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Informationen zum Autor Lamya H Klappentext "Fourteen years old and growing up in the Middle East, Lamya is an overachiever and a class clown, qualities that help her hide in plain sight when she realizes she has a crush on her teacher-her female teacher. She's also fourteen when she reads a passage in Quran class about Maryam, known as the Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible, that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and later, when told she is pregnant, insists no man has touched her. Could Maryam be... like Lamya? Spanning childhood to an elite college in the US and early adult life in New York City, each essay places Lamya's struggles and triumphs in the context of some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the Pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing strength from the faith and hope of Nuh building his ark, begins to build a life of her own-all the while discovering that her identity as a queer, immigrant devout Muslim is, in fact, the answer to her quest for safety and belonging"-- Leseprobe Maryam I am fourteen the year I read Surah Maryam. It’s not like I haven’t read this chapter of the Quran before, I have—I’ve read the entire Quran multiple times, all 114 chapters from start to finish. But I’ve only read it in Arabic, a language that I don’t speak, that I can vocalize but not understand, that I’ve been taught for the purpose of reading the Quran. So I’ve read Surah Maryam before: sounded out the letters, rattled off words I don’t know the meaning of, translated patterns of print into movements of tongue and lips. Read as an act of worship, an act of learning, an act of obedience to my father, under whose supervision I speed-read two pages of Quran aloud every evening. I’ve heard the surah read, too—recited on the verge of song during Taraweeh prayer in Ramadan; on the Quran tapes we listen to in the car during traffic jams; on the Islamic radio station that blares in the background while my mother cooks. This surah is beautiful, and one that I’m intimately familiar with. The cadence of its internal rhyme, the five elongated letters that comprise the first verse, the short, hard consonants repeated in intervals. But although I’ve read Surah Maryam before, my appreciation for it has been limited to the ritual and the aesthetic. I’ve never read read it. 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. It’s not a fancy international school, but my classmates and I are from all over the world—Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Germany—and our parents are always telling us to be grateful for our opportunities. Mine are always reminding me why we left the country I was born in a decade ago—a country where we lived next door to my grandmother and a few streets down from my cousins, where I remember being surrounded by love—to this country where we don’t know anyone and don’t know the language and my mother can’t drive. My parents are always listing reasons we’ve stayed: better jobs, more stability, a Muslim upbringing. Which includes an Islamic education in school. Twice a week, my classmates and I have Quran class. We line up in the windowless hallway outside the room where we have most of our other lessons—a room we’ve decorated and claimed desks in and settled into. From there, we begrudgingly make our way to a drab room in the annex called the “language lab.” The name is deceptive; it’s just a regular classroom outfitted with headphones and tape players, recently appropriated from the boys’ section in an attempt at a more equal distribution of the school’s resources. But gross boy smells—sweat and farts and cheap...
