Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H is the author’s coming-out story. Lamya, whose author photo on the rear inside flap is as anonymous as the cover illustration, grew up in a Muslim family in southern Asia (likely Pakistan). She never reveals her birth country nor the country her family emigrated to when she was a child, but it could be the UAE, Qatar or Bahrain. She shares stories from the Koran in each chapter, and relates them to her own life as she grew up and acknowledged her sexuality.
I devoured this book in four days, but could have easily read it in two. Lamya wrote convincing dialogue in the retelling of her life stories, which hurried the narrative along. After she acknowledged her sexual orientation, she was slow to accept herself enough to go out on dates. She spent many years chasing straight women because they were safe and the love would always be unrequited, so she could deal with the inevitable rejection well in advance. The only intimacy Lamya shares is kissing her girlfriend. That is not to say that I expected or even wanted to read a kiss-and-tell tabloid romance. Lamya keeps everything G-rated and safe enough to read to a child at bedtime.
During an appointment Lamya must convince her doctor that she isn’t–or couldn’t possibly be–pregnant. She reveals that she is a lesbian. The doctor, a woman, asks:
“‘Tell me something. Why? What kind of gay are you? Why do you still veil?’
“My skin crawls, not with humiliation but with anger. What does it matter that I’m gay? That I’m not out to my parents? That I wear hijab and don’t participate in a particular kind of gay nightlife culture? This is the kind of gay I’ve grown into, this is what my queerness looks like and I have nothing to prove.”
As this is the second queer Muslimah memoir I have read, it is inevitable that I compare it to We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib. By the stories from the Koran alone, Lamya’s memoir has more of a religious element, and for me was a welcome introduction to the holiest work of Islam. I learned about Maryam, Asiyah, Nuh, Yusuf, Hajar and Yunus, among others.
Near the end of the book Lamya makes a two-page confession, essentially repeating herself on the second page but in different wording. She reveals why she is closed to reciprocal feelings of affection and caring:
“I’ve been so afraid for so long that I will lose everything if I come out. I’ve spent decades living on the brink of this loss–of my family, of my friends, my Muslim community. This feeling lives in my body. It makes me want to do everything possible to prevent this loss in relationships that I can–or think I can–control. It makes me make myself invaluable. It’s why I glorify self-sufficiency, have a hard time asking people for help. It’s why I minimize my own needs so I can spend all my time and energy taking care of others, so they love me, so they won’t leave me. It’s a way of making myself indispensable. It’s a way of making myself unleavable.”
Hijab Butch Blues was not as groundbreaking as We Have Always Been Here, where the latter’s author removes her hijab and embraces her lesbian life openly. Here Lamya is so closeted she doesn’t even reveal her country of birth or the country she moved to when she was a child. I can easily conclude that all of the names she provides are aliases, however in the acknowledgements she lists strings of family members, friends and professional colleagues by initials only. The overall shroud of anonymity makes her work seem more of a novel than a memoir. Which makes me wonder: I know that H doesn’t reveal her surname, but is Lamya even her first? Lamya retains her anonymity for reasons of personal safety, I get it, but the whole work seemed lacking in genuineness because all I kept encountering was the author yet again hiding what she was writing about.