When I was 18, I was an idiot in many ways. I was, or so my teachers told me, more than smart enough. I did well in school, had wonderful test scores. Everyone told me that I should apply to any university I desired. My parents told me that, wherever I was accepted, they would make sure that my tuition was paid and everything taken care of. I applied to a fair number of schools, including prestigious ones, and got into every single one of those, even the ivy league ones. My parents were pleased. If nothing else, I knew that when my father sat with his peers, the other old Arab guys, he’d be able to brag about ‘my daughter at Yale’ or at Princeton or wherever I ended up going. They’d have to settle with saying “my daughter is at Georgetown” or “my son is at Emory” (ours was the competitive world of immigrant families; I’m told the same sort of competitive bragging goes on in other little worlds).
But I didn’t go to any of them. Instead, I opted for not even the best school I’d gotten into in Georgia. I was an idiot.
Back then, I felt myself to be devout. I spent at least as much time learning Quran as I did on school work and poured my energies into what we called ‘dawah’, trying to spread the light of Islam to the unbelievers, trying to make myself into a paragon of Muslim virtue. Headscarf knotted proudly below my chin, I turned unplucked brows to the world and decided everything by what I thought would aid that.
I listened to no one else’s counsel. Even Hind, my mentor whom I called my sheikha, told me that I was making a mistake. But she was also, in my dreams, my heart’s desire and that was enough to make me refuse to listen to her.
After I’d sent out most of my applications and the first acceptance letters had trickled in, I went to see one of those first ones to reply. Agnes Scott College, the World for Women, was initially one of my ‘fall back’ schools. Twenty minutes from home by car and one with a steady stream of nice Arab Muslim girls attending. A cousin had already graduated from there after high school in Kuwait and there were a fair number of girls I knew who’d gone there.
I made arrangements with Dina, one of the sweetest Arab Atlantans of my generation, to spend a night in her dorm and see how I liked it. I arrived with my little bag and she showed me her room. Her roommate, she explained, would be gone so I could use her bed.
Where’s she? I asked.
The roommate usually stayed with her boyfriend. In his house? No, no, in his dorm room at another school.
I put my trust in God alone, I swear and am scandalized. So why do you live with someone like that?
Like what?
Someone wicked.
Dena shrugs, she doesn’t see it that way. Their way is different than ours and leaves it at that.
We have dinner in the cafeteria and she introduces me to her friends. We go with some other girls to a lecture where a poet reads. I love it. Afterwards, we walk into town and have ice cream. I notice two women in the ice cream shop, holding hands, lesbians. Dena notices me noticing, tells me that it’s rude to stare (in Arabic) and that I shouldn’t judge them and not be so close-minded; it’s normal here. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I know that we’re in ‘Dyke-atur’ and all that that implies.
We go back to the dorm and I take off my hijab. Dena and I sit and talk with her dorm-mates and she and I teach them debke steps. We’re laughing and having fun. And I notice that two of the girls are holding hands and look at each other with love. And those two were the two I had been most ‘clicking; with. Kristin’s a French major and we’d talked about Flaubert (she’s actually read Salammbo, not just Bovary) and her girlfriend studies history.
When we retire and we’re laying in bed, I ask Dena about them. She tells me it’s no big deal, I shouldn’t be homophobic and let them be happy together.
And I start to imagine myself next year, here or somewhere else, living in a dorm, no family anywhere about. No one knows me; I make new friends. And sooner or later, I imagine, I’ll be looking at one of them and our eyes will lock and we will kiss and end up in bed. And then everything follows; somebody sees us and tells my parents who, if I’m lucky, simply disown me. Or maybe just ships me off to be married to some ninety year old monster or maybe they kill me and bury my body in the river … and even if not, the family has nothing to do with me, Hind and the Sisterhood expel me … and cut off from home and family, I end up on the streets, a broken wreck of a woman, begging for money to buy drugs or drink, and die in a gutter of some sort of awful disease, then comes Qiyamat and I find myself engulfed in the Fire, for ever and ever …
And it is all to clear and everything is obvious. In the morning, I realize, I can’t go away to college. I cannot live in a dorm. If I do, it’s obvious that I’ll destroy my life and condemn myself to the Fire. There’s no other way, I think.
“The young man and the young woman, alone in a room,” I recall someone telling me, “and the shaitan makes three.”
For me, though, I know, that, if I am not careful, the Shaitan will tempt me and me and a woman who isn’t so driven, we’ll make three with the Shaitan.
So, I make my decision that morning, before my mother comes to get me. I won’t go to Agnes Scott or Emory or UGA or Tech; I won’t go to Yale or to Princeton or Vassar or Smith. I don’t even bother finishing the application for Georgetown or for Harvard. I will go a school where I can live at home, commute from my parents’ house and not deal with Shaitan.
Of course, I don’t tell anyone why. I justify to myself and explain it in other terms. Here, we are building a sisterhood, of young women who will follow the Miss. If I go somewhere new, all my work will be over here and I’ll have to start from scratch. The family needs me, so does the Miss. I convince myself that it makes sense to go to a school full of headscarfed Muslimas who commute from their fathers’ houses. I tell Rania and she is enthusiastic about it. My sheikha and my family think what I’m saying makes sense – or at least that’s what they tell me.
And years go by and I realize that I was an idiot governed by fear. Yes, there were consequences when I stopped being scared of my own shadow and life was never simple, but becoming true to myself set me free … and all my imagined horrors never happened (we’ll see later about the Fire, I suppose) and instead I found unguessed depths of loving-kindness.
And if I could go back in time seventeen or eighteen years, I would tell my younger self to be herself and not try to be who it is that she thinks everyone wants her to be. I'd tell her 'you know that girl you like, tell her about it ... worst thing, she'll reject you and you'll move on. You’ll get over it and you’ll fall in love with someone else and she’ll be a better choice. Take the opportunities you actually have; you have ones that 99% of your peers would envy and you reject them. Make the best of what you have instead of running from shadows ... oh, and, Amina, eat more, please!”
6 comments:
Great, great writing.
I'm hooked!
Oh Amina, you've given me my best smile of the morning. About the time you were visiting Agnes Scott, a niece of mine was a student there. Daddy's little princess. After school, she shared a house with a lovely lesbian couple, and has managed to even shock me with some of the things that come out of her mouth these days - pleasantly shocked, but still... Blessed Be, we were all idiots when we were teens. At least you grew out of it ;)
Howdy from Arizona!! I found your blog a few weeks ago and check it daily, 1/2 to read your posts and 1/2 just to make sure you're still posting. I agree with you on some things and disagree with you on others, but always find your posts intellectually insightful. If you ever come to the Grand Canyon state please let me know as I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee as thanks for a refreshing read every morning. Be safe.
well written. strange how the circumstances of our lives push us in certain directions lacking guidance, fearful of asking for it, and too stubborn to accept it. wisdom comes with age but one should never look back and regret ones choices.... even when the memory of it aches like an old wound. you are the sum of your experiences and you are already a remarkable person who has touched the hearts and minds of many.... regret not your choices.
Do you really believe that you might be punished in the afterlife for who you are? I hope not! Don't believe it...
Look into the Ada Comstock program at Smith College. It's never too late! Be safe.
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