Lamya H.

Hijab butch blues

nhu ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

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. This gesture of care and tenderness from Liv, on this journey to introduce her as a friend to a family who loves me, is all so beautiful and tender and unfair that I feel as if my heart will break.			

fira

“No wonder Yusuf has it so hard the rest of his life. How do you live after that happens to you? How do you ever love anyone again? How do you trust anyone again? That’s what I think Yusuf’s story is about. Living with the consequences of trauma, of being abandoned.”

“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?”

Her smile is difficult to extract but worth it for the way it spreads across her face, the way that it crinkles her eyes. 

“They never instilled in us this idea that white people were superior to us. We grew up with stories about Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. If anything, I grew up feeling sorry for white people. But not too sorry.”

				“That’s so unfair! I grew up with my family reminiscing fondly about being colonized by the British!”

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. 

The language God gave us hides meaning, adds meaning, and is constantly shifting beneath us, constantly creating our worlds and constantly creating us.

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.

It’s not like I’m hiding that I’m gay from this friend, it’s not that I don’t want to tell her. It’s just that the more I’ve grown into my queerness, the less I want to come out to straight people.

But I shouldn’t have worried. As soon as I enter my new friend’s sunny, cozy, plant-filled apartment, she greets me warmly, and the few people who are already there jump up to say hello before I’m fully inside the door. “I didn’t know you were coming! I’m so glad you’re here!” says one of the queer femmes whom I’ve been very intimidated by, and who has previously been hard to read. 

I’m not expecting her to dress up, so I show up in sweats and a raggedy T-shirt. But boy does she dress up. She looks dazzling in a red dress with a deep neckline that I can’t stop sneaking glances at. She tells me all about her childhood, asks about mine. Drinks a little and gets touchy-feely, grabs my hand and tells me my long skinny fingers are beautiful, perfect for…drawing. She holds up her palm to mine and compares our phalanges. “Doesn’t this feel like we’re on a date?” she giggles, tipsy and happy. And then goes home, to the boyfriend she lives with.

Hijab butch blues quotes

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