Clad in yoga pants and a tight denim jacket, Layal Orra sits cross-legged on her couch, watching a Sunday evening NFL matchup. Every once in a while, she readjusts her glasses and the burgundy hijab tied loosely around her hair. The third-generation Lebanese-American, born and brought up in Toledo, Ohio, works as a beautician at a local salon and cares more about sports than politics. She confesses that she didn’t vote in the recent presidential election. “But my family did,” she adds with a smile. “And they all voted for [Donald] Trump.”
Although Trump won the election, that is still a surprising thing to hear from a Muslim—especially one like Orra. A hijab-wrapped woman of Arab descent, Orra, 29, embodies everything that Trump’s year-and-a-half long Islamophobic and misogynistic campaign ridiculed and vilified. In December last year, Trump demanded “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” on the grounds that Muslims were “terrorists.” Calls for mass deportations...
THIS ARTICLE IS PRICELESS...
To read this piece, and more such stories in India's most exciting and exacting magazine, plus get access to our 25-year archives goldmine, please subscribe.
