My parents are Muslim and I’m gay
Omar Hosseini, 25

I had no intention of coming out to my mother. I was 21. I came home one night at 3am and found her sitting up, waiting. I felt guilty, thinking she was sleepless worrying about my safety. Then she said, “Are you gay? You can’t be Muslim and be gay.” She had found a love letter from an ex-boyfriend in my things, and it was a bit grandiose—declarations of love and all that. She cried, mourned the grandchildren she wouldn’t have, threatened to tell my father. I can’t bear this alone, she said. Part of me started to prepare myself for not knowing them. I was concerned because they were paying for college, and so I started preparing for the worst.

It was always business between my parents; my sisters and I were the business. My father, an anesthesiologist from Pakistan, has a sort of Jack Kerouac–slash–Leonard Cohen vibe about him. He isn’t religious; he reminisces about his time following the Beatles, his desire for a butterfly tattoo on his hand and his interest in Islamist mysticism. He played Rumi poetry on tape—which I tried to like during my Tori Amos phase—during our drives to Muslim Sunday school. But it never stuck.

My mother never engaged this side of him. It was like, “Your father does what he does.” She is an Afghan refugee and is more firmly grounded in traditional Islam. She decorated my room by putting Islamic icons and images among my Trent Reznor and L7 posters. She made me keep one wall completely empty for prayer. In a larger sense, she was trying to preserve a space in my life that was distinctly Muslim. So she planned a trip for us to Mecca shortly after she found out about my sexuality; she hoped I’d be transformed. She told me that once you go to Mecca you can’t turn your back on God; radical alteration comes with making the pilgrimage. I jumped at the chance to go, but I was actually a little worried: What if I did change? What would happen to me there? I had only come out a year prior and I was still a little fresh.

Mecca was life-changing. It was amazing to stand with 3 million other Muslims and, as a gay man, say to myself, “Yes, I’m here too. I belong.” Though my mother and I bonded during our trip, I feel like, in a way, I’m back in the closet. I know she would still disown me if I settled down with a man or made my being gay impossible for her to ignore. My sister is also queer. But she never saw a point to coming out. And that’s the way I felt. I had no desire for my mother to be involved in my life as a sexual being, even if I were straight. More and more Muslim people are caught in a conflict with an American or European sexual politic regarding dating and marriage. So these conversations are becoming more commonplace. But the issue of gayness is more difficult to deal with. It’s not really on my mother’s radar. So for now I try to find ways to bring her closer: I’m learning Farsi, and my mother and I practice over the phone every night.

—As told to Amanda Krupman