how many times I may complain about the situation Muslims are in the United States, I can always take some time to be grateful for everything I have because of being here.

And we have to remember, I think, that being patriotic is not the same as declaring America perfect. I love this country and its people, and that is why I fight. I love this country enough to have the need for it to be better than what it is right now.

The rain pours down the streets of Chicago. Falling idly from the gray black clouds, it hits each skyscraper with a thud. The thunder booms. Lightening. Puddles of water, murky gray and green from the dirt of sidewalks, stream quickly into the sewers. It moves away from sight and sound. Away from experience.

This experience, me with the members of Jordan Interfaith Action, the Chicago Youth Council, and Interfaith Youth Core's staff will be the same. Just one rainstorm in the life of a city. Just one week of my life.

Talking about our faith, what brought us here, and why. Discussion after visiting a Buddhist temple, a Jewish synagogue, and a Hindu temple. What we saw, how we felt. The connection between all of them and me. And perhaps what is discussed even more: the differences between all of them and me. The power of those differences.

The fact is that we can be friends with those blinding differences. Differences that people usually kill each other over.

We joke around on a school bus on the way to service projects, on the stage performing our time with refugee children from all over the world, in dorm rooms in the University Center of Chicago. We laugh over stereotypes, over language barriers, over all-encompassing cultural differences.

This week has been about those jokes, that laugher -- because of our never-ending hunger to change the world.

Today marks a day that I have been looking forward to since December. I will see people I haven’t seen in a while, have discussions I’ve been waiting to have. Today, the Jordan Interfaith Action group from Amman, Jordan is coming to Chicago. The second leg of our exchange has begun.

The first was six months ago, when we, the Chicago Youth Council (a program of Interfaith Youth Core), went to their city. Saw their history. Danced. Sang. Tried our best to experience their culture. Talked. Learned precious few words in Arabic.

And that is what I have missed most. Just having them there. To talk.

So I may not write for a while, because I’ll be having conversations.

It’s officially the start of summer for DePaul students. After today, the last final of the school year will be taken, and some will go back to their homes for another few months.

Some students will move on to graduate school. Others might travel the world. Some of them might even go to The Real World of nine to five jobs and yearly salaries. That’s a little frightening, if you ask me.

And still, other students have not ended their year. There are still active protests, still angry faculty and staff, still upset parents and academics. DePaul has not reversed its decision to deny tenure to two professors, Norman Finkelstein in the Political Science department and Mehrene Larudee in the International Studies department, despite the obvious support from faculty. In the case of Professor Larudee, this support was unanimous.

Yesterday, at an open DePaul faculty meeting, I sat with students who had spent their finals week dedicated to speaking out. The day earlier, these same students had been threatened with expulsion, merely for a sit-in protest that had not even lasted a week.

DePaul has now officially silenced students as well as professors. For this reason, there are parents who no longer wish to send their children to DePaul, academics who are boycotting our school.

A friend of mine said, “DePaul has let me down.” And he is right. Because there was a sense of trust that has now faltered, a trust that DePaul must attempt to repair by doing what is clearly right.

But rebuilding trust? Well, that takes a long time.

Amid sunshine and the distant screeching of cicadas that have infested the Chicago suburbs, I woke up the morning of my birthday by no means refreshed. The day earlier had consisted of signing a lease for my apartment, going to a Harry Potter event at the Chicago Printer’s Row Book Fair, and finding out a professor at DePaul had been denied tenure.

On Friday, June 8, 2007, Professor Norm Finkelstein was denied tenure, presumably because of his position on the Israel-Palestine issue. Not because of his teaching style. Not because students hate him. Students love him, in fact. A friend of mine always talks about how he loves going to his class.

Finkelstein says in this article, “They will never stop me from saying what I believe.”

No matter if you agree with Finkelstein or not, there is a value in this country I think my university has forgotten, if only for a moment. Academic diversity and integrity have been challenged.

Finkelstein’s words have taught me something. I will forever have to defend my thoughts, my beliefs, my faith. Because of recent events, and because of the way Muslims are portrayed in this country, I will always be one step behind. But they will never stop me from saying what I believe.

In my Islamic World Studies class, we learned the reason for so many generalized stereotypes against Islam and Muslims. The decentralization of the religion, specifically in the majority Sunni Islam, makes it so hard to spread what Islam is really about. That’s because so many Muslims, most of them I would say, probably don’t know themselves. Since we don’t have a papal system in Sunni Islam (there is a similar version in Shi’a Islam), there is no one left to answer our questions beside ourselves.

Recently, Liz sent me this article, about the search for an American Imam. While I applaud them tremendously, I doubt the essence of the title.

The American Imam? There are so many things in that phrase that we haven’t defined yet. First of all, what is American? Ask different people, and you will surely get different answers. Also, what is Islam? This is a question that I surely don’t know the answer to. Not yet, anyway.

I think it will be a long way before we can have our American Imam. I look forward to that day. Because that day means that we have been accepted. That we as Muslims are just American, not a foreign entity trying to break the West.

There’s something about the Great American Highway. About the hills of Wisconsin, the hills that Illinois land lacks. I love this land, because it teaches me something every time I see it.

My family and I sat in a crowded ’98 SUV. It was one of the few times that we acted just like we would have ten years ago in the same situation. We bickered and smiled, yelled and laughed. We slept and we stared out the window. We listened to music, and we had conversations.

And at those moments, I knew we were just like every other American family. Maybe the songs playing on our speakers weren’t in English, but that doesn’t make any difference.

I’ve spent my whole life getting used to the idea that I’m not white, not American. That I’m different, because I’m from somewhere. Somewhere other than here.

But I learned this weekend, truly learned, that I am just as American as everyone else. I think the same way, I read the same books, watch the same television shows. And that maybe just as much as America has changed me, I have changed America. My family has changed America. What it means when we say someone is “American.”

And our SUV from 1998 made tracks on a highway this weekend. Tracks have been driven on before us. Tracks that will be driven on after us.

From our old country, we have brought with us our language, our culture, and our faith. We have brought our knowledge, our ambition, and our ethic. Just like everyone before us. Just like everyone who is still coming, just like everyone who will continue to come.

There is something about the voice of Ira Glass on This American Life that has this spark to it. It draws attention. My ears, which succumb so easily to the ticking sounds of the clock during lectures, have no problem at all finding interest in the stories broadcast on NPR.

24 Hours at the Golden Apple. Notes on Camp. 81 Words. All of these stories I remember fondly, reciting my favorite quotes to my friends after I’m done with each episode. Listening to them while I’m supposed to be studying.

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Running from a DePaul Democrats meeting to the Brown Line el train, I dropped my bright green binder for my Peer Theory and Education class on the sidewalk of Fullerton Avenue. Someone stepped on it accidentally. I frowned, wiping off the speckles of mud.

I walked in late to Lost and Found: My Journey To Islam, an event hosted by UMMA, DePaul’s Muslim Students Association. Sitting in the back row, I shoved my bright green binder and my bag under my chair, and listened to five stories full of struggle and hope. Five stories of an internal jihad, the struggle inside your own mind. Five stories of people who lost many things, but gained one common thing: Islam. One woman who spoke talked about losing her mother, her only parent growing up, and almost losing her husband.

And all I could think was what struggles I had been through, and sometimes how trivial they seem compared to this. That we have so much to learn, because our problems are going to be far worse than muddy green binders in the days to come.

There is a woman in Georgia named Laura Mallory, and she hates something she doesn’t understand. Something that I cannot get enough of. Something that has inspired me since I was eleven years old. Laura Mallory hates Harry Potter.

It is not that she hates the book series. She wants them out. Out of public libraries. Out of schools. She thinks they turn children in devil worshipers, and encourages lying, cheating, and disobeying rules. She hates these books enough to go to court, spending time and money on this.

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We sat around at Minnies, a diner that was easily becoming our new favorite, holding onto a paper napkin. Scribbled on it was The Rules, a system we had devised to make sure we got what we deserved. That just because we were smart, funny, kind women doesn’t mean that we should lessen ourselves for anyone.

Clinking our glasses to the event, we decided that we would start being fair to ourselves the following morning. This was a revolution.

And I wondered how easy it would be to actually follow our own rules. Not at all, I suppose. Even though I feel women’s rights have come so far, we have so many more paths to run. And even though we may want to take a break for a minute and enjoy the scenery, we still have to climb mountains.

I feel the same way about faith sometimes. That when I make a breakthrough revelation, I suddenly become lazy again. I forget to think about Allah as I’m walking down the street on a Monday, but I remember on Friday afternoons during Jumu'ah prayer.

And that even though I’ve come far, I still have so much more left to learn, to discover.

One week later, and it’s time to move on.

College students return to class in Blacksburg, Virginia. And the country goes through the next step in the grieving process. The sadness lies in the fact that someday this will be old news.

I feel a year older than I did on the morning of April 16th, 2007. I feel like incidents like this, as tragic as they may be, bring us together in ways I never thought possible. It shouldn’t take this to make us listen to one another. We should already be doing that. We forget the consequences of our actions too quickly.

And that is when we lose hope.

This weekend I made tacos with a group of lively children and teenagers. All of them were from Liberia, and they came to Chicago as refugees. As we, the volunteers, stood in our DePaul Interfaith Council T-shirts, we conversed with them. Once in a while, we’d laugh at them, and they at us. Afterwards, I learned about what brought them here. What tore them from their homeland.

And without hope, I don’t where they would be.

They taught me hope. Just the few moments I spent with them, I was reminded that life renews itself. That life moves on.

I woke up this morning to news about a “rambling” killer. Surrounded by ignored biology packets, studying for a forgotten midterm, I stared blankly at the television screen.

And for some reason, all I could think was, “He was an English major. I’m an English major.”

And that little commonality between us made him suddenly real to me. And it made the incident real. Before, it was just a haze.

It is so easy to separate yourself. It is so easy to say, “That is them, but this is us. We are not them.” But faith has told me otherwise. God, Allah, has told me otherwise. He has told me that we are all human. And humans, no matter their appearance, are the same.

And they are not the only ones with problems. They are not the only ones who are angry, depressed, violent. Because we have all been there, though many of us have not been driven to the point. That breaking point.

And there are things now that we have to solve. Things we cannot ignore anymore. There are problems the whole country faces, not just the few who are deemed anti-social.

I will never forget April 20, 1999. I remember watching the news during lunch, something I would not do again in school until September 11, 2001. I remember the Columbine High school students running out of the building with their hands on their heads.

All I could think about walking around campus today was that image. Shuffling from class to lunch, then from lunch to club meetings, I couldn’t shake that fifteen second video out of my brain. It replayed over and over again.

This wasn’t supposed to follow us here. This wasn’t supposed to happen in college. Not anymore.

But it has, and it has made it one of those days. It was one of those days where you could feel the sense of confusion that had hung in the air. Discussing the incident with my friend, I think we both felt the fear that had first prickled through us eight years ago. And we voiced how that fear did not go away. It stayed with us for days, weeks, months, and years. It will do the same now.

And it is in times like this where I have never needed my faith more. My faith in God and the faith in humanity that God has taught me. That even though we as humans might have messed a lot of things up, we have a power in us to fix it. We have a power to fix all the things that we have done wrong. Because I believe it is that power that Allah has given us.