The conflict between Americans on the issue of Arab-American immigration has been a volatile one throughout history. Arab immigration to the United States began before the United States achieved independence in 1776. Since the first major wave of Arab immigration in the late 19th century, the majority of Arab immigrants have settled in or near large cities. They felt as if they were outsiders from the very beginning.

Part of the play’s history is loosely based on the 1929 Romey Lynchings in Florida. N'oula Romey was the fourth victim of racial terror that year in Florida, and one of ten people who were lynched by white mobs across the US in 1929 alone. Just hours before, his wife Hasna (Fannie) Rahme was fatally shot by Lake City police in their store. Their tragic murders were the most gruesome and violent attacks on Lebanese immigrants in the US, but this was not an isolated incident. Their killing was the culmination of a widespread pattern of racially-motivated hostility, vitriol and physical abuse directed at early Arab immigrants who came to, worked, and lived in America between the 1890s and the 1930s.

In the 1950s, during the height of America’s racist attitude toward Back Americans, the same attitude was extended toward those Americans who had immigrated from Arabic countries. I have used the N’oula Romey lynching as a part of the backstory of the Faizan family. His father’s lynching was impetus for Damien Faizan to move to Texas to settle and raise a family. The play deals with the subsequent generations and how their lives continue to be be marginalized by a country with history of racist behavior.

Part of the play is also a study of America’s conservative religious past and how new generations have started to question the dogma of religions like the early Church of Christ that tended to marginalize entire communities of people as well. That the issues of prejudice and religion lie on the same page is not an accident.

At its core, however, the play is a murder mystery about the loss of a promising and innocent life. Joshua Faizan represents what is best and worst about this nation. He is intelligent, vain, blindly loyal, difficult and full of a fire that makes him unique. Above all—he is the son of immigrants. His death and its revelation says much about who we are and what we have become.