At the beginning, we meet Gamra, a conservative girl who enters into an arranged marriage and is the envy of all her single friends. Her friends recognize that Gamra’s life looks good because she now has a husband and is not so lonely. However, Gamra’s new life partner has secrets to hide. Neither has chosen the other, and the struggle of duty over desire and love soon tears the fragile relationship apart with bitter consequences for Gamra. Marked by the black mark of a divorced woman shackled to an unwanted child, Gamra is shunned by society and her rights, few as they were, are further violated until she discovers the beauty of chat rooms and pretend romances. Still, Gamra’s world is one of fantasy and loneliness, painting a vivid picture of a double betrayal-the betrayal of her husband and the even greater and more pertinent betrayal of her culture.

Sadim has it a little better than Gamra. When she marries her true love Walid, she agrees to overcome the system and spend a night of pleasure with her future husband. Once completed, Walid suddenly reneges on the contract and ends the possibility of the union. A girl who has not protected her virginity, who has given herself to a man (regardless of the circumstances), is shunned and also unable to marry. Lonely and hopeless, Sadim wonders if all people are like this, or if her treatment is a sign of harsh and outdated cultural prerogatives and a certain element of double hypocrisy inherent in her restricted society. When she meets a second chance, she must choose between love and self-respect.

Michelle (Mashael) is half American and half Saudi. The hopes of Michelle, the liberal, outspoken thinker of the group, are soon dashed when her ambiguous heritage convinces her heartbroken lover Faisal that despite his love, he must heed his mother’s warning. Choosing the security of family and tradition over feelings, Faisal’s heartbroken rejection makes Michelle distrust men. As she becomes more involved in her career, trying to forget about her loneliness, she is once again hampered by cultural expectations and her father’s sudden move to “save the family name.”

Only Lamiz manages to combine love and successful work for a long and happy life. By choosing the middle, Lamis combines her devotion to religion with a modern worldview, choosing her own man and her own life without rejecting any remnants of her heritage. Always open to the needs of her friends, Lamis’s advice brings a disparate group of women seekers together into a cohesive unit. The friends take care of each other and together question their tragedies and disappointments in men, developing as individuals but still bearing the emotional (and sometimes physical) scars of their experiences.

As the story progresses, the anonymous narrator responds to both hate mail and fan mail, providing more details about each girl in his gossipy style, while refusing to identify himself (or herself) in the story. Together, the tight-knit group of friends delve into the tough questions they shouldn’t be asking. Some rise from the ashes (Lamis) and find balance and answers, while others (Gamra) fall into unresolved rage. It is a strikingly vivid portrait that strikes a chord with the reality of each person. The ideas of love and the etiquette of relationships, no matter how culturally distant, are still painfully familiar to the audience, as are the pressing questions of the developing world. Are all religion and society built on hypocrisy? Is tradition an unbreakable chain that breaks and destroys? Are some elements of heritage good and others bad, and if so, how do we identify them and choose what stays and what goes? How has the advent of technology and online disguise affected those regions of the world where it is now possible to disregard past rigor with a device-and, ultimately, should we?

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Performing the hajj was not a spiritual revolution, but a dark glimpse of what Arab youth do in the heart of Islam; after she committed herself to tajweed and hifd, Khadra was told that she must stop reading the Qur’an in mixed gatherings and that Qur’anic competitions were only open to men. Her ideal Islamic marriage begins to crumble when her husband calls in a Qawwam card to ban her from riding her bike in public – and when she becomes pregnant, only to decide on an abortion and then divorce, Khadra creates a rift between herself, her community, and everything she has known. In the years that followed, Khadra would deconstruct and reconstruct her identity as a Muslim and her beliefs about Islam.

In many ways, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf is both a love letter and a breakup note for conservative Muslims. Kafa’s book describes with profound authenticity what it means to be raised in the West by parents steeped in Da’wah; our quirks and eccentricities and connections to a native culture we don’t always understand; our hidden hypocrisy and our secret shame. She breathes into words the tenderness of our bonds of faith, the flame of our religious passion, the complexity of our relationships. She knows who we are, how we are, and she speaks to us in our own words. Perhaps ahead of her time, she gently forces Muslim readers to confront the problems of intra-Muslim racism, the history of Black American Muslims, and the naive arrogance of immigrant Muslims,
Of course, this comes at a price. Kaf concludes his novel with Hadra following the predictable trajectory we’ve seen from many Muslims of a progressive bent: Sufism is the only acceptable rather fluffy type of Islam; all paths, even outside of Islam, lead to God; conservative Muslims are confusing, suffocating, and keeping their communities from true spiritual enlightenment. To be fair, Kaf also does not refrain from pointing out the hypocrisy of secular liberal types, and she is also much gentler and more tender in her portrayals of conservatives.

It’s worth taking a closer look at how Kaf chose to lead Khadra on the path of progress. Khadra’s story mirrors many true stories of children from religious families whose resentment over their experiences has pushed them to choose an easier path, one less rooted in Shariah observance and more vague in their understanding of spirituality. This narrative portrays progressive development as the only logical conclusion to such experiences, which is itself deeply problematic. In truth, there are many Muslims-both born Muslims and converts-who have suffered far worse than just restrictive upbringings or unhappy marriages, and who have instead chosen to commit themselves even more resolutely to orthodoxy. Spirituality is not the exclusive domain of Sufis or liberals; it is an integral part of Islam itself, even in its most conservative form.

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The novel follows al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad as the head of his family; Amina, his sons Yassin, Fahmi and Kamal, and his daughters Khadija and Aisha. He establishes strict rules of Muslim piety and sobriety in the family. As-Sayyid Ahmad allows himself officially forbidden pleasures, such as music, drinking wine, and having numerous extramarital affairs with women he meets in his grocery store or with courtesans who party men in their homes with music and dancing. Because of his insistence on his domestic authority, his wife and children are forbidden to ask why he stays out late at night or comes home drunk.

Yasin, the eldest son, is al-Sayyid Ahmad’s only child from his first marriage to a woman whose subsequent marital affairs are a source of great embarrassment to father and son. Yasin shares his father’s looks and, without al-Sayyid Ahmad’s knowledge, Yasin also shares his predilections for music, women, and alcohol and spends as much time and money as he can afford on beautiful clothes, drinks, and prostitutes . Fahmi, Amina’s eldest son, is a serious and intelligent law student , active in the nationalist movement against the British occupation ; he also pines for his neighbor Maryam but cannot bring himself to take any action . Khadija, the eldest daughter, is sharp-tongued, opinionated and jealous of her sister Aisha, who is considered more beautiful and able to marry. Meanwhile, Aisha is gentler and more peaceful and tries to keep the peace. Kamal, the baby of the family, is an intelligent boy who frightens his family by supporting the British soldiers camped across the street from Abd al-Jawad’s home; he is also very close to his mother and sisters and is deeply disturbed when the prospect of marriage for the girls arises.

Major plot elements include al-Sayyid Ahmad’s debauchery, Yasin’s cultivation of the same hobbies, Fahmi’s refusal to stop his political activities in defiance of his father’s orders, and the daily stresses of life in Abd al-Jawad’s home, in which wife and children must delicately discuss certain issues of sexual chastity and behavior that cannot be discussed openly. Through the affair, Yasin and Fahmi gradually realize the exact nature of their father’s nocturnal activities, mainly because Yasin has an affair with a young courtesan who works in the same house as al-Sayyid Ahmad’s lover. After seeing his father playing the tambourine at a gathering in the house, Yasin realizes where his father goes at night and is delighted to discover that they have similar interests. Amina, meanwhile, has long ago guessed her husband’s predilections, but suppresses her resentment and grief so much that she behaves almost willfully without knowing it all.

The family provides the novel with its structure, as the plot concerns the lives and relationships of its members. However, the story does not unfold in isolation; indeed, the characters themselves are important mediators between local or wider issues. For example, the theme of “authority” (especially its establishment and undermining) is woven into both the maturation of the children of the al-Jawad family and the broader political circumstances that define the temporal boundaries of the novel.

The first chapters of the novel focus on the al-Jawad family’s daily routine. Amina, the mother of the family, welcomes the return of her husband, al-Sayyid Ahmad, after a night of socializing. She rises again at dawn to begin preparing the meal, assisted by her daughters Khadija and Aisha. Her sons join their father for breakfast. At this meal, as at any other communion with the patriarch, strict etiquette is observed. In the chapters that follow, we explore the characters of the family members, especially their relationships with each other. The marriage of children is key, as is the challenge to the supreme authority of the family patriarch.

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