I chose the title Bird on a Wire based on an observation made by my maternal grandfather, Mohamed Omar Awaad, who, in these pages, as in my childhood, I call Gidoo. He once described an assembly of birds sitting on a telephone wire as “birds lining up for prayer.” I chose the title to honor him because he taught me how to pray and because I am one of God’s creatures who loves to sing and worship. 

Bird on a Wire tries to do many things. It is a story about the need for each individual to make the faith she inherited from her parents her own. Additionally, it includes the powerful dimension of a family epic (my favorite reads) that begins in Lebanon at the turn of the 20th century and incorporates the unique perspectives of three generations on how one becomes an “American.”  As each generation attempts to integrate their culture into the majority culture (in this case, largely Christian America), we become privy to their dreams and decisions about how much to assimilate and how much to preserve as a matter of self-identity. I combine stories of my rather colorful life and longing to become a cheerleader with my family’s dream of building the first mosque in New England (1964).

In a surprising conclusion, Bird on a Wire takes my audience where it never expected to go.