Becoming Baba

Aymann Ismail grew up in New Jersey as the son of Egyptian immigrants, and his childhood was shaped by the years after 9/11. He watched the media fill with alarming headlines about Muslims, and then lived it up close when a run of bomb threats hit his Islamic school in Teaneck, just a few miles from Manhattan. His worried parents decided it was no longer safe to be so openly Muslim and moved him to a public school, where he was the only Muslim his new friends had ever met. At home, the family leaned on their faith, holding to traditional ideas about gender roles and steering clear of what they saw as American temptations like alcohol, sex and rebellion.

Aymann was nonetheless a typical American teenager, pulling against the limits of his upbringing while trying to find his place in more than one world. He went into political journalism, partly to tell the story on his own terms. Over time he came to see the worth of what his parents had given him: his father's punishing hours as a town car driver and his mother's skill at holding together a family that was often on the move.

Then he met Mira, who had her own views of what a modern Muslim family could look like, and his life changed course again. When she became pregnant with their first child, he had to take a hard look at his past, his future and the beliefs he had grown up with. What does it mean to be a Muslim man, or simply a man? What does it mean to raise both a son and a daughter? And how can someone honor his heritage while leaving room for change?

Becoming Baba is a memoir by Aymann Ismail, a staff writer at Slate, about fatherhood, faith and identity. Writing in clear, confident prose, he questions the religious and family structures he inherited and considers what his own children will take from him, hoping his honesty will serve as a guide for them as they grow up.