When an opportunity arises to study in Europe for learning a foreign language, it is impossible not to embrace it. Living in the metropolitan of a Middle Eastern country, we have a wide range of options for foreign language courses. But, there are a few occasions to practice these languages unless we go on a family holiday on Anatolia’s southwest coast and encounter tourists just to ask where they are from. We can quickly realize the proud shining eyes of our parents even though we stutter over a phrase.
Yet, the opportunity presents itself with many obstacles, if not aggravating our survival. Going to Europe as aspiring, ambitious, and woke young women brings a script — invisible to our eyes initially but seating anxiously in our luggage, lap, chest, or forehead. It is an encoded gift bestowed to us as if testing our limits to see how much we can bear people’s assumptions about ourselves, which are unrelated to who we are.
Williwaw — though the country we are visiting can be sweltering during summer — blows to our faces when they divide us after our first step to their land: “non-Europeans.” The space we are allowed to take up is narrower than the other parts of the airport. We are stuck in a suffocating line with several people because they have to close the outer door to prevent the transmission of any disease coming from exotic lands.
“If we have to wait in the queue, why aren’t we given more space?” I am thinking, but not letting this thought get in my way because I’m happy at last. I’m in my dream country that I’ve aspired to since my childhood.
With that little uneasiness and excitement in my mind, I hold out my passport so that they can approve that I’m not a terrorist or abuser that has arrived to destroy their country. Out of courtesy, I utter awkwardly “good morning” in their language to show that I carry no threat. I’m here just to learn their language and travel. They look at my maroon passport with a golden star and crescent. They sigh. I catch the notes of disappointment in their expression. “Another headscarf,” they think.
I wish they could have praised my curls higher than my spirit and seen to eyes on the contrary to an inexistent piece of cloth.
It breaks my spirit, hardening my expression. I understand that they will encourage me towards a personal journey, rather than through their cute, small villages. In exchange, I respond “thank you” in English.
. . .
I live in a traditionally patriarchal society with diverse religious beliefs that are used for self-interests and cause discriminations in the same nation. Luckily, I was born into a secular and liberal family that does not divide my brother and me according to our genders. In every aspect, kindness is the core, which we turn in moments of confusion. Having a good heart, being kind to everyone, and ignoring societal differences among people are the foundations of our education with my brother.
By giving me the option to choose how to live my life, my parents have guided me to take up an active role in determining my course plan, defining my identity, and questioning my religion. These have given fruits in our society: a successful school life, trustworthy friends, meaningful family quality moments.
Having a belief that I could survive in any society, my parents encouraged me to study in Europe when the scholarship presented itself. “It will be an amazing experience,” my dad said. “You will learn wonderful things and find a place in their society,” my mom added. We all believed that I was equal in every public sphere.
. . .
I replay this scene with my parents when I finally leave the airport. It is my very first experience in Europe, yet an unpleasant one, whereas I was dreaming more welcoming reactions.
It is the first time I realize that I have minimal space in the society to take up as a woman, a foreigner, a queer, and a Muslim.
These words mean that we have a script to take on and perform once we enter the public places, far from our home. As if these norms substitute with oxygen in the air making our survival more dependent on them. It doesn’t matter if they are socially constructed, hence false categories. They cruelly exist, and we have to fight against them unless we want to be consumed.
Being a Muslim makes everything more challenging. Having watched the 9/11 attacks and people’s reactions towards the event, I have always been aware of the stereotypes: old-fashioned, intolerant, violent, misogynistic, and fanatic terrorists. I was devastated by injustice and violence. I got frustrated that assailants used our religion under fraudulent purposes and represented all kind-hearted people as evil.
I knew that event would be the costume to cover all of us, erasing our idiosyncrasy. People weren’t so fond of us already. The attack was the long-waited bomb, both literally and metaphorically, to segregate us. Then and there, we are slowly ostracized as snowflakes, not knowing where to fall and belong. As Fariha Róisín said,
“What has happened in the post-9/11 world to Muslims has done more damage to the Muslim psyche than anything else. The feelings of rage I had for myself are tethered to the feeling of being unwanted.”
Over time, I thought the stereotypes reducing Muslim individuals into their beliefs were irrelevant to me. I ceased believing in my religion at the age of 16. I wasn’t such a firm believer already, and I was typically against the conventions. I saw religion as institutionalized for benefits, and I rejected to build my belief system. I buried my religion, hoping not to take it out of the grave. I promised myself not to label my personality, integrity, and opinions in the corners of religion, sexuality, and gender.
I didn’t think people would keep associating me with a religion in which I had no belief. Yet, Europe became my gravedigger. When I went there to embrace happiness in its bosom, it had already prepared shovels and pickaxes to dig me into specific words. It pushed and confined me into the barbaric image that some terrorists with beards created, and I so suffocated.
I spent four years studying in Europe, experiencing four different schools, and getting a diploma or certificate with top marks. I met several transnational people. I got engaged in many intellectual, cultural, and political conversations, both with my peers and professors, surviving all and often gaining my supervisors’ admiration. The intelligence level I shared with my colleagues was fairly even.
All these came to an end or ran into hard rocks when they heard the magical word written in my official documents but having no relation to my personality: Muslim.
After having talked to a French guy about the historical oppression against LGBTQ+ for half an hour, he was super shocked upon his discovery of my religion. “Really? You must be joking! I’ve never thought of you as a Muslim,” he said, laughing, and I nodded, feeling confused about how to react. I haven’t thought of myself as a Muslim, either. But here we are.
In a classroom full of fifteen diverse nationalities, my foreign language teacher asked, out of nowhere, to a German guy how traditionally submissive Muslim women were. The guy responded: “I just know three or four Muslim women. Based on my experiences, they prefer to stay at home, bearing children.” Meanwhile, I was sitting in the same room, studying diligently to earn a place in the public spaces, and neither asked me about reality.
When I told a classmate how I was despising patriarchy and heterosexual relationships founded in the patriarchal maxims, she asked me how come I wasn’t aspiring to have a husband.
While I was enjoying the gin&tonic that I prepared so elaborately, a girl asked me about the motives behind my drinking: “Are you allowed to do that?”
Later I learned that the French guy was racist while protesting homophobia. The German guy was oppressive over her girlfriend. The professor had diversity-intolerance while working in a foreign language school. The classmate was waiting to graduate so that she could marry her boyfriend without a career prospect. And, the last person from the party who was shocked by my gin&tonic? I carried her from the bathroom because she drank A LOT just to get attention.
If there is one value that I seem to take on from religions, it is the kindness towards fellow-beings. In each experience, I didn’t react much, not to be mean to others. I didn’t want them to feel in the way I did.
But, I felt a needle pricking to my skin, draining my blood, and injecting the affliction of my Muslim identity. I needed the pain to stop and people to understand me.
I questioned my right to occupy these public spaces that I worked so hard to reach. I wondered if I would ever call a place home, if I would belong somewhere, and if the whole world can’t be generous enough to give me a place out of prejudices and disgrace.
Audre Lorde once said: “Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women (…) know that survival is not an academic skill.”
When I was a child, I dreamt of changing the world, putting an end to disasters, wars, and inequality. I didn’t foresee the world would try to change me.
As a queer woman, I struggled in a homophobic and patriarchal country.
As a Muslim, I endured an Islamophobic society.
As an advocator of equality, I suffocated in the present world.
Yet, I have survived and keep surviving.
My wish would be to gain those survival skills in academia as Audre Lorde implied. But, they do not exist. The academia cluing that I could climb the intellectual ladders haven’t mentioned the cruel reality — that I would be outside of the circle as an unacceptable woman.
My wish is to leave surviving and start living — fearlessly, unapologetically, and confidently: to resist the world’s attempt to alter me, to change myself according to my values, ignoring all the outside voices.
The brilliant writer, Yassmin Midhat Abdel-Magied, wrote:
“I did say it was easier, back when I wasn’t woke. I didn’t say it was right.”
I suffered a lot from the stereotypes that I even didn’t see myself fit. They gave me a sense of discomfort that would burn and peel off my skin if left out. Why not throwing it away to burn the world — the systematic oppression that breaks our spirits?
We must educate ourselves to get rid of cliched and false representations. We must nourish compassion and empathy toward diversity. Differences have long been regarded as tools of oppression. Only when we take our strength from what makes us different can we spark creativity and learn how to live together.
No, change is not easy. It is full of discomfort and anxiety. But, without feeling uncomfortable, no revolution is possible. Differences exist for radical changes.
“When we fight for injustice, we fight for it for all people, for all our communities. And, although it is complicated, it’s that simple.” — Mariam Khan
—
This post was previously published on Equality Includes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
—
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want to join our calls on a regular basis, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Talk to you soon.
—
Photo credit: Unsplash
