The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar

Good Desi girls are not gay. Good Desi girls don't get into trouble at school. Good Desi girls don't let other girls steal their culture.

Nishat isn't feeling like a Good Desi girl these days.

I'll be honest; I didn't think much of Flávia, the love interest. She seemed to be jerking Nishat around a lot. But Nishat liked her, which is the important thing.

I don't know a lot about henna, so I enjoyed learning a bit more here. Nishat obviously loves it very much and that was nice to see. A lot of teenage protagonists don't show how much they care about things, so it's nice to see someone who isn't afraid to show it.

(I did think it was weird that Nishat called him the prime minister, when that is not the term we use at all, but maybe she was translating for her mother.)

A lovely, heartwarming read. I really enjoyed it.

“Yes.” Priti is nodding her head frantically. “That makes sense. It must have been her. We should go to the principal. Tell her everything. I’ll show her the text and they’ll be suspended, probably. I mean, this is a hate crime!”

“No. That’s not going to make anything better.” The thought of telling someone about this feels almost as bad as the fact that it happened. 

“Whoever did this deserves to be punished, Apujan,”Priti says in a grave voice.

 I shake my head. It’s not that I don’t agree with her, but these kinds of things are rarely punished. It’s not as if the horrendous things said about me and Priti over the years were ever met with any consequences. The teachers couldn’t have failed to hear the whispers in the hallways, like horrid secrets the girls carried with them, spilling them with glee into each other’s ears. But nobody ever bothered to put a stop to it. Telling the principal would just make everything worse. 

What if Ammu and Abbu got dragged into it? Would they even stick up for me? Or would they agree with whatever the text said? Would they be ashamed that so many people know now? I can imagine their faces, red and blotchy from anger and tears—with the shame that has been brought onto our family. Shame that I have, ultimately, made the wrong choice. 

I stand. “You should go back to class,”I say. 

“What are you going to do?”Priti stands up too. 

“I’m going to go back in there and show them that I don’t care. That . . . I’m stronger than them.”I’m still blinking back tears. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep them at bay. But I want to stand there and look Flávia in the eye. I want to hold her accountable for everything. And I won’t give any of them the satisfaction of me going home. Of appearing weak. 

“Are you sure?”Priti asks in a whisper, like speaking too loudly will break me. “Do you want me to come with you?”

I shake my head. “I’ve got this.”

“I love you, Apujan,”she whispers. “And I’m so damn proud of you. I hope you know that.”

When Nishat comes out to her parents, they say she can be anyone she wants—as long as she isn’t herself. Because Muslim girls aren’t lesbians. Nishat doesn’t want to hide who she is, but she also doesn’t want to lose her relationship with her family. And her life only gets harder once a childhood friend walks back into her life.

Flávia is beautiful and charismatic and Nishat falls for her instantly. But when a school competition invites students to create their own businesses, both Flávia and Nishat choose to do henna, even though Flávia is appropriating Nishat’s culture. Amidst sabotage and school stress, their lives get more tangled—but Nishat can’t quite get rid of her crush on Flávia, and realizes there might be more to her than she realized.