All We Have Left

Alia is the 16-year-old daughter of a Muslim family that has recently relocated to Brooklyn from California. Her brother, Ridwan, is known as “Ricky” at school and is not public about his religious background. Possessed of a strong imagination and artistic skill, Alia has developed a young, Muslim, female superhero character by the name of “Lia”; this imaginary figure serves as the young woman’s alter-ego, as she navigates the difficulties of practicing her Islam faith while adjusting to the demands of young adulthood in a new environment. She clashes frequently with her mother, an immigration attorney whose professional aspirations precipitate the family’s relocation from California. While Alia is more tolerant of her father, Ayah, he stands with his wife in punishing their daughter when her creative arts high school reports that she was found in the restroom with a former friend, and that both were in possession of marijuana. While subsequent information proves that Alia was a victim of circumstance, her punishment will preclude her participation in a prestigious NYU after-school program.

On the morning of 9/11, she impulsively attempts to visit Ayah, a computer designer, in his Trade Center office in order to persuade him to reconsider allowing her to attend the film seminar at NYU. She also chooses this morning to start to wear the hijab, or traditional headscarf worn by some Muslim women to signify purity and loyalty. The ensuing tragic events cause her bonding with Travis, the older brother of Jesse, who died while attempting to escape the Towers with Alia.

The book alternates anecdotes from the perspectives of Alia and Jesse. Until the final chapters, Alia’s story is confined to the events leading up to, and including, the fall of the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001.

A promising high school graduate who was admitted to Columbia University, Travis returned to the family home prior to completion of his freshman year under mysterious circumstances that appear to have angered his father. He is disenfranchised for a time period, avoiding old friends and engaging in apparently risky behavior.

His presence in the Trade Center on 9/11 is explained as Jesse’s investigation into the circumstances of his death are completed. Travis was in the company of his beloved paternal grandfather when the older man was mugged and stabbed as the two were leaving a musical gathering of Gramps’s friends. Travis ran to obtain help; upon his return, his grandfather was nearly dead. Gramps had worked on the construction of the Trade Center and subsequently was employed there as a maintenance worker for over thirty years. On the morning of Gramps’s funeral, Travis is overcome with sadness that his grandfather will be buried in a remote suburb, rather than in New York City, which he had loved so much. Travis travels to the Trade Center in the hope of scattering some of Gramps’s ashes from the rooftop of the building; he and Alia happen to be alone in an elevator when the first plane hits, and they begin a lengthy attempt to escape the Tower together. Prior to the identification of his body, the only knowledge that his family has of his whereabouts on that day exist in a barely audible phone message left on their answering machine. Travis tells his family members that he loves them all, and mentions being in the company of a young woman named Alia. 

Hank is the second oldest of Jesse’s two brothers. Unable to withstand the intensity of his father’s vitriolic rage toward Travis, even following the young man’s death, Hank leaves home to take part in charitable work in Somalia. He marries and has a child there, and rarely returns home to visit.

Jesse contacts Hank for help as she attempts to piece together the events of Travis’s last day of life. He advises her to locate the answering machine that he hid from their father in a closet out of fear that the older man would erase the message left by Travis. This voicemail, combined with the 2016 technological expertise of Jesse’s friend, Emi, allow the family to hear the entirety of Travis’s last message and leads Jesse to find the surviving Alia and all the information that she has to share.

A prototypical angry, teenaged rebel, Nick is the product of an abusive father and an absent mother. Angry, cynical and disenfranchised, his cool and diffident demeanor, combined with good looks, attract Jesse to him. As time goes on, he fans a great anti-Muslim sentiment within her, noting that this is the group that killed her brother and caused his older brother to return from Afghanistan with an amputated leg. His trademark graffiti tag, “Nothing,” concisely defines the sense of isolation and meaninglessness that characterize his life. When Nick convinces Jesse to scale the Islamic Peace Center in order to spray it with anti-Muslim graffiti, he absconds when Jesse falls, is hurt, and is arrested. It becomes clear that Nick has appealed to the least admirable portions of Jesse’s character; the turning point in her own maturity occurs when she realizes that he is a denigrating influence upon her.