Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

Lamya tells the story of the first time she came out to someone as queer. In undergraduate, she went to work as an English teacher at an isolated school in Southeast Asia with a group of other students from her college. A few weeks into the trip, she realized that she had feelings for a white girl (who, she notes, didn’t understand why she couldn’t call Lamya “cutie brownie”). Lamya decided one night to tell her friend Cara about her feelings for someone. Cara asked Lamya if she had feelings for a girl, but Lamya was too nervous to speak in response.

Lamya recounts the story of Musa (Moses) hearing the voice of God from the burning bush. She loves the prayer that Musa says afterward, which includes the line “untie the knot from my tongue” (96). She said this prayer to herself and nodded “yes” to Cara’s question. Cara was understanding, and Lamya felt relieved.

A year after college graduation, Lamya’s queer friend Billy asked her if she could come out to his parents since they were worried that Lamya was in love with him. Lamya said that she would think about it since she had not come out to her own parents, despite her queer friends’ exhortations, believing that they wouldn’t understand.