We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

by Samra Habib

Ironically, it was she, the very person who’d gotten me into this situation, who also taught me the lesson that would ultimately set me free: that we all go through hardships, tragedies, and barriers, that they’re all part of life in a world that has always been incredibly unfair and cruel, but it’s what we do with those experiences that allows us to leave our mark.

Sounds like Gandalf but always true

As I stared at her, waiting for an explanation, it became clear I wasn’t going to get one. And that she in fact did not know best—for herself or for me. Grown-ups, who are supposed to protect their children, are limited by what “best” has felt like to them, based on the circumstances they grew up in and the privilege they did or did not have. The lines between grown-up and child were often blurred between me and my mom.

I related to this so hard

I wondered whether my mother ever dared to imagine what her best could look like. Did she ever have the luxury to envision a best made up of decisions that were good for her without feeling selfish and guilty? The kind of best that was truly hers and hers alone? A best that didn’t make her feel that if she wasn’t living for someone else’s happiness, she wasn’t worthy of love? A best that didn’t ask her to justify her existence by being useful to others? A best that didn’t ask her to mute her fire so that someone else’s could burn brighter? A best that didn’t require that she give away every part of herself, including her daughter, until she had nothing left? A best that didn’t demand she sacrifice everything for the promise of heaven’s embrace? My mother had failed to give me a better life than hers because she didn’t have the blueprint to show me what my best could look like.

I was in such a rush to prove that I’d come out of childhood unscathed, in order to prevent causing others any worry and concern, that I’d forgotten to examine whether I truly had. The

Guilty as charged.

Because my femininity had often been exploited by others, used as justification for controlling and monitoring me, I didn’t want it to be looked at or acknowledged.

I wouldn’t let the fact that I was coming out of a relationship with a man make me feel that I wasn’t queer enough—being queer, I learned, is so much more than who you sleep with. It’s who you are, whether that means rejecting traditional gender roles or embracing non-normative identities and politics.

So true

We talked about how not to lose oneself while giving and receiving love and how to keep our sense of self intact while opening ourselves up to the possibility of love. I marvelled at the sheer longevity of this battle, how it united us across age and geography. — In the spring of 2015, almost two decades after my rushed wedding to Nasir, I watched my sister marry her husband in a beautiful ceremony at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. Needless to say, it was a much more joyful affair than my own. My sister walked down the aisle to a Hindi song my relatives had sung at my parents’ wedding. The lovely homage to them, reimagined

Being surrounded by great people isn’t a fluke. It’s almost like solving a math problem, finding variables, adding and subtracting to figure out a formula that works. Being surrounded by people who fuel you is intentional.

I liked to imagine that Shireen was my younger self coming back into my life for a second chance. Tell them what you needed to hear at their age, I’d say to myself as they described the same problems I was having when I was in my early twenties.

It had been an awful lonely time, and I was glad to be in the company of people who didn’t ask me to change who I was in order to share space with them. I had finally found my people.

For me, practising Islam feeds my desire to understand the beauty and complexity of the universe and to treat everyone, regardless of their beliefs, with respect.

My faith inspires kindness, patience, and self-reflection in my daily interactions. Relearning how to pray—focusing on the words and the prayer steps, such as kneeling in front of God in sajda—taught me that completely surrendering yourself to something you love is a gift. In fact, it’s in the getting lost that you find yourself.

My inability to access the language in a deep and layered way prevented me from fully expressing the flood of emotions and frustrations I’d felt as an immigrant in a new country. Our understanding of the interior lives of those who are not like us is contingent on their ability to articulate themselves in the language we know. The further removed people are from proficiency in that language, the less likely they are to be understood as complex individuals. The

Much has been written in academia about queer Muslims, but often the ideas and findings are disseminated by scholars who have far more privilege than the subjects of their work. I’ve sat on panels where I felt excluded from conversations by the barrier of academic jargon. It seemed as though meaningful dialogue was available only to those with a PhD. In this way, the language is inaccessible to those who need to be comforted most.

“We have always been here, it’s just that the world wasn’t ready for us yet. Today, with all the political upheavals in the Muslim World, some of us, those who are not daily threatened with death or rejection, have to speak for others. They have to tell stories of a community that is either denied or scorned. Together, through facing distinct realities, we should be united—united in the desire to be, in the desire to enjoy being free, safe, and happy. It is not going to be easy and one may never reach a reconciliation with oneself (or with religion), but at least we should care for each other. In face of the challenges, our sense of community and our shared aspirations for a better world should make us stronger.”

Whatever has happened to you has happened before,

“Jaan, it helps to find solace in the larger universe, especially when your internal world isn’t hospitable,” she said, hoping that the advice would stick. “Sometimes that is how you come back to yourself.”

I don’t know what it’s like to live in a place where I have roots. Where old women see you on the street and remark that you have your grandmother’s eyes. Where the Pakistani grocer around the corner asks how your father’s doing when you stop by to pick up a box of gulab jamun. I never had quick family visits with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to heal wounds and provide relief from the constant exercise of having to introduce myself. No ancestors who’ve left footprints for me to follow or passed down stories to serve as a roadmap. I’m new here.

Whenever a feeling of anxiety or fear creeps into my thoughts, I gently console the seven-year-old instead of the adult. “Don’t worry—it’ll be all right,” I say. “I’ll take care of you.” And I mean it.

“Our safety, our survival, is routinely threatened in the name of some hypothetical greater safety that does not include us,” she told me. “What they are trying to keep safe is white supremacy, what they are trying to protect is their own power.”

Laila identified with the feeling of hopelessness she recognized in other African Americans she met; she admitted that she experienced it every day. And yet she always managed to tap back into her strength. “We exist,” she told me, “and we’re fierce as fuck.”

I’d learned that I was much more interested in the connections that emerge in the aftermath than in the fear, anger, and presumptions that immediately follow a traumatic event

Throughout my childhood, I faced the very real fear that revealing my identity would put me in danger. Once I started figuring out the many factors that defined me, I was able to offer insight from the point of view I’d searched for my entire life. I began to look outside myself; I understood my place in the world, and now I wanted to help others do the same.