Conditional Citizens opens with a vivid description of the day in 2000 when the author, Laila Lalami, became a US citizen. She identifies the four traits that contribute to her subsequent discussion of what it means to be an American: her status as “an immigrant, a woman, an Arab, and a Muslim” (6). She recalls that on her first trip out of the country after becoming a citizen, border agents asked her husband how many camels he had to exchange for his marriage to Lalami. This experience is repeated almost verbatim 10 years later.

Lalami reflects that people of Arab descent are often portrayed negatively. She points out that George W. Bush and the Republican Party courted Arab American voters in the 2000 presidential election by acknowledging them as real citizens; however, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City cut these efforts short. In the years before and after 9/11, Lalami and her husband take increasing steps to care for her mother-in-law, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Lalami shares memories of bonding with her husband’s mother, as well as the difficulties of caring for her.