I'm Gay and Muslim. I Saw Myself in the Quran

I am fourteen the year we read Surah Maryam in Quran class. We, as in the twenty-odd students in my grade, in the girls' section of the Islamic school that I attend in this rich Arab country that my family has moved to.

We are slogging through Surah Maryam painfully slowly, about ten verses at a time and I deliberately sit near the back of the class so we'll be done reading before my turn comes.

Today I'm composing a note on my calculator to my best friend, with whom I've been trying to come up with a code using numbers and symbols and the smattering of letters on the keyboards of our scientific calculators.

Then someone in the first row reads the translation of this verse aloud:

And the pains of childbirth [of Isa] drove her [Maryam] to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, "Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten." (19:23)

I stop writing my note, stop looking at my watch, stop trying to decide what I'll eat for lunch, stop breathing for a second. Because this verse is saying that Maryam wants to die.

Maryam, of the eponymous surah we're reading, wants to die. Maryam—who has a whole chapter devoted to her in the Quran, this woman beloved to God, the mother of a prophet, held up as an example to mankind—is saying she wants to die. In this difficult moment of childbirth, of birthing the prophet Isa, who will go on to birth the entire religion of Christianity, this Maryam is talking to God, complaining to God, screaming in pain to God that she wants to be in oblivion, forgotten. That she wants to die.

I am fourteen the year I want to die.

Nothing has happened to precipitate this feeling, but that's part of the problem: Nothing happens in my life. What I want is to disappear. Stop living, more like. I just want to stop being alive. It's a constant ache, this wanting to disappear. A craving that's always there, even when I'm with my friends, even when I'm outwardly joking around or playing games or making people laugh. I just don't want to do this thing called living anymore, and this feeling both creates and fills up an emptiness inside me. I want my parents never to have had me, I want my friends never to have known me, I want none of this life I never asked for. I want never to have lived at all.

I don't tell anyone that I'm tired of living, that I'm hungry to disappear, because I don't know it myself: I don't have words for this feeling, just nebulous thoughts about this thing that is not talked about in my family, my culture, in Islam.

Suicide, we're told once in a while in Friday sermons, Islam classes, halaqa reading circles, is the work of the devil. It's cowardly, one of the biggest sins, punishable by hell, takes one out of the fold of Islam, means no funeral prayer, no Muslim burial, audhubillahi minnash shaytan arrajeem.

But that's not what I'm struggling with, I tell myself; that's not what this is. And it's not, not really; these feelings that I'm having, that I'm hiding, are different. I just want to erase myself retroactively. Like Maryam, I don't want to kill myself, I want to be in oblivion, forgotten. I want to die.

The week after reading about Maryam wanting to die, I look forward to the next Quran class. I'm jittery as the time approaches, and eager to start walking to the language lab. As usual, my class of twenty-two girls whittles down to a little more than half as we wind our way through the school building to the annex on the other side of campus.

The other girls are unhurried when we get there. They take their time choosing seats and chattering and settling, but I'm fast: Notebook out, pen out, headphones on, ready to start the lesson. I'm jumpy. Hyperaware of everyone and everything, anxious that I'm being transparent, that everyone can tell that I'm craving the next installment of the story of Maryam, that I'm leaning in so as not to miss a word, that I'm grasping at everything I can learn about this woman who complains to God and wants to die.

But today is a review lesson, the Quran teacher tells us, to prep for our midterm the week after. I'm devastated. I'll have to wait an entire week to know what happens next while we recap the thirty or so verses we've already read, and then review the recitation, the hard words, and the English translation for our upcoming test. Someone in the front row starts reading the beginning of the surah aloud and I sigh, slip into my usual half-listening mode. I nudge my best friend sitting next to me and ask to borrow her multicolored pens for doodling. Then someone reads the translation of these verses aloud:

And mention in the Book [the story of] Maryam, when she withdrew from her family to a place toward the east.

And she took, in seclusion from them, a screen. Then We sent to her Our angel, and he represented himself to her as a well-proportioned man.

She said, "Indeed, I seek refuge in the Most Merciful from you, [so leave me], if you should be fearing of Allah."

He said, "I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you [news of] a pure boy [Isa]."

She said, "How can I have a boy while no man has touched me . . ." (19:17–19)

I stop. Stop doodling, stop calculating how many minutes till the end of class, stop thinking about the bag of chips in my backpack, stop breathing for a second, my body caught in a moment of clarity that shoots through me and suspends my thoughts.

Suddenly my arm raises of its own accord, and before I'm aware of making any conscious decision, I'm speaking, my voice higher than usual and breathless. "Miss. Miss. Did Maryam say that no man has touched her because she didn't like men?"

There is a pause. Two seconds of shocked silence before my classmates break into titters. Some roll their eyes. This sounds a lot like one of my infamous questions that derail the class, and some of my classmates are annoyed that I've interrupted their get-out-of-jail-free summary of the classes they've skipped and the things they need to know for the midterm.

But I am grateful, so grateful for the tittering. It conceals my earnestness. I'm grateful for my earlier antics, that I get to play off this question as a moment of clowning instead of a sincere, burning desire for an answer. I need to know: Is this a thing? Are there other women like me, who don't like men? Who would tell a handsome, well-proportioned man-angel who appeared before them to go away? Who have never been touched by men? Who don't want to be touched by men?

The Quran teacher, a matronly Sudanese woman in her sixties who has always been kind to me, doesn't seem to read anything into my question, and mercifully she does not skip a beat in her answer.

"No," she says. "It's because Maryam had taqwa, she had God consciousness in its highest state of being. It's because Maryam was pious and loved and feared God. She knew that the Divine was watching her even if no one else was around, knew that the presence of God was everywhere even if she couldn't see God. Maryam didn't want the privacy of her situation to tempt her into doing something with this beautiful man, something God wouldn't be happy with. Isn't that an excellent lesson to learn, girls? Don't ever forget that God is watching. When you're around boys, God is always watching. If you're alone with a boy, God is watching. If it's just the two of you somewhere, then God is the third. Remember Maryam, girls. Maryam turned to God. She asked the man to go away because she had taqwa."

But I know. I know differently.

Maryam is something, somehow like me. I feel different that day after Quran class. Relieved, at first, after the embarrass­ment dies down, after I'm done playing off the question as intentional, after I'm done receiving high fives in the hall­ways from my classmates for my joke. I'm relieved that no one has caught on and I'm relieved that I'm not the only one like this.

And after this relief comes elation. There are other women like me in the Quran. Women who are uninterested in men, who are born wrong, living lives that are entirely out of their control. Women who rage, rage to God no less, about wanting to die.

It's so acute, this elation, that it spills out of my body and into everything. Something has changed, something entirely new feels pos­sible. I stay quiet, but I'm buzzing on the inside.

How did Maryam live? Who took care of her? Who loved her then? How will I live, how will I create a life for myself? Who will take care of me, who will I take care of? I'm curious about these ques­tions, and curiosity is not compatible with boredom or a desire to disappear.

I am fourteen the year I read Surah Maryam. The year I choose not to die. The year I choose to live.

Adapted from Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. Copyright © 2023 by Lamya H. Published by Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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