KarMel Scholarship 2007

“Our Veils”

By Anonymous

Desciption of Submission: Many people will label this a 'coming out story.' However, it is much

more thant that; it is the hardest struggle and deepest moment.

A minor preface: I am Lebanese American, my family is rooted in

tradition and faith that is very alien to the Western World.

However, like most things in life, it is my hope is this story is nothing

less than universal.

“Habeeb, watch your step.”

I stepped over the Nadiers, and the two of us moved along the next aisle. Her arm was cold and

her hand was limp as it rested between my elbow and chest. At times she had to walk leaning on me,

her soft veil covering my left side. In tradition with normalcy, my head remained down and my gaze

everywhere but my mother. We had just passed the Otts.

“Sitto misses you, I think. She sees you now, and she sees were you will take us.” I tightened

the grip on her fingers as an offer security, a lie on my part. We past the Pauls.

“And were will you take us, I think about. Sitto always knew. About the legacy; our legacy.”

The legacy: my life, my goals and aims; decisions conjured and molded before I was born with

a sure intent by all in my family for their fulfillment. Now was I assumed to properly manifest their

desires, as is the fate every American-Lebanese first born. For this family, I was to be my Sitto's

successor.

“Mama,” I replied, “I don't think so. I am different.”

“Yes, you are. Oh, but habeeb, you are bright! You shine brighter than any of us! This world,

this country, has so much for you, so much for us! It is no miracle many families have petitioned us for

you. Not yesterday, Father Gebrhan told your father about one of the Alam daughters...”

As her true intention revealed itself, I interrupted.

“Mamma, no.”

We passed the Possellies.

“Yeshua?”

Passed the Richards.

“Mamma...no.”

She halted at the Roberts, her weak arm holding me from continuing. Her head began to move

to and from with a look that even her veil could not hold back.

“If Sitto was here...” my nerves tightening and breadth squeezed, I interrupted again.

“Sitto is not here, mamma! She is over there,” pointing to my grandmother's casket on the other

side of the lot, where the rest of the family had taken over the south side and radiated into the adjacent

block. At this, my mother slapped me.

“Abwoon Dishmaya, how dare you!” I remained silent, as I normally did with my mother. She

calmed and continued walking, absent from my side as we past the Ruthens. All the while I felt my

mother's luminous eye on me though she stared stubbornly forward, the traditional veil covering her

eyes and her limp ensuring her power. She was reading me.

“You are telling me something, yes?”

She knew, she had always known. We passed the Sanjas.

“Telling you what, mamma?”

I could see my Sitto, I could see the wife I would not be having for her, I could see the sons I

would not be raising for her.

“Yeshua...what...why are you...”

“Ask me, mamma.”

The Sherlocks, Simons, Smiths...

“Ask you? I don't...Yeshua...I can't say the word...”

“Mamma.”

The next aisle, the Tufts, Thomases...

“You are...kyrie elison...Yeshu...”

Her breathing quickened, her voice weakened, my head lowered.

“You're...gay?”

We had arrived, our family name marking the stone reading, “Tabish.”

I attempted to lift my head, turned, and gave my wordless answer. Lifting her veil, she looked

into me, as I observed her own tender innocence in what she was about to face. But when she looked

she did not see the familiar: her expectations, her vicariousness, herself. She did not see my namesake,

His deeds, His aims, His expectations. In that moment my mother saw my wholeness. She saw her true

Yeshua, the sufferings, the loves, the passions, the pain. When she had looked into my face she looked

into the infinity and mystery of the human soul, and the mystery and infinity of my soul was reflected

back. Her hand slid off my cheek and tears flowed down her own.

My mother fell. She collapsed onto her brother's stone, caressing it as she once did his beard; a

deep embrace, as if it was he was living. I stood above watching my mother, her veil drifting back on

her nose, failing to hide her nakedness.

And as she wailed and wept, she lived what I lived, touched what I touched, and prayed what I

prayed. Her charitable tears were not for the grandchildren she would not have or the family she would

not see grow.

My locked body remained, but when my mother gathered the strength to look back at me from

below, clutching her brother, my emotions for so long oppressed were free, and I too, fell. Without

hesitance and fear, my mother with all authenticity grasped and held me.

There we sat stripped bare, leaning against my uncle's grave, left with nothing but a

transparency and vulnerability unknown to our people. She held me in silence, overshadowed by my

venerable ancestors. They too knew, they too understood. And, they too, wept.

I do not remember how long we remained, only being brought back by the curious calls of my

father. At that my mother raised my head off of her ill chest, her eyes being my brightness and her tears

filled with God.

“You are my son, you are my savior. Yeshua, you I will always love.”

It was this caring moment that became the critical turning point in their lives, as they touched

one another's humanity. The mother revisited the very foundation of being a mother, and the son of

being a son, as both acknowledged the deep roots of their equal humanity; a realization that this

embrace, this moment, was sacred work that overtakes all tradition and orthodoxy. She found he was

gay and saw his loves and pains, he found she was but love and was no longer afraid.

In that, their veils lifted.

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