I asked my little brother how he felt about those trips, and after much cajoling he said that Sudan was like a vacation for him, because he got to play soccer all the time. But when I pressed him about visiting family, going from house to house, his tone betrayed his irritation: ‘I just didn’t know what was going on! I couldn’t understand!’
Whether it was to do with the age or personality, I think the culture shock may have been more difficult for my brother. He wasn’t born in Sudan and didn’t speak as much Arabic as me, so communication was challenging. His discomfort manifested itself in strange ways: he would only eat one type of food – Ta3meeya, the Sudanese version of falafel – and so my cousins became experts in making that dish for the little koala, as they called my brother. He also spent a lot of time running away from the endless kisses or hugs from aunties who hadn’t seen us for two years. As happened with me, as he became older he grew into his personality, finding an identity as a Sudanese man, taking cues from the many uncles and cousins he would meet.
The early trips back to Sudan set the scene for who we were to become. They also gave us the ability to live between both worlds. Having experienced life there, I was able to do what this modern world allows: take the best of both and create something new. It was easier as a child, when navigating between the two worlds was simple. Things got trickier when I visited as an adult, when everything became as clear as a puddle of Sudanese mud.
‘Hey, Mama! Look at the ground! Al-balat [the tiles] are so cleeeeeeeeaaannn!’ I squealed in delight as I spun around and swept my feet across the white tiles, pretending I was a ballerina, skipping back in forth in front of my parents, who sat crumpled in the check-in area at the Egyptian airport, surrounded by luggage, my little brother cradled in my mother’s arm.
‘Mush’kida [Isn’t that right]?’ My dad chuckled. ‘Everywhere looks clean after al-Sudan. Remember when we got here a month ago and it looked so dirty because we were coming straight from Australia?’
I paused halfway through my swirl, casting my mind back to Sudan’s sepia tones; no filter needed, just a side effect of being in the desert and having everything constantly covered with a thin film of dust or sand.
‘You’re right, Baba! Sudan is so dirty! There’s sand and dust everywhere. Here is so clean!’
‘Wait until you get back to Australia, Yassmina.’
I’m sure I was embarrassing my parents, yelling about the dirtiness of our home country, but who was going to quieten a six-year-old? I giggled and resumed dancing, excited to be going home.
Chapter 6:
High School
At the end of grade seven I left my comfortable and familiar community at the ICB, saying goodbye to Hafsa at the same time. She was moving to Rockhampton with her family as her father had found a new job up north. I couldn’t imagine life without my best friend, and the tears flowed freely at our farewell.
‘We’ll write to each other,’ she promised, and for years we did. In those letters we shared all that was important to us. I would explain how different the kids were at the new school and she would tell me what it was like moving to a country town that didn’t even have a mosque. We were both adjusting to a world that didn’t understand us, doing our best to make our way.
It wasn’t an easy transition for either of us, although I didn’t realise how much it affected me at the time. I tackled the move in the same way I do everything – I just did it and reported everything to Hafsa as it happened, from my crushes on boys to my developing love of cars, sketching Jaguar E-Types, Dodge Vipers and Corvette Stingrays into my letters.
The change in school meant a change in worlds. I was thrown from my cocoon into a realm where the rules were different, for me and my family. My parents went from being known and respected in the school community to virtual nobodies in this larger, more established pond. The things I cared about, like spending time with family, weren’t cool or even normal and so it forced me to adapt. I had to learn to survive and then try to find a way to thrive in a foreign environment, a skill that I’ve used ever since.
My father selected John Paul College (JPC) with characteristic rigour, the decision made following the principal’s positive response to my request to wear the hijab. Unlike other schools, which took weeks to send lukewarm responses to the idea of altering the uniform to fit my requirements, JPC quickly got back to say they were happy for me to wear a hijab as long as it was in school colours. I was going to study at a Christian ecumenical school, the largest school in the state, and be the first girl in its history to wear a hijab (although there had been a few Sikhs before me, wearing their turbans). All in a day’s work.
I wasn’t sure what to expect of JPC. The brochures showed a campus that seemed beautiful beyond belief, like a TV advertisement for a resort we couldn’t afford. My father and I drove in a few days before my first day of school to do reconnaissance. As we rolled up, I noticed that the street leading into the grounds was John Paul Drive – named after the school! Damn, I thought. These guys have sway.
But we hadn’t come to admire the scenery, check out the ovals or suss out new buildings: there was a class list, and I wanted to know who I was going to share my new adventure with. As I scanned through the names posted outside my future classroom door, I encountered a dilemma. ‘Baba, I can’t tell if they’re boys or girls!’ My father laughed.
After going to school with Mohammeds, Ahmeds, Laylas and Kausars all my life, names like Alex, Kenny, Chris and Ashley confused me. Who was I going to sit next to? What would they be like? Would they care about my scarf?
That night I asked my mother whether she thought I should stick with my decision to wear my hijab at my new school.
I had been thinking about what I’d seen on the news about Muslims, and the stories I’d heard through friends of how people treated Muslims on the street, especially women who wore the hijab. All this was running through my mind, as well as how difficult it could be starting at a new school and looking different to everyone else.
Then I remembered why I was doing this. I wanted to please Allah. This was for a higher purpose, right? I remember thinking, If Allah is making this hard, I’ll get extra brownie points. The hijab was a part of me now. My identity had become Yassmin, the loud academic kid who wore the hijab. I had shown my parents I could do it, proved my staying power to my friends and started to experiment with different coloured scarves. My interactions with the outside world were already shaped by my clothing, which indicated to the world that I was Muslim. I had become accustomed to the associated biases, ready at any moment to explain not all Muslims were terrorists. I had adjusted to people assuming I was an expert in my faith, explaining polygamy, the oppression of women and the meaning of Halal food, all at the wise old age of eleven. My lived experience no longer included the freedom and the naivety of a young child, not because of the hijab, but because of what it seemed to say to people. There was no going back.
I made the decision myself. ‘Actually, no, Mama, it’s okay. I will wear it, Inshallah.’
Mum shrugged, nodding her approval. I left feeling surer of myself and my decision to stay true to the hijab.
There was a lot I didn’t know about living in mainstream Australia after my sheltered primary school years, and moving schools highlighted how different my upbringing was from my Anglo-Australian classmates, and how my world-view was shaped by very different experiences and histories.
My father’s attitude towards the West reflects the pain of historical wrongdoing coupled with a desire for progress. On one hand, he appreciates that the West has helped the human race advance in many areas; after all, we moved here to take advantage of that development and safety. On the other hand, the West has also been responsible for so much hurt and historically has had such little regard for other civilisations, yet continues to act like it is morally superior. The hypocrisy of that grates. That superiority is linked to the idea that the West does not want to accept there are other ways of being. Western cultur
e also prioritises the individual over the communal, and this is something my father could never abide. The discussion about these issues and value systems is so important to our family because my parents had a real and well-founded fear of their children losing connection with their culture and the religion we all believe in. My brother and I were growing up in the West, in a world that was progressive but also problematic. How would my parents ensure we retained the values they deemed important?
Our family understanding became that as long as our actions are religiously above board, ‘culture’ should not be a barrier to what we can do. So if it was traditional in the Sudanese culture to get married early but not required in Islam, then there wouldn’t be an issue with not following the Sudanese cultural expectation. Culture, my family decided, was created through our habits, so we could create our own family culture that took in elements of Sudanese, Egyptian and Australian culture and, as my dad called it, ‘being progressive’. Being progressive meant striving for education, leadership in the community, the betterment of those around us, all within the framework of our religion. ‘Liberal’ or ‘Western’, in my father’s mind, meant being individualistic, and placing less value on family, elders and women. My brother and I are continuously working on finding the balance, along with migrant kids in various diasporas around the world.
My mother sees no issue with being called Western. ‘You guys are Western,’ she’s told Yasseen and me, ‘but why is that bad? The Western world has done a lot of good for the globe; we must never forget that. We can disagree with some of their actions and foreign policies, but ultimately they’re the society that has reached self-actualisation!’
Mum often referred to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when we were growing up, to illustrate how people make decisions based on their circumstances. If a person is at the bottom of the pyramid, their focus and drivers are primitive: food, water, shelter. Once these are sorted, people have the mind space to think about concepts beyond sustenance: critical thinking, philosophy and culture.
‘No one can invent something if they are at the bottom of the triangle, Yassmina,’ Mum would say.
I’d sigh. ‘So we should be thankful that at least someone is thinking?’
‘Why did we move here,’ she’d ask, ‘if we didn’t want to be part of the system?’
That was something my father agreed with, but he took it a step further.
‘We chose to come here,’ he once said, ‘to escape the oppressive Islamist regime. If anyone wants to come here and do the same thing, we will also fight them.’
‘So you would fight with Australia over Sudan?’ I asked.
‘If it was in self-defence, of course I would.’ Fighting in self-defence is allowed under Islamic law.
The beauty of living a faith-based life in an individualistic Western society is having the freedom to practise your faith as you see fit. The Muslim communities, like many other communities, hold their members to account not through formal means but through the accepted social norms. In an individualistic society like Australia, you can choose to live your life as you please regardless of what the community may think of your decisions. You may pay the price with reduced social capital, but life goes on. It is not as easy in communal cultures, where going against the grain of the unwritten rules can have significant and very real consequences.
The simple response to finding a balance between the individual desire and communal obligation is to say ‘take the best of both worlds’, but that isn’t so easy. I don’t think any community has found the balance yet, though some are getting close. Even when I am doing well finding the balance in how I want to live in Australia, true to my ‘values’ – a mix of communal, individual, Sudanese and Western – I find that sometimes when I go back to Sudan I default back to ‘traditional’ gender norms.
I had no idea what I was getting into when I started at JPC.
It was the small cultural things that made me stand out. When we were introducing ourselves in class someone asked if I had any pets. Naturally, I was compelled to share a story from my recent trip to Sudan: ‘I don’t have any pets here, but I do have a cow!’
My grade eight classmates frowned. ‘You have a what?’
‘A cow!’ I said, beaming, sure it would be more impressive than a dog or cat. ‘My uncle gave it to me last time I was in Sudan.’
‘Do you have it at your house?’ The girls giggled as they nudged one another in a shared language I didn’t understand.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s still at the farm in Sudan.’
I grinned, impressed with myself. How cool am I, I thought to myself. Hafsa would have been stoked.
When they found out they couldn’t come to my house to pet the cow the conversation soon moved to other topics I had no grasp of: boys, parties, songs with nonsensical lyrics. The most popular girls sang Khia’s ‘My Neck, My Back (Lick It)’ every day for months and the words didn’t seem rational at all. I often had to ask Caroline, my new Greek friend, for translations. Caroline was also loud and understood the commitments of family, so when we hung out she needed fewer cultural explanations.
Being cool in this white world was very different to the Islamic school, where kids got cred for their religious piety or because of their family influence. At the ICB, parents who were active and volunteered a lot, or who had tertiary qualifications like my parents, were well respected and well liked. I quickly became aware that social currency at JPC was based on individual decisions and choices. Another buddy of mine, Bridget, was on the fringes of the cool group. To my surprise, when she introduced me to the Queen of the Cats, I was embraced with open arms – not what I’d expected, given my nun-like attire. Perhaps I am cool, I thought. Later, we approached the cool-cat huddle as they gossiped near the toilet block, all long sleek hair and high ponytails, socks low and skirts short. The circle opened to let Bridget in, but another girl threw me a sideways look and stepped back to close it off.
‘C’mon, girls,’ Queen Cat chastised. ‘Yassmin’s new, let her in!’
The second girl looked me up and down. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, turning away, and just like that, I was dismissed.
I took a step back, shocked. I had never been pushed aside in that way before, and for what reason? At least at my primary school if you didn’t fit in it was because of your ideology. Here, one look and I was out? Their leader just tittered and made space for me on her side, but I have never forgotten that experience: the difference a simple kind gesture can make, and how completely crushed being left out can make you feel. It also taught me about the currency of coolness, and how everything about me (my colour, my religion, my looks) did not fit in.
The school itself had done its best to help me fit in. They lengthened my sleeves and skirt, and away I went – a fully hijabified private school kid, covered head to toe in maroon, hat precariously perched on my hijab. Neat. The school even had a multi-faith reflection room, although I rarely met anyone else there, possibly because any other Muslims weren’t comfortable praying regularly at a Christian school, and possibly because I was not always consistent with my prayer times, preferring to delay my Dhuhr prayers until I got home. It took courage to pray regularly during lunchtime when your friends are out having fun. I had bouts of regular prayer then would fall out of the habit. I always found my way back, though, like a homing pigeon, and when I didn’t, my missed prayer weighed on my mind. The trickiest part for me was Wudhu. Having to do ablution in the communal toilets was too much for this young girl to handle every day. A few weeks into my first year I decided to try it out and began the ritual, washing my hands, face and arms. A cluster of grade nine girls walked into the bathroom as I was halfway through washing my right foot. I froze, toes wriggling under the stream of water, and a silence descended on the tiled room.
‘What are you doing?’
I took my foot out and shook it slightly, placing it back onto the top of my sock, which was lying on my brown school shoe.
‘I
’m washing my feet. It’s part of praying, ’cause I’m Muslim,’ I said.
The girls glanced at each other and then back at me. ‘That’s so weird,’ said one girl, giving me a pitying look; then they forgot me and began talking among themselves.
‘I wash my feet five times a day, so technically that means my feet are cleaner than your face,’ I muttered quietly, not brave enough to make an enemy just yet.
The embarrassment was acute enough that I completely avoided doing Wudhu and tried to keep my ablution from the morning until lunchtime, so I could pray without having to wash all over again. I was okay with being weird, but I wasn’t game enough to be the weirdest kid ever. There were limits, and I had found mine.
I wasn’t the type to remain feeling inferior, so with a combination of naivety and willingness to learn, I found my way. It was definitely uncomfortable for others; there were other Muslim girls who joined the same year as I did who didn’t feel as confident talking about or even revealing their faith. This could have been for a number of reasons, but coming from a Muslim school meant I wasn’t ashamed of my religion. I knew it was sometimes publicly contested, but I felt comfortable in who I was, which I put down to my primary school experience, my family and my connection with Sudan. Feeling comfortable also meant that I retained my loudness and my determination to be heard.
‘Ya nincompoop!’ I would retort at any boy who insulted me or did something I disapproved of. I saved most of my ‘swearing’ for one particular lad who had the misfortune of sitting next to me. He was the cutest new kid on the block and the grade eight girls swooned all over him, which made him the target of boys who weren’t happy the new guy was cutting their grass. He was olive-skinned and well developed, with dark hair, a little attitude and enough height to make him seem manly. Todd was the boy every girl wanted, and he sat next to Yassmin Abdel-Magied, the fully covered Muslim chick from Sudan.
Yassmin’s Story Page 10