The Five Stages In Ali Eteraz's Children Of Dust

In the book Children of Dust, Ali Eteraz goes through five tumultuous stages in life. These stages are The Promised, The American, The Fundamentalist, The Postmodern, and The Reformer. Each stage he takes on a new identity and name in order to give relevance to each stage he is going through as a way of reinventing who he is at that given time. During the first stage he is born Abir ul Islam, which means “Perfume of Islam”. As a baby his mother took him on Hajj. As a child he grew up in a Pakistan desert village, where he was surrounded by family members and great amounts of love in a strict Muslim setting. His mother would tell lessons from the Koran and Islamic folk stories. He also received a very short and brutal education. However, this
At this time he believes he has an idea of who he is as he learns he is a descendant of Abu Bakr Siddiq, who was known as the truth-teller. Again, he changes his name to Abu Bakr Ramaq—“spark of light”. This understanding sparks his own fundamentalism. He explores his faith and begins to represent a passion he developed for Islam. During the process though he goes through confrontations of extremism and secularism. He decides to venture back to Pakistan with his mother and younger brother to the village he was born and grew up in. He finds a wife and begins to trace his lineage. He discovers he is not who he thought he was and turns out he is descendant of a Hindu convert named Savekhi, who had also changed his name to Siddique. Shortly after this discovery he and his family is threatened by Taliban-like thugs and escorted out of the country through the assistance of his
He transfers to a Christian University in Atlanta, Georgia to begin studying philosophy, Islam, Postmodernism, and religion in a general sense. He was greatly conflicted as he saw himself as Islamic, but others did not. He began to lay blame on the closed mindedness and a country that he felt failed him in Pakistan. He begins to seek revenge through postmodernism and through a great deal of sexual encounters. He also begins to take on a greater leadership role on campus for Muslims by leading Friday night prayers, giving lectures, and providing advice as needed. He becomes desperate to validate himself as Islamic, and not only convince himself of this, but everyone else as well. Upon graduation he moves to Washington D.C. and within a few short months the terror attacks of 9/11