Tami Shaikh

Ocean in a Drop Tami Shaikh

Miraj Hussain remembers the moments when her mother admonished her for being too stubborn. She was always told that "good girls were created to obey." In her native land of Pakistan, this was a lie that almost everyone believed. But Miraj couldn't bear living the lie.

As she and her brother Asad grew up in their father's stifling household, they became more and more disillusioned with Sadiq Hussain's religious hypocrisy and favoritism toward their older brother, Adam. While Miraj couldn't keep her opinions to herself, Asad suffered from secrets of his own. He could never tell his traditional father and brother that he was gay. There was no life for him in Pakistan.

Now the two have traveled far from their homeland to start new lives in the United States, but it isn't as easy as they dreamed it would be. The Hussain siblings face new prejudices, bigotry, and hypocrisy in their adopted country. As they navigate their way through an unwelcoming society, they must examine what they truly want in their lives. Along the way, they will discover that the obstacles to their happiness don't just lie within Pakistani and American cultural conventions but within themselves.