Chapter 5

“I’m not trying to be offensive,” Declan said. “I’m trying to make sure I don’t accidentally assume the wrong thing.”

Having worked the store front at the bike shop for over a year now, Amir was used to people, mostly white, wanting to know “where he was from.” They were only marginally better than the people who didmake assumptions and yelled at him to go back to Iraq or Iran or somewhere else too far west. Amir really wanted to give Declan a long, complex answer detailing where his grandparents had grown up, the stories he had been told as a child about why his grandparents had left, maybe even broken out his smattering of Hindi and Urdu to be really impressive, but he felt Ken giving him a look.

Using his customer service charm, Amir said, “Well, my dad’s family is from the west side of India and my mom’s family is from the southeastern part of India, so I’m technically full-blooded Indian, but I’ve only ever visited my dad’s side of the family once when I was a kid.”