Home Is Not a Country

Safia Elhillo’s 2021 Young Adult novel in verse, Home is Not a Country, charts the growth of Nima, a Muslim teenager living in the United States with her immigrant mother. The author biography in the novel dubs Elhillo’s work “a love letter to the diaspora communities she grew up in.” Written in the first-person perspective of Nima, the novel uses elements of magical realism to explore the themes of The Struggle to Belong Within the Diaspora, Home as a Feeling Not a Place, The Impact of Racism on Identity Development, and Imagination as a Coping Mechanism. In addition to this novel, Elhillo has also penned a book of poems titled The January Children.

This guide refers to the 2021 Make Me a World edition of the text.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of racism, Islamophobia, and hate crimes. Additionally, the source material uses bigoted language for Muslims, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes from the source material.

Plot Summary

The Prologue, “New Country,” introduces Nima, the teenage daughter of a Muslim immigrant, as well as her family and friends. The narrative begins with a photograph of Nima’s parents in their home country. Although not explicitly stated, it is widely believed to be Sudan. Nima idolizes her father, who died before she was born. However, she views her mother, Aisha, as a woman burdened with grief and exhaustion. Haitham, her best friend and the son of her mother’s best friend, Hala, is fun-loving and social, the opposite of Nima. He teases her about her love of traditional music and dubs her the “nostalgia monster.” At school, Nima keeps to herself, but the two sit together in Arabic class on Sundays.

Nima was almost named Yasmeen, a moniker the girl considers more beautiful than her own. She longs to be Yasmeen, an alternate version of herself who is more beautiful and more loved than she is. Instead, she is stuck as Nima, which means grace, a trait she thinks she lacks.

Part 1, “The Other Side,” begins with the memory of Nima and her mother being turned away at the airport by Islamophobic employees. Despite this experience, Nima embraces her culture through music, film, and dance. However, she struggles to fit in with her American classmates at school and with her peers in Arabic class. Only Haitham is kind to her, and with him, Nima can be herself.

Hungry for knowledge of the past, Nima asks her mother and Haitham’s grandmother, Mama Fatheya, for stories of “home,” by which she means Sudan. Despite hearing painful anecdotes, Nima misses a country she has never visited and concocts stories of a happy life there. When Nima and Haitham sing old songs, Mama Fatheya scolds them, believing they could summon jinn (ghosts) from the spirit world.

At school, Nima endures microaggressions and overt acts of racism. When this happens, Nima’s body becomes transparent, flickering like a ghost. Also, she periodically sees a spirit girl whom she imagines to be Yasmeen. When Nima asks Haitham about jinn, he teases her, inciting an argument. They no longer hang out or say hello at school, and Nima feels alone. The day her mother stops wearing her headscarf (implied to be 9/11), Nima is attacked and called a terrorist at school. Despite being the victim, Nima is suspended. Not long after, she learns that Haitham has been attacked and hospitalized.

In Part 2, “Old Country,” Nima and Aisha visit Haitham and learn that he was beaten for being Muslim. When Nima also learns that her father was shot trying to protect her mother from officers in Sudan, she runs away. After wandering through a street festival and swimming in a stranger’s pool, Nima is led by the ghostly Yasmeen to a diner where a stranger offers her a ride home, but instead takes her to a hotel. Yasmeen intervenes, helping Nima escape to the airport.

There, Nima enters an elevator, which opens to the party in her parents’ photograph in Sudan. She and Yasmeen are invisible visitors. Entranced, Nima feels she belongs in this world. However, when they arrive, Hala shares that she is pregnant with a married man’s child. Aisha is also pregnant with Nima, which upsets her father, Ahmed, who plans to desert the family.

Nima and Yasmeen witness a game to decide the name of Aisha’s baby, and the loser begins to disappear. Frightened, Nima disrupts the game, and both girls flee to an abandoned building. On the rooftop, Yasmeen pushes Nima into the river. As they grapple in the water, Nima realizes Yasmeen is trying to kill her to usurp her life. Despite this, Nima saves the girl.

Later, Nima helps Yasmeen find another life to inhabit. Then, Nima whispers her father’s plans to her mother. As the couple argues in the car, the scene with the officers unfolds. Altering history, Nima hurls rocks into the group, allowing her parents to escape unscathed. When they return, though, her father still leaves. As Nima invisibly comforts her mother, the girl enters a portal back to the present day, seeing new family photographs and being dumped into an overflowing bathtub in their apartment.

In Part 3, “Home is Not a Country,” Nima and her mother embrace, full of love and gratitude. Although in some ways Nima’s life remains the same at school, she and her mother are much happier. Haitham recovers and their friendship is restored, and in Arabic class, they meet a new friend, Jazz, who seems to be the real-life version of the ghostly Yasmeen. At the end, Aisha gifts Nima a yellow dress, a symbol of their newfound happiness.