big beautiful hair
There’s a rage I feel when I see my mother run into an old male acquaintance and he takes a second to recognise her and then says ‘oh you look different with a hijab’.
It’s the same rage I feel when a white man flirts with me by asking about what it’s like in ‘my part of the world’, or when a waiter politely misgenders a loved one just after we’d paid.
It’s a rage I’m not supposed to feel because it belongs to events that are devoid of violence. It is a rage reserved for people who say the wrong thing without knowing they have.
Yesterday, I rummaged through our family photo albums. A child, leaning against lemon trees during summer holidays in Gaza. A schoolgirl, visiting her brother in Brighton, clutching a shiny camera. A college student, dressed in colourful florals and posing next to Madonna posters in Al Ain. A newly-wed young woman, grinning next to her husband in Abu Dhabi. A mother of two, taking her kids to swimming practice in Cairo.
I watched my mother grow up in those photos.
Every picture looked like an ad for a new shampoo, big beautiful hair that was no doubt inspired by her personal holy trinity: Madonna, Princess Diana and season one Rachel Green.
I felt jealousy before rage. Jealous that those men got to witness a version of her that I barely remember. Jealous because I logged into Twitter when I was fifteen and found that someone at school made an anonymous account just to tell me I have monkey hair. Jealous before I understood that they were trying to tell her that she used to be hot.
And I can talk about what it was like to watch a beautiful woman dry-brush my afro until both of us hated it. I could talk about the years I spent wishing for her freckles and soft hair and how no one I grew up with would have expected anything different.
There is a kind of grief in being remembered in a way that does not feel tangible, in an image being cast on you so quickly and quietly that there is no question about it.
My mother laughs in a sad way when those male acquaintances say they don’t recognise her without her beautiful hair. I also laugh when I am asked about my part of the world.
I wish they could see her the way I see her.
And I wish they could see me the way they saw her.