Children of Dust: A Portrait of A Muslim as A Young Man

Children of Dust: A Portrait of a Muslim as a Young Man

Ali Eteraz wrote a memoir of his life entitled Children of Dust, A Portrait of a Muslim as a Young Man, which is a tale of a Muslim boy who journeys through various stages of his life in search of his true calling in the Islamic faith. The book is separated into five different books, all of which tell a different part of his life, and each comes with its own challenges and name changes.

The main point of the story, in my opinion, is that more often than not, spirituality is a journey. Ali journeys from Pakistan to the United States and back, all in search of what it means to be a Muslim. He grows and matures from childhood to adulthood, learning and practicing Islam as he goes. His understanding of Islam changes with every anecdote.

As a young boy growing up in Pakistan, Abir ul Islam was under the guidance of his strict Muslim parents, Ammi and Pops. His parents fostered the idea that he would spread the religion of Islam his whole life. His name, Abir ul Islam, means perfume of Islam, thus meaning that he would spread the word of Islam like a perfume. During his time in Pakistan, Abir would learn a lot about Islam from his parents and family, as well as from friends he would meet. The part of this book that stuck out the most was the tales of the Iblis. Iblis is a demon that is responsible for a lot of bad things that happen in the Islamic faith. If something goes wrong, they would seem to blame it on Iblis. He also is responsible for punishing people that don’t follow the rules of Islam. He urinates in your mouth for forty days minimum if you say a swear word. He sleeps under your tongue and defecates in your mouth all night if you fail to cover your mouth when you yawn, resulting in bad breath. Also in this book, there were other tales of unbelievable things that were said to occur if you didn’t follow the word of Allah. At first I thought these stories were told to children in order to convince them to behave while respecting Islam and the word of Allah. However, even adults believe these stories. This is amazing to me, possibly because I do not believe in any religion. Personally, I think a lot of religions use fear as a tactic to get people, especially at a young age, to follow the rules set in place by religions.

The second book was about the narrator’s journey to America with his family, as they moved around a few times and settle in Alabama. This was the most relatable part of the story in my opinion, because I could relate to the situation the most as Abir/Amir goes to high school. There were a lot of things that I learned about the Islamic faith that shocked me in this book as well. When the narrator was going on “missions” with other Muslims to spread the word of Islam, they met a man who kept a curtain in his house to separate him and his wife when people came over. I would think that when you are married,

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