Lamya H. > Quotes

“Queer indispensability?” Manal asks.
“It’s a concept I heard about at a play I went to a few months ago—a solo performance piece by a queer Sri Lankan trans man,” I tell her. “At one point, he talked about something he noticed, not only in himself, but in his queer friends and com“community—this way in which queer people tend to make themselves indispensable in their relationships and friendships. They’re so afraid of being left that they make themselves unleavable.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“You all know I’m queer, but I still have to play the cool hijabi[…] The not too religious hijabi, the hijabi who can rock it with the alternative crowd, who won’t judge you, who will be accepting and tolerant, the Good Muslim. I’m in full on silent rant mode now. Unlike those Bad Muslims, the religious ones, the ones who are inconvenient in their practice, the ones you have to pause for as they break their fasts, the ones who have to step out to pray. The marginalized ones you would fight for, organize for, protest for, but would never be friends with, who you would studiously avoid at a brunch. I’m the cool hijabi only because you’re projecting your xenophobic narrow-mindedness, your lack of imagination of Muslims into me. You’re still projecting them. Your prejudices are still in the room. ”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“This better world—that is the world I’m fighting for from inside the whale, this world I want to be birthed into. A world that is kinder, more generous, more just. A world that takes care of the marginalized, the poor, the sick. Where wealth and resources are redistributed, where reparations are made for the harms of history, where stolen land is given back. Where the environment is cared for and respected, and all species are cared for and respected. Where conflicts are dealt with in gentleness. Where people take care of each other and feel empowered to be their truest selves. Where anger is allowed and joy is allowed and fun is allowed and quietness is allowed and loudness is allowed and being wrong is allowed and everything, everything, everything is rooted in love. And maybe that’s an unattainable utopia.But I’ve found a few smaller versions of this world—in the ground rules Liv and I set on the bus en route to meeting my family; in the grace Cara showed me when I came out to her; in the patience with which Zu mentored me. I’m not naïve enough to think we’ll reach this utopia in my lifetime or possibly ever, but I’m also not faithless enough to think that the direction in which I strive doesn’t matter, that these smaller versions of the world aren’t leading us there.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“The question feels so patronizing: as if I’ve never thought about gender and how I choose to present myself, how I dress, how I stand, how I crop my hair short, and what this means. As if I’ve never thought about what it would be like to live as a man instead, the relief that would come from passing, with not having to face the everyday violence and humiliations of living in my body. As if I’ve never thought about how I don’t want that, how every cell in my body recoils at that thought of being a man, and yet how harrowing it is that the only way I can get out of my bed and make it through the day is by wearing masculinity on my body. As if I’ve never held dear my feminist rage, never thought about how I feel so politically aligned with womanhood and yet hate inhabiting it, hate it when my body is read as such. As if the only way to be trans is to transition to a binary gender, as if I can’t exist as I have been, in some space in between or beyond, using she or they pronouns and seething when people call me a woman and laughing when people tell me I should transition.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I’ve learned to reframe telling people as inviting in, instead of coming out - inviting into a place of trust, a place 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. But what I’ve been noticing about people I haven’t invited into my queerness is that it introduces a barrier between us. What do I talk to these people about? How do I share feelings and intimacies without revealing this huge part of myself? Who am I without this queerness that now pervades my life, my politics, my everything?”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“...even after all of this, my saying the truth out loud is not enough to prove who I am to a world that doesn't believe me.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“But what I've been noticing about people I haven't invited into my queerness is that it introduces a barrier between us. What do I talk to these people about? How do I share feelings and intimacies without revealing this huge part of myself? Who am I without this queerness that now pervades my life, my politics, my everything?”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I don’t really feel anything. I haven’t felt anything in months. It’s fascinating how busy my friends are with being the center of their own worlds, and my parents have never been very involved or perceptive of my inner life. I get good grades and I don’t act up, so they’ve never needed to understand me. Unlike my brother, who gets mediocre grades and struggles with making friends and therefore gets all of their focus and attention and energy. Decades later my mother will throw out a casual remark about how easy I was as a teenager. And I’ll be shocked anew that she never knew, that she never even tried to know.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“As I bite into the banana bread, I realize if all around me is the evidence of what happens without my asking, doesn’t that mean that there’s possibility for more? A more trusting love where I could let myself ask for things, let myself be vulnerable and imperfect and even dispensable? A more magnanimous, forgiving kind of love where sometimes people give me what I ask for and sometimes they don’t and it’s okay? Where it’s okay to be disappointed and it’s okay to be disappointing—where we can love each other and ourselves regardless?”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“This is the world fourteen-year-old me couldn’t even begin to imagine. I’m already here.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I want to figure her out, this girl, and I want to know everything about her.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Sort of?” she says, but there’s a gap between the way she’s responding and the way this concept of queer indispensability gutted me that day in the theater, still guts me to this day. And I know, I know why she doesn’t get it—it’s because I’m intellectualizing, I’m not telling her how I cried that night, quiet hot tears that I hid from the friends I was sitting next to. How my entire being seemed to implode, how I held every muscle tight to silence my sobs. How shocking and overwhelming this recognition felt.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“And just like that, the medical exam is over. I pass.
. 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.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Decades later, my mother will throw out a casual remark about how easy I was as a teenager and I'll be shocked anew that she never knew, that she never even tried to know.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“There is an inherent quietness to reading that I hoped would create space for people to absorb, reflect, consider. Or, if they shared my views, to feel a little less alone in the crushing powerlessness of pointless fights.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I feel tired. Or reckless. Or maybe brave.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I just don't want to do this thing called living anymore, and this feeling both creates and fills up an emptiness inside me.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

“Why can't people see the everyday overlaps of our lives? Difficult work situations and queer
shame. The newfound deliciousness of frozen yogurt. Navigating the uncannily similar experiences of Irish Catholic guilt and brown diasporic guilt. Instead, it's only the contrasts that people see.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I spot a mirror on the opposite wall, where everyone else in the reflection is talking, eating, happy. I position myself near a corner of the reflection and slowly edge myself out. Slowly move out of the frame inch by inch, to the left at first and then down, slouching lower and lower on my chair so I’m no longer in the reflection and the scene is left intact. Looking at the scene in the mirror - everyone else still gathered, talking, eating, happy - makes me feel strangely relieved. As if these people never knew me, as if I had never come to this party, as I’d I had never been born.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“She's white, she's pretty, but this sense of being wrong has never left her, and she still carries herself like an outsider. I don't understand how she manages to be brilliant and brash and
insecure at the same time. I am intrigued.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“And I. 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 question 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 H., Hijab Butch Blues

“I get a call one day from both of them on speakerphone, asking me how to use "they" pronouns.
These questions never fail to make my day. And remind me that it was the right decision to tell them l'm gay.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Except there's this girl. There's this girl on this trip for whom I have confusing feelings. I wasn't sure what they were at first, but now that we're about halfway through the summer, I'm pretty convinced what I'm feeling for this girl are feelings.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Listen, I’m the only one who’ll tell it like it is,” says my one Republican friend, a white boy named Dave I met in my Intro to Physics class, one late night while we’re doing a problem set together in the dining hall. “You’re being asked for your ID because you’re Muslim. We’re fighting a war against Muslims right now, so they’re all scary; we never know who will do what and when. We need to know who’s around.”
It feels like the truest answer I’ve gotten from anyone, and it’s clear that my friend doesn’t think I’m part of this “they” or “us.” But I’m confused about where this leaves me—about how his response can somehow make me feel seen and unseen. Like a jinn.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Once in a while, when people notice that I’m less of myself and ask if I’m okay, I tell them yes, of course everything is okay. I don’t tell anyone that I’m tired of living, that I’m hungry to disappear.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“don’t need a partner: I have my friends, my queer Muslim community, my cat. I have my work, my writing, and a reliable vibrator. I don’t need a partner. I’ve tried everything, and I’m done. I need to escape from the cycles I’m caught in. I need to start over.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“It's raining outside and bustling inside; the windows around our corner are foggy, wrapping us in a soft cocoon.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“Rejection from straight girls is so much easier than rejection from my entire family and religion.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“And the blues: the water in the lakes, sparkling so majestically that I have to remind myself that it’s real, that it’s minerals and sediments reflecting light, not magic.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues

“a constant ache, this wanting to disappear. A craving that’s always there, even when I’m with my friends, even when I’m outwardly joking around or playing games or making people laugh. Even when I’m doing things that have previously brought me pleasure, even in situations where I look like I’m having fun. I just don’t want to do this thing called living anymore, and this feeling both creates and fills up an emptiness inside me. I want my parents never to have had me, I want my friends never to have known me, I want none of this life I never asked for. I want never to have lived at all.”
― Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues