In our twenties, we’d bounced around from apartment to apartment.

We’d go abroad at least three times a year, sometimes for Amy’s work—she’s a contemporary-art curator—other times for my freelance writing. My wanderlust had been born out of my largely sedentary childhood. I had grown up in a rigorously normal town of about 30,000 in upstate New York. We didn’t travel much, except for a family vacation every July when my brother, my parents, and I climbed into a Ford station wagon and drove to a beach in Delaware.

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Walking into the hangar that brittle February morning, where he worked for the Montreal-based aircraft manufacturer Bombardier, Hammad encountered a picture of a Taliban figure plastered to his locker. It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. He'd endured ridicule for his Muslim faith for years from co-workers. But for some reason it was different that morning. It broke him. With a mix of sadness and defeat, he froze and just stared at the image, while half a dozen workers looked on and laughed. No one would take credit. He says that day he felt like the loneliest man on earth. "I have to tell you," he confesses, "it depressed me so bad seeing that picture. It just really hit me -- that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I work, no matter how much time I put in, I would never be accepted here. I would always be the hated Muslim my co-workers want out."

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