Keeping a displaced group closely knit together
A photo essay on Masjid Tajul Huda, a mostly West African mosque in the Bronx, New York.
Boy runs down the stairs during iftar. Photo credit Youcef O. Bounab ©.
Abderafiou Boukari recently sat down after Maghrib prayer at Masjid Tajul Huda, a majority-Nigerian mosque in the Bronx. Ending a long day of fasting, he dug into platters of egusi soup and iyan swallows, which—among other West African delicacies—members made and brought almost every day.
Boukari, a bespectacled man with an unfailing grin on his face, is from Togo. He previously lived in Algeria, where his adoptive father still lives, and France, which he left with his wife and little baby to come to New York a few years ago.
For him, Masjid Tajul Huda, unlike any other mosque “abroad,” feels closest to home.
“It’s better here,” he said. He tangled his hands and raised them above his head. “Here, we’re united.” Then, following a moment of silence, he added, “It’s not like in France. In France, you pray and you leave. Here, no. It’s like we’re au bled [back home].”
