The henna pictured is on the hand of a student at Salma Ladak's Islamic Sunday school, where she's been principal for nearly 30 years, teaching kids from childhood through adulthood. Born in East Africa, of Indian ancestry, Ladak is a particularly involved presence at her predominantly Urdu-speaking mosque.

When she immigrated to the U.S., she moved to New York because, in her words, it was the only city she knew the name of. Her ancestors migrated to East Africa as merchants looking for economic opportunity, part of a larger wave of Indian traders who settled there under British colonial rule. For a time, her family found what they came for. But in the 1970s, economic upheaval and post-colonial policies favoring native East Africans pushed a new generation toward immigration, this time with no destination as fixed as East Africa had once been.

She first moved to Rego Park, Queens, in 1991, working as an accountant while searching for the community she'd grown up inside. She knew another Khoja family who wanted to start a religious center, a mosque, a gathering place for weddings, funerals, and Sunday schools. After scouting sites across Queens, Brooklyn, and New Jersey, they settled in Englewood in 1997 and integrated into an existing mosque called Mehfil-e-Shah-e-Khorasan. There, she started up a Sunday school for kids anywhere from three to twenty. Fundraising back then meant baked goods, clothes, and henna for sale, the same trade Ladak's students carry on today.

– Ariba Hassan

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant