Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

“I am fourteen the year I realize I am gay.

Realize is a strong word. It’s not exactly something I realize in the conventional sense; it’s not a sudden epiphany, or even something I have language for yet. It’s more of a steady gathering of information, a piling up of block upon block until suddenly a tower appears. A tower that is no longer part of the background, a tower that—unlike a scattered set of blocks—is no longer ignorable.”

Lamya describes her embrace of her queer identity as gradual, reflecting the trajectory of her arc over the course of the memoir. She uses the metaphor of a tower slowly coming in to being, block by block, to describe how, piece by piece, she finally constructed her identity

“I am fourteen the year I read Surah Maryam. The year I choose not to die. The year I choose to live.”

At the age of 14 years old, Lamya began Developing a Personal Relationship With Islam. She identified strongly with the figure of Maryam, and she positions this as deeply influential to her life choices—in this case, the choice to live instead of die.

“I know I confuse these women by how much I seem like them—a brown, hijab-wearing graduate of an elite college—while adamantly turning down their efforts to set me up with a man. I have Maryam, I tell myself on subway rides back to my apartment after the halaqas. I don’t have to live like them. But it feels lonelier in this context than it ever did before.”

Over the course of the events described in the memoir, Lamya’s search for an LGBTQ+ community became central to her embrace of her queer identity. Some of her early efforts were unsuccessful, as she describes in this quote, where her scriptural reading group, with its heteronormativity, made her feel more isolated than ever.

“This rigidity of gender follows me like a punishment everywhere, across oceans and continents.”

As a nonbinary person, Lamya had to learn to Navigate Intersectional Prejudices in many different spaces. She felt like the pressure to conform to a gender binary was a “punishment.” This passage foreshadows her later interpretation of the gender binary as one of the cruelties that Adam and Eve face when they are banished from the Garden of Eden.

“This God, who teaches us that we can be both and neither and all and beyond and capable of multiplicities and expansiveness. Nonbinary, genderqueer, They, this God that is the God, my God, my Allah. Who created the world and created language and created the first person, Adam, this first person who was man and woman and neither and both and not a mistake, never a mistake.

Like me.”

In this quote, Lamya uses first-person plural pronouns (we/us) to address the audience directly and include them in her scriptural understanding of the gender spectrum. Although she is referring to her own experiences of gender, she is making it clear that she feels that this belief applies to everyone.

“The first time I tell someone I’m queer, I do it without using words. There’s no coming-out speech, no deliberating what phrases to use, no practicing out loud in front of the mirror—nothing like that. What happens instead is this: in the process of telling someone I’m queer, I end up telling myself.”

Lamya’s decision to finally express her queer orientation to a friend represents a turning point in her arc. Her fear and uncertainty are evident in that she did not even use words to “come out” but simply nodded her head in response to her friend’s questioning.

“I have owned my queerness, and in doing so, accepted it for what it is: a miracle. A difficult miracle, like Musa’s. One that I didn’t ask for, had no choice but to receive. Sent from God, who made the heavens and the earth and who does not make mistakes. God, who has my back. God, who answered.”

A second landmark moment in Lamya’s embrace of her queer identity and community occurred when she finally told another Muslim person that she is gay. As with many things, Lamya views this moment through the lens of scriptural interpretation. She compares her queerness to the difficult commandments that Musa (Moses) must fulfill in leading the people out of Egypt.

“I can imagine your elation, your relief, because I feel it, too. It’s that glorious feeling that comes from inviting someone into your world.”

In the chapter about the prophet Muhammad, Lamya uses the pronoun “you” to refer to him. This creates a confessional tone, as if Lamya is communicating directly with the prophet. It also represents an expression of her piety and respect for him.

“I’ve learned to reframe telling people as inviting in, instead of coming out—inviting into a place of trust, a space for building—and it feels like a waste of emotional energy to tell straight people whom I don’t expect to understand my queerness, don’t intend to count on for advice or support in this area.”

As Lamya became more comfortable with her queer identity and connected with her LGBTQ+ community, she learned how and when to engage with people about her queerness. She flips around the metaphor of “coming out” to one of “inviting in” because it is more expressive of her vision of a community where people come together in understanding and support.

“More than a decade after arriving in this country—four student visas, three extensions, two work visas later—I hold the card and the pamphlet that says ‘Welcome to America’ in my hands. And I feel nothing—no jubilation, no joy, no lightness, not even a sense of resolution that this saga is behind me. It doesn’t magically go away, this feeling of not being from here, that I might be asked to leave at any moment, of being trapped. I suspect it never will.”

Lamya has been an immigrant since she was five years old, in one country or another. Given this context, it is understandable that the moment when she received her green card felt insufficient and anticlimactic. Here, she frames the experience of being an immigrant in America as analogous to being “trapped” in a marriage.

“I gather my resentment, my fury that there’s nowhere in the world that’s magically free of racism and Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia. I take that burning energy and channel it toward new, different questions: How can I fight injustices in this place where I have community, where I’m choosing to stay? How can I build a life here that feels, rooted in my principles, even if it will never be perfect?”

Lamya characterizes herself as passionate and idealistic—traits that she recognizes as powerful—as she navigated intersectional prejudice. She decided to use this power toward building a better world, even as she recognized that nowhere is a utopia.

“Time slows as my mind strains to process this information, my body going numb to try to protect myself from feeling this bitter disappointment. The touching doesn’t mean anything, the hanging out, the wanting to be around me, the modeling clothes for me doesn’t mean anything, can’t mean anything if she doesn’t even know the word ‘heteronormative.’”

Even as Lamya became more comfortable with her queer identity and community, she still struggled with dating women. In this quote, she reflects on the emotions that she experienced when she had a crush on a woman whom she realized was straight. She emphasizes that this pattern repeated many times in her life—a way for her to explore her own feelings without the risks of actually dating. As Lamya’s arc progressed and her friends encouraged and supported her, she found the courage to date queer women.

“‘Fine, fine, fine,’ I say, trying to sound more playful than annoyed, trying to disguise the combination of terror and thrill I feel about actually, really doing this. Because yes, Manal is stubborn and I want to order, but also because somewhere along the way, time has elapsed and life has happened and I’m almost thirty years old and I’ve never been in a relationship.”

Lamya recognized that even though she had been “out” as a queer person for over a decade, she still had some limitations in her comfort with her queer identity. The self-awareness of her own limitations and the emphasis that she placed on the supportive group of friends around her who could help her underscore her growth from the beginning of the memoir in which she felt isolated and alone.

“Like Nuh, I keep trying. I continue to go on dates and engage in this exercise of futility.”

As elsewhere in the text, Lamya compares her experiences to those of figures in the Quran—in this case, Nuh (Noah). In this quote, she does so humorously, comparing Nuh’s building of the ark to her own series of terrible dates.

“But I do know that like Nuh, God sends me a flood—and with my cynicism and hopelessness washed away, I can let in this feeling of hope. Like at fourteen, when my curiosity about Maryam turned my eyes to a horizon I didn’t think I was interested in, I’m ready to meet my new world.”

Although Lamya can be humorous about her scriptural interpretations and their relationship to her life, as in the previous quote, she more often takes her personal relationship with Islam seriously, as can be seen in this quote. She interprets her feelings of hope through her identification with Nuh’s and Maryam’s experiences.

“‘You know what’s weird, though?’ Manal says. ‘The introduction in the tafsir says that Surah Yusuf is about love. I find that so fascinating. What if we’re thinking about it from the wrong angle? What if this surah is about healing instead? What if this surah is about healing from being left? What if it’s about healing through love?’”

While Lamya most often describes her own scriptural interpretations in Hijab Butch Blues, this quote provides a glimpse into competing interpretations. This passage highlights how people of the same faith, in this case Islam, understand their religious texts differently and discuss these different interpretations.

“I miss being surrounded by love.

I don’t deal with it very well, that loss of love. I don’t understand it, and no one will explain it to me.”

Lamya reflects on how having to leave her home country and extended family at a young age impacted her way of being in the world. She has learned to be withholding because losing love at such a young age made her more sensitive.

“‘It’s not like a lifetime of being left is going to be cured overnight just because there’s love in his life, like he’s suddenly going to be okay being vulnerable and messy. I hate when people expect that of you. It’s not that easy…for Yusuf.’ I trail off, feeling exposed at having shared so much.”

Although, under the protection of a pseudonym, Lamya is very open and forthcoming in her memoir about her personal relationship with Islam and the way that she relates to the figures in the Quran, this quote from a conversation with her friend Manal reveals that Lamya has struggled to be as vulnerable in person. With others, even those with whom she is close, Lamya has “fe[lt] exposed” when sharing her feelings and interpretations.

“I decide to try again with Manal, this friend I love, whom I want to let in. I take a deep breath. Be brave, I tell myself. Like Musa. Like Asiyah. Like Maryam.”

Lamya uses the figures in the Quran as role models and inspirations in her daily life, as evidenced by the structure of her memoir. Here, she thought about them in a way that is a similar to prayer to give her strength.

“Isn’t all of this love? Even when I haven’t provided anything in return? Doesn’t this mean I’ve needed people, and they’ve let me need them, and they’re still, miraculously, here?”

As the memoir comes to a close, Lamya reckons with the fact that she has formed a community and found love, even if her former isolation makes it hard for her to accept it. This self-awareness helps her recognize that she still has work to do on herself.

“But this is the story that won’t get told to my family when we visit: the truth of my queerness. More than a decade after coming out to Cara, to myself, to Billy’s mom, to many, many friends, my family on both sides of the ocean still doesn’t know that I’m queer.”

Lamya describes her decision to withhold her queer identity from her family as “the story that won’t get told.” This language connects her personal journey to aspects of the story of Hajar, which she describes in the same language, emphasizing the close connection between Lamya’s scriptural interpretation and her understanding of her queer identity.

“These rules are an act of love. The wisdom of creating these rules and her willingness to put our relationship on hold are all acts of love. The playfulness and humor in her tone is an act of love. Our hiding is an act of love.”

When traveling to visit Lamya’s family, Lamya and her partner Liv set ground rules to hide their relationship, which Lamya describes as an “act of love.” She and Liv were effectively “flipping the script” on how such scenarios are generally seen—as a tragedy.

“Just like we don’t take each other for granted, Manal, Mitra, Reem, and I. We were all displaced immigrants, queer, Muslim, and different shades of brown, navigating these identities alone before we found each other.”

At the end of the memoir, Lamya reflects on how she has been able to build a community around her that reflects and embraces all aspects of her identity. This is the final step of Lamya’s arc toward embracing her queer identity and finding support and a sense of belonging in community.