Arogen (Book 1)

Growing up as a young Muslim woman, I realized the significant segregation between people with diverse beliefs, people who looked different, people who didn't have the same backgrounds. I saw my classmates digging holes into the dirt that the inspiring historical figures cried through the heavens from above - because they've realized that their efforts are to be gone in vain. I began to realize that there was no compromise, and there never will be, unless these diverse arrays of individuals conglomerated to inspire or find solutions to the ongoing problems we face within our community.

I'll put it quite simply - Arogen is an allegory. It's an allegory for many things, actually. The biblical and Islamic renditions of the prophet's stories, the political setback and controversy over religion, the discrimination of Muslims throughout the world because of ill-defined words and scapegoats. It's all real, whether we like to see it or not, and in writing my novel, I hope to portray the real social clash and horridness of what happens when both sides don't communicate. When people realize that communication, language, literacy and comprehension of one another is key to living a real and honest life, and that it effects society immensely, is when we can climb out of the hole that we've dug so far in. In that moment, the moment that we realize that this is our reality, we can find a way to pull ourselves, wrench ourselves out of that damp dirt and begin to work through our problems - figure out how to get the sun out so that the dirt will dry, and then have the grass grow.