We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

by Samra Habib

But that is not the Canada I encountered on that ripe July day in 1991. Instead of blooming with potential, Canada felt oddly sterile. Or maybe overly polite, as though it didn’t want to ruffle any feathers with a jolt of personality.

I wondered how long it would take me to forget the language I dreamt in, stripping the proof of otherness from my speech.

My mother has a habit of answering straightforward questions with vague Urdu poetry, codes that needed to be deciphered.