Proud Maryaam
My inception was poetic, with Aunt Maryaam at the helm.
I’m a fourth-generation Sunni Muslim.
I was born to a Black Muslim woman who was born to a Black Muslim woman who was born to a Black Muslim woman. Growing up, my grandmother would tell me about her times in Egypt and Lebanon with her Aunt Maryaam, who was one of two girls of six children to my great-great-grandparents, Lynn and Mary Hope.
Born Mary Hope in Montgomery Alabama, Aunt Maryaam converted to Islam with her brothers in Lebanon in 1946 after they migrated from the states to pursue music careers abroad. She was a classical pianist and one-fifth of a quintet with her brothers when they were noticed by record executives while on tour in Lebanon and North Africa.
Aunt Maryaam was a silent heroin for the women who raised me. Married only once to her soulmate whom she buried in Egypt after an illness suddenly took his life, she never bore any children. She led her life with a dedication to authenticity that was evident in her last years.
I knew Aunt Maryaam as the funny elder whom my mother and I would visit every weekend when I was a child. She quickly became my favorite, handing me snacks and telling tales of lands far off across the seas. She seemed to me like a character who’d jumped out of a fantasy novel. Often dressed in a silk robe and satin turban, Aunt Maryaam embodied the mysteries of two worlds, bound in her words and memories. She was trilingual, fluent in French, English, and Arabic, but kept the earthy drawl of her southern roots on her tongue.
Some stories I didn’t have the delight of hearing directly from Aunt Maryaam. I just remember being sent to marvel at her Steinway that sat so majestically in the front parlor of the three-story colonial house in West Philly she shared with her brother and his wife. When I was eight, her body was the first I learned to wash for janazah, preparing her physical being to transition from this earthly plane.
I didn’t know exactly what mysteries she carried, but I knew even then that they were a wealth I’d be blessed to learn. It wasn’t until over twenty years later that I learned Aunt Maryaam was bisexual. She was married to a Lebanese man and had a secret union after his death with a woman in Egypt. Something about it liberated something inside of me that I had tucked away so deeply, I didn’t recognize it.
For years I felt set apart from my family. I was born to young unwed parents- one Muslim, one Taoist. My mother’s uncles refused to acknowledge my existence until she married a Muslim man when I was two years old. I didn’t know my father’s family, not even remotely, as he’d ran away from home years prior. A part of me always felt trapped in someone else’s narrative as if my life were a charade to keep the tides down. My inception was poetic, with Aunt Maryaam at the helm. She was responsible for giving me my name, that of her favorite Lebanese poet’s mother, Kamila Gibran. So it only seemed appropriate that her legacy and example would be at the helm of my rebirth.
A bisexual divorced Muslim woman with three children? Where they do that at?
I explored life in a careful, cautious way all the way up to twenty, when my mother died suddenly, leaving the physical realm, and a void in my heart. It was a familiar dance I was entangled in with Death. I’d seen it many times before. But this time, It was calling me to see myself in a different light. It would take me eleven more years before I would and the process is still underway. I’m constantly discovering more about my spirit as I move with intention.
On my thirty-first birthday, I came out to my aunt, my children, and close friends. I battled with accepting myself as a Muslim. I prepared to separate from the tradition I’d been bred from and led by all my life. I assigned myself to a life of exile and shame for my truth. No one would accept me. A bisexual divorced Muslim woman with three children? Where they do that at? And the world replied, everywhere.
I hadn’t considered how wide the gradient lay between who I was expected to be and who I really am. Naw, it hasn’t been that simple… That profound. It’s been beautifully difficult, with triumphs and losses in between. I haven’t always been strong in my resolve to show up and take up space in my life. Hell no. The idea terrified me into a corner, a cage I’d dressed so intricately, lined with all the reasons I gave weight to not to live in my truth. Thirty-one years of shame, pain and isolation.
James Baldwin said, “The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook, and my chains fell off”. I couldn’t have felt his words more had I been sitting in his presence. How could I break so many years of tradition and expectation? Why did I have to be pulled to it? The thought of stirring up so much within my family and possibly dishonoring my mother’s memory plagued me. All I could think was, She worked so hard to break the stigma against her and me.
I felt a duty to uphold a face for those left in her wake. It was in that moment that I confronted my fears with the truth; they’re relatives, not family. It wasn’t the first time life taught me that hard lesson. What did I have to lose? It was a conversation I had with my mother’s younger sister during which she revealed to me that Aunt Maryaam was a proud bisexual woman. Aunt Maryaam, our matriarch, was family. My family.
It’s in the perseverance, the mining of that voice, that I found the words to share and lovingly, invite others to stand firm in their truths.
Aunt Maryaam was proud of her identity- all its layers, colors, and variables. A dutifully spiritual woman, scrolls of her Quranic calligraphy still sit in my house to this day. It was Aunt Maryaam who taught my mother her first surah when she was a small child. It was Aunt Maryaam who spoke Arabic with me and proudly listened to me recite more surahs than she’d ever taught to my mother when I came to visit. It was Aunt Maryaam who guided me through my first time with Death. The grin that spread across her face as we performed her last rights over her body. I knew the sweet kiss of Death in her face, the glow that invited me to seek beyond the surface in life. It’s not something I’ll ever forget, I’m sure. To be reborn and stand contently in that rebirth is what Aunt Maryaam taught me.
When I decided to write this piece, I remember her voice, “Go ‘head, baby. You got it”. A few months after I came out to my family, my younger cousin confided in me that she was bisexual. Her mother, my great aunt, told her she didn’t know if she could love her. My cousin told me that she’d been damming up her own truth because she felt she was the only one in our family who was experiencing what she was. We talked at length and I told her about Aunt Maryaam. We found comfort in knowing that there was no coincidence in our awakenings. It was confirmation and a nudge from beyond.
It’s from a place of affirmation and faith that I impart my truth because I know that there is power in the voice beneath the pain and fear. It’s in the perseverance, the mining of that voice, that I found the words to share and lovingly, invite others to stand firm in their truths. It matters because every day isn’t cheery and kind. Every face isn’t warm and welcoming. Every voice doesn’t call to love. And in those heavy moments, those shadows, Love is there.
Love is yours, always.
“Go ‘head, Baby. You got it”.
Kamila Hasana Ahmad is a queer Black Muslim woman whose message is affirmative love and creating space. An avid student of the human experience, Kamila infuses her traditional foundation of education with her spiritual practices into her life’s work. She is currently a yoga student with a multidimensional spiritual knowledge that has enabled her to fill up her own well and lend a guiding word and hand to help others do the same. Knowing that spirituality is universal, therefore inherent, she is not confined by titles, positions or names. She lives by the motto: “Spirit recognizes Spirit.”
