The Community

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

After witnessing four years of a presidential administration that heightened racial tensions, created a policy to separate children from their parents, and banned Muslims from traveling to the country, all while amassing a cult following that led to hundreds of white men storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, under the guise of having been disenfranchised, I saw too many parallels to the world of York.

that family was everything and anti-Blackness was everywhere, which meant that family had to stay together no matter what happened. These are the puzzle pieces that got my mother to agree to the Community, the belief that she would be able to make something whole.

At the time, my parents seemed to have a severe need for a religion, a belief system that came from people who resembled them.

“The more I looked at you, the less I saw my husband, the worse I felt.

We were our own leaders, teachers, and tailors.

how unique it was to constantly be surrounded by Black beauty?

My parents and others within the Community forgot that in their quest for knowledge, guidance, a community, they sacrificed a child or children in the process.

Money was important because it meant not having to ask for help,

The entire situation was confusing to me: my father claiming he wanted to become Muslim to move into a community that separated him from his family, which is the opposite of what a Muslim family should look like, to the three of us leaving separately, on separate occasions, and not coming together.

Becoming Muslim might have been my father’s idea, but it was Ummi who had soaked up the training for how to soldier through. She believed in the Community’s self-taught self-righteousness. I sensed she had found something, a purpose, from the Community.

“You may have forgotten, but I have sacrificed much for this belief system,” she said. “I abandoned my own identity, took lessons from others who might have been just as lost as I was, turned my back on family members who refused to visit because they said I acted holier than thou. I know you’re a child, but I’m not going to allow anyone to make fun of my religion.”

Exactly. It belittles the sacrifice.

Ninie, on the other hand, represented something new, something that felt like the opposite of discipline and order and oddly like preparation.

Prep for the outside world that dont always believe the way you do and are vocal about it.

I believed women were as powerful as men, girls as strong as boys.

five pillars of faith—testimony that Allah is the one true God, prayer five times a day, supporting those in need, fasting for Ramadan, and eventually making hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca—

While I still considered myself Muslim, I started to think, why do I have to uphold rules created for women when my husband does not uphold his end of the religious bargain?”

“I still believed a woman’s beauty was reserved only for her mate, but if he wasn’t present to receive it, why should I hide it?

While Sulaiman and I were different in many ways, neither of us were able to keep our father’s love.

“I never wanted to be the reason for why you see your father differently.

I sacrificed my freedom, joined the Community, to keep our family together. Your father gave up his freedom for something that had nothing to do with liberation.”

I hadn’t known an apology was the catalyst I needed to heal until it was offered.

There are days when I find it difficult to completely blame York for stealing souls when those souls, for the most part, willingly went with him.

Who protects children if not their parents?

He showed them power. He told them they didn’t have to stay in a country that abused and lied to them; they could go to Africa, to Sudan specifically, and be free.

I quickly learned from others and believed that my life didn’t matter.