Juniper

Juniper is a fictional town situated in the Mojave Desert, California. For the novel’s protagonists, this small, “casually racist” town – with its nearby military base – concretizes their feelings of boredom and despair (129). “You are better than this place. More than this place,” Misbah impresses on Noor (42). Its extreme weather conditions make it an even more frustrating place to live (the desert can turn “from cold and miserable to hot and miserable in the space of seven days”), but the novel draws our attention to the beauty of the mountainous surroundings, too (302). When Salahudin is in prison, he walks “circles in the yard, missing the smell of the Mojave wind and the way the Sierra Nevada transformed every sunset into a poem” (359).

Places in Juniper

The Clouds’ Rest Inn Motel is both a home and a place of business for the Malik family. Misbah and later Salahudin work...