When we were sisters A novel

Review by Booklist Review

When their father is brutally murdered in Pennsylvania, three Muslim American sisters are left with nothing but a new title: orphans. Taken in by a peculiar uncle with harsh rules, the young girls are confined to a tiny bedroom in an apartment filled with birds, turtles, and other animals. Under the watchful eye of the moon, they learn to depend on each other in an ever-changing landscape of caretakers, abuse, and grief. But as they enter their teen years, their diverging paths--alongside their uncle's growing control and society's harsh gender roles--begin to test the bonds of their sisterhood. Author Asghar brings that same lyricism from her poetry collection, If They Come for Us (2018), crafting vignettes with dark but tender prose that form a striking picture of the sisters' daily lives. With minimal dialogue, these brief windows are told through the first-person observations of the youngest, Kausar, with occasional interludes from their uncle or father. A debut in fiction perfect for poetry readers, this poignant coming-of-age tale examines a girlhood torn apart by loss.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Asghar follows the poetry collection If They Come for Us with her elegant debut novel, which follows three Pakistani American sisters scrabbling to get by after their father dies. Nine-year-old Noreen, the oldest and de facto caretaker; Aisha, the quarrelsome middle child; and Kausar, the sensitive youngest, are taken in by an estranged relative, referred to only as "Uncle," who promises them a home with a zoo. It soon becomes apparent that he has taken custody only to cash the checks that the government pays him to care for the sisters (the "zoo" turns out to be a hallway of mistreated pets), and he rules the sisters' lives with authoritarian neglect, demanding they follow a strict schedule even while he leaves them unsupervised for long stretches of time. The sisters must learn to grapple with their grief while caring for each other and establishing their own identities. Asghar's poetic sensibilities are on full display in the lyrical and oblique prose ("Brown fingers cradle porcelain, the news spreading fast and careless as a common cold"), and the frequent formal experimentation enlivens the text (for example, one page reads in its entirety: "A bunk bed in exchange for a father./ What idiots. He was our father. We should have asked for more"). The result is a creative telling of a tender coming-of-age tale. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Pakistani-Kashmiri American poet Asghar's (If They Come for Us) debut novel follows three Pakistani American sisters through a bleak childhood marked by grief and neglect. Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar lost their mother years ago; now, after their father's sudden death, they are orphaned. They are taken in by their corrupt uncle, who stows them in a shoddy apartment filled with turtles, birds, and other animals. He lives elsewhere but keeps the girls in this desperate limbo as he draws on their inheritance. Hungry and unsupported, the girls grow into adults, struggling to do right by each other and themselves. Farah Kidwai, Kamran Khan, and Deepti Gupta narrate, with Kidwai taking the lead and telling the story through Kausar's eyes. Khan gives voice to the girls' father ("Him"), and Gupta provides a brief, but graceful appearance as their mother ("Her"). While Kidwai skillfully captures the lyricism of Asghar's words, listeners may be disoriented by experimental parts of the book that don't translate well into audio, including pages with the text written vertically and sentences separated by large gaps. VERDICT Asghar's poignant debut shines with moments of piercing beauty despite the heaviness that governs the sisters' lives. A tough but gorgeous listen.--Sarah Hashimoto

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

Sisterhood is the power that gets three young Muslim American girls through a neglected childhood in this debut novel. Their mother died years ago; when their beloved father is murdered, young sisters Noreen, Aisha, and Kausar are orphaned. Their parents were immigrants from Pakistan, so they are "familyless in America" except for one uncle, their mother's brother, whom they don't know. Noreen, the oldest sister, is smart, pretty, and responsible; Aisha is assertive and angry. Kausar, the book's narrator, is the youngest. She's frightened and confused, but she worships her sisters fiercely. The girls are taken in by the man Kausar calls Uncle, the term always followed by a black bar, as if his name were redacted in an official document. He picks them up in Philadelphia and takes them to a city a "five-hour car ride" away. He promises them a new home with plenty of room and a zoo; what they get is a cramped apartment with a hallway full of caged birds and three bedrooms, to one of which all of them are confined. Uncle gives them strict rules of behavior and isolates them from everything but school. He's dealing with his own problems--he's separated from his American wife (who wants nothing to do with his nieces) and two sons, whom he maintains in suburban splendor. He lives in his own apartment near the girls, where his hoarding is out of control. So he often neglects his nieces, leaving them without food or money. He rents out the other bedrooms in their apartment to immigrants in transit, and sometimes the sisters get lucky, as with a kindly couple who parent them for a while. But much of the time they are on their own. Caught between American culture and their family's Pakistani background with little guidance, the girls turn to each other for support. But as they grow up and become teenagers, cracks develop in their bonds of love. Kausar's compelling voice, sometimes lyrical, sometimes heartbreaking, is skillfully crafted, changing subtly as she grows. The book's ending, a jump forward in time, seems tacked on and less convincing than what went before, but the sisters' story is a moving journey. An assured first novel explores the bonds and divides among three orphaned sisters. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

Chapter 1 1995 In a city, a man dies and all the Aunties who Aunty the neighborhood reach towards their phones. Their brown fingers cradle porcelain, the news spreading fast and careless as a common cold. Ring! [   ] is dead. Ring! Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. Ring! How sad. Ring! Only a few years after his wife. Ring! And his daughters? Ring! Three of them, yes. Ring! Alive. Ring! Ya Allah. Ring! [   ] is dead. A man dies in a city he was not born in. Murdered. In the street. (Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un.) A man dies in a city he only lived in for a handful of years. (How lonely.) A man dies in a city that his children were born in, but a city that will never be theirs, in a country that will never be theirs, on land that will never be theirs. (Ya Allah.) A father dies and the city and his children keep on living, the lights twinkling from apartment building to apartment building. All around the city, breath flows easily. All around the man, breath slows to a stop. The sky, who sees everything, looks down at him. And the moon, who is full, shines her milky dress on his dead body, bedded by the cement street. In a city, a man dies. In a suburb of a different state, the man's brother-in-law celebrates by adding an extension to his family's house. A new deck spills out into their backyard. The man's brother-in-law renovates the basement: old moldy carpet pulled up and Moroccan marble tiles put in its place. The brother-in-law pores over them at the Home Depot, comparing prices, how happy it will make his wife, white, who he married when he first came to America. A gorra? his mom asked, the brown women in his family looking at each other, confused. She found Islam because of me! he explained, exacerbated, not understanding why people couldn't see how he was going to earn extra points to heaven, his love enough to make someone convert. You went to America and fell out of love with us, his mom sighed, dramatic, as usual. But brown women were so plentiful. He knew he could have them. White women found every simple thing he did exciting. It opened him. The lota in the bathroom, a marvel. Basic fruit chaat, the spiciest thing they'd ever tasted. How interesting he could become. A gorra? his cousins in Pakistan echoed in disbelief, some whispering mashallah as others turned away from him. Yes, a gorra. His gorra, her slender nose, all her features pulled towards it, her voice fast like lightning. When they first married, she'd take him around to her American friends. Him: so exotic and fun. They had two sons: brown, but fair. For a while it was good. Or maybe never fully good, but bearable. But when the quiet arrived it stayed. Rooted into his bones. The coldness between them, rattling his chest on every inhale. He still gets to see his sons on weekends, lives in an apartment on his own. Her American friends, their selfishness, filling her head with ideas of a divorce. I divorce you. I divorce you. I-- All the things he's done to keep her from saying it a third time. Divorce. Ya Allah, what people would think. Divorce. He can't even bring himself to think it a third time in a row. So American it bursts his skin to hives, so American it bows his head when he walks by the Pakistani men at the masjid who mutter about his failed business practices: the roofing scheme he tried to start, the gardening venture, the haraam liquor store. His failure is a reputation that clings to him. That clings to his wife. That clings to his sons. Even when he boasted about the great family he comes from. What they were back in Pakistan. Their name, their honor, what they contributed. People would be polite, they listened and nodded. Then they got tired. They would look away. If only he could make more money. Maybe he could see his sons more. Maybe he could see her more. Maybe she'd walk next to him as he entered the masjid. When his little sister was alive, when they were kids, she looked at him like he could do no wrong. Her eyes big and full of wonder. Bhai. No one else had ever looked at him like that. She grew up and got married, had kids, made her own life. And then she stopped looking at him that way. When she died he buried the pain deep in his stomach. Tried to convince his sons to love him while their mom called him a useless sack of shit behind his back. It's not until his sister's husband dies that his stomach begins to bubble. He realizes how much he's missed that look from when they were kids, how she was the only one who believed he could do anything. How much he missed someone believing that about him. How, through her eyes, he believed it too. It's sad business, his nieces orphaned a few states away. Sad business, their girlness. Sad business there was no boy among them. Sad business his wife can barely muster an Inna lillahi for. Sad business she doesn't think about as she combs the hair of her two sons, getting them ready for school. Sad business, their dead dad's money up for grabs, the promise of a government check following the orphans until they turn eighteen: 161 checks that could come through for the youngest, 139 for the middle, 120 for the eldest--420 checks total, if they survive. I don't want them staying with me, his wife says, lounging on the couch. One of their sons is upstairs coloring, the other son beside her watching TV, absorbed in a show where a badly drawn white boy with a large nose, three strands of hair, and an oversized green sweater vest is supposed to be eleven years old. Her two sons are in private school. Her manicured lawn. The Tupperware meal plans for all of them stacked in her fridge. Everything so orderly. Neat and separate--a blessing. Her failure husband is in his own apartment, away from them except for weekends. When she met him in college, he was brimming with potential. All her friends said he'd make a lot of money. Be an entrepreneur. She loved the stories he would tell; of places she'd never been. How close his skin felt to everything, like he was part of the world and not outside of it. His deep belly laugh, full of fireflies. It was a gamble, sure, marrying a brown man. But it made her edgy, something she never had been before. She always felt so outside of everything. Like she couldn't even feel the grass under her feet. And then he came, so eager. Her veins started to open. She could feel more, the sun on her arms. His fingers, blending into the soil. A gamble. Even when she stood in front of the Imam, reciting there is no God but Allah, removed like she was observing herself, her eyes wandering to the different faces of the men in the mosque, wondering what her life would have been like if she'd met any one of them first. Here, people adored her. They welcomed her, doted on her even. The more she felt how easy it was to be adored, the more her husband's need disturbed her. The more space she wanted. Separate, clean and distinct, a fence around her. And then his mom died. And his sister. Death, how cold it made him. She never fully understood that coldness, both her parents still alive, but so separate from her. He started to become that too: separate. No longer the man that was part of the world, the man she fell in love with, the man she used to envy. He became fenced, lining the walls of his own apartment with boxes like he was cushioning himself against destruction. So no one could get to him. But she could care less, loving how foreign she felt in this new community, how exotic. Her own parents, flabbergasted by her decision. But she had wanted to leave them as soon as she had left for college. Promised herself she would never go back. And now, here she was, in her own house, with her own kids. Her pristine little life. The one she had to claw out for herself. The three orphans, threatening to dirty it. It'll be like they never existed, the Uncle says, sweaty, as though it's his body placing the marble tiles on the floor, as though he's lifted a finger. Excerpted from When We Were Sisters: A Novel by Fatimah Asghar All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---