People are nice, actually

Every time I visit my father in the rural southern (usa) town he moved to, I lament being a muslim woman just a little. Every other demographic of people has the ability to hide their religion and maybe even their gender when it’s convenient, but not us. We went to a diner downtown and the whole thing was an exercise in social anxiety. “Why is that white guy staring at me?” “The guy in the Jesus shirt probably wants to kill me” “What if the waitress is ignoring us on purpose because of me?” And so on and so on. I accidentally made eye contact with a guy a few seats down and nearly jumped out of my skin. I tried to smile at the few other black women I saw, but they wouldn’t smile back even though we made eye contact. Maybe they were worried I was a terrorist, or about to start evangelizing at them or something. But then the guy near me started talking to his grandma, and trying to convince her to support Mamdani and socialism. He kept talking about it for the entire time I was there.…