At one point in their conversation with Mr. Ghani, a number of students asked about the daily prayers most Muslims perform, in accordance with the central “pillars” of Islam. They had learned that Muslims pray five times each day, but many seemed to imagine five long prayer services, like the church services most were more familiar with. One student asked about the boys we’d seen reciting the Qur’an: “Do they have a social life?” she wanted to know. Mr. Ghani had asked one of these boys to tell our students about the daily prayers, but at this point he stepped in to respond: “What do you think, we just keep praying the whole day? How would you make your life?” He reassured our students that the five daily prayers take a few minutes each, and that young Muslims still have plenty of time to play basketball and video games. Yes, he said, they have a social life. “Do they eat lunch?” one student asked, and Mr. Ghani responded: “Now I know you’re joking!” But I’m not sure. Many of the Explorations students were surprised to learn that Muslims too “have normal lives.” The next day in class many students said that meeting these young Muslim boys was their favorite part of the entire fieldtrip. They were especially pleased by another moment of conversation I can’t describe here, when one of the boys talked back to Mr. Ghani – yelling “You can do it!” when he was asked to translate a verse of the Qur’an. These glimpses into the everyday life of another community seemed to humanize Muslims in our students’ eyes. When I asked them why these boys made such a big impression, one girl replied simply: “Those kids was cool – they my homies now.” This sense of common humanity must not lead us to ignore the religious and cultural differences between a Dominican Catholic girl from the Bronx and a group of Pakistani Muslim boys from Flushing. The boys were, after all, attempting to memorize the Qur’an – a task that makes shaving one’s head seem positively ordinary. But such differences must not blind us to the fact that these young New Yorkers all lead “normal lives.” For much more on the Explorations Academy fieldtrip to Flushing check out this video produced by Josh Adland, the teacher we worked with to create the trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9f_r4ZueFM