Category: Fiction
Rights: All rights available
It is Easter Sunday, a perfectly languorous morning in Colombo. Aisha is planning to spend the day at leisure when a series of suicide bombs sends shockwaves through the country. Aisha, still reeling from the shock, learns that her son Aqib is missing, setting in motion a firestorm of gossip and speculation.
When the once estranged family comes together to look for Aqib, the narrative charts the highs and lows of a Muslim family caught between modernity and rising conservatism amidst growing Islamophobia in contemporary Sri Lanka. It plunges us deep into the minds of Aisha and her daughter Emaan as they wrestle with the sweeping changes in their community and their family, no less with Aqib’s transformation from a regular fun-loving teenager to a man of deep faith. As they vacillate between faith and doubt, hope and despair and confront the sacrifice they have to make for Aqib’s sake, a fascinating examination of faith, family and love emerges, combining the political and personal in complex and subtle ways.
The author: Rizvina Morseth de Alwis