It was bound to happen. Kismetta lacked prudence when she asked her questions and ended up offending everyone at the mosque by her aggressive tone. When the Mosque calls to tell her mother about her behavior, how will Kismetta respond to being BUSTED.
Preliminary Notes: While the arguments presented here are ones that I have seen Muslims use online, I don’t want to have cartoonish villains as foils for the main characters. So, in portraying the annoyed reactions to Kismetta’s questions, I asked myself how those attending a Catholic youth group might respond to a Catholic youth asking those kinds of questions in a similar tone.
Zara (Bahrudin’s second wife probably needs her name explained for Western readers. The naming conventions of the UAE would be her given name (Zara) + bint (daughter of) her father’s name (Raziq) + ibn (son of) her grandfather’s name (Daaood) + her family name (Aslam). So formally we’d have “Zara bint Raziq ibn Daaood Aslam.” However, except for formal documents, the “ibn Daaood” and often the “bint Raziq” would be dropped. I’m told that the practice for Muslim women in the Middle East is to keep their own family name and do not change it to their husband’s. So, in America, she might simply be known as “Zara Aslam.” Sumeja, marrying Bahrudin in the United States followed the American custom and does use her husband’s last name. Kismetta is simply Kismetta Dhumzur from the American convention, though in the UAE she might be formally introduced as “Kismetta bint Bahrudin Dhumzur.”
One unexpected thing that happened during the creation of this comic was the death of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler (nominally since his stroke) of the UAE. The country is currently undergoing 40 days of mourning. I found this out after I completed the comic on 5/13/22. I had to re-edit dialogue on the last two pages to reflect this change.
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