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Antonio
In “Aviation,” Sunni is a young Sikh boy who requires emergency foster care after Sunni’s maa is taken into custody following an altercation with a woman at a store. Ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks, Sunni and his mother have faced anti-Middle Eastern discrimination. For instance, Bill and Susie, an elderly couple who lives next door to Sunni and his maa, used to watch Sunni when his maa was at work. But after the terrorist attacks, they started making up excuses not to watch him until they ultimately cut off contact altogether. In the story’s present, Antonio, a case worker assigned to Sunni’s case, takes Sunni to the house of Mirabel, a woman in the running to provide Sunni emergency foster care. Tension builds, though, as Mirabel struggles to reconcile her anti-Middle Eastern bias (at least in part a trauma response to her husband Michael’s death) with her knowledge that Sunni is an innocent child who needs her care. The story ends on a note of uncertainty: Mirabel is in the middle of a panic attack, only half-hearing Antonio as he pleads with her to remember that Sunni is just a child and has nothing in common with the “bad men” who brought about her husband’s death—other than the color of his skin.
Sunni Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Sunni or refer to Sunni. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Aviation
Quotes
The kid’s bottom lip is quivering. He raises his hand to the front rim of the faded blue Knicks cap, slowly removes it from his head, and rests it in his lap. His face is cherubic: cheeks rounder than Mirabel’s ever seen on a child his age. Wound tightly over his head is a piece of black, stretchy material. The material conceals the boy’s hair and twists around at the top to form a kind of covered-up bun.
Mirabel takes a sharp breath in, fear rising in her throat.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Sunni used to climb over from their apartment’s balcony to the balcony of Bill and Susie’s place. It was a cheeky thing he did: surprising them with a visit, sneaking in through the sliding balcony door to leave a drawing he’d done of them, or some cookies he and his maa had baked. After the bad men in planes, Bill and Susie had stopped looking after him, stopped looking at him with kindness in their old-person eyes. […]
The next week, old Bill and Susie had put plants up against the concrete divide where their balconies joined Sunni’s place. Sunni pointed the beautiful pink flowers out to his mother.
“You can’t climb over and visit anymore,” she’d said, her voice shaking. “They’re poisonous flowers. That’s oleander.”
Get the entire Foreign Soil LitChart as a printable PDF.
Sunni Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Sunni or refer to Sunni. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Aviation
Quotes
The kid’s bottom lip is quivering. He raises his hand to the front rim of the faded blue Knicks cap, slowly removes it from his head, and rests it in his lap. His face is cherubic: cheeks rounder than Mirabel’s ever seen on a child his age. Wound tightly over his head is a piece of black, stretchy material. The material conceals the boy’s hair and twists around at the top to form a kind of covered-up bun.
Mirabel takes a sharp breath in, fear rising in her throat.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Sunni used to climb over from their apartment’s balcony to the balcony of Bill and Susie’s place. It was a cheeky thing he did: surprising them with a visit, sneaking in through the sliding balcony door to leave a drawing he’d done of them, or some cookies he and his maa had baked. After the bad men in planes, Bill and Susie had stopped looking after him, stopped looking at him with kindness in their old-person eyes. […]
The next week, old Bill and Susie had put plants up against the concrete divide where their balconies joined Sunni’s place. Sunni pointed the beautiful pink flowers out to his mother.
“You can’t climb over and visit anymore,” she’d said, her voice shaking. “They’re poisonous flowers. That’s oleander.”
