When I walked up the front stairs of my new dorm and saw Dee-Ann, her red hair chopped as short as mine, I assumed she was gay. “Of course, I’ll be there.” Unlike the majority of students, who were being dropped off by their parents, I arrived alone, having spent the previous week at another international student orientation. Maybe it was only being around women, or maybe it was because our residence was an actual house. During my tour of Smith, I had been told that the sixty or so residents of my house and I would eat meals together, watch movies together, and work on community service projects together. That evening at the house meeting, as I looked around at the women gathered in a large circle, I noticed how different we all were. There were women in dresses and makeup, and women in Doc Martens and leather jackets. After introductions snaked their way around the room, residents began breaking off into smaller groups, chatting with the people around them.
All the women of Capen were fast friends, though. A place where no one batted an eye at a baby-faced blonde slamming a Jäger shot, or a Muslim nursing a vodka cranberry, or the two of them belting out “Little Red Corvette” at karaoke night. I wanted one after the other after the other, I wanted it breezy and light and fast. But gay women presented a different challenge. During parents’ weekend, I saw women walking with their mom or dad, holding hands with their girlfriends. When I saw other students hosing down the sidewalk—cleaning off chalkings from Pride celebrations of National Coming Out Day—before parents weekend, I felt validated. But away from my family and culture, nothing seemed as certain as this: I was an Arab Muslim woman. Surely at Smith College, I thought, a place where inclusivity was the rule and acceptance was a given, I could be all three—an Arab, Muslim, But my first Ramadan in the United States turned out to be especially meaningful; it was strangely gratifying to summon the discipline to fast in a land that didn’t cater to my fasting.
I had learned about the Muslim Student Association at Smith during the international student orientation. Refreshing, too, I thought, to be around people to whom I didn’t have to explain the very concept of iftar, the way I could talk to my gay friends about certain things that only they understood. The Muslim student group met on Wednesdays on the first floor of a nearby house, a short walk across campus from my dorm. I found them in the living room, looking familial and cozy on couches and love seats, about a dozen women in an uneven circle. I recognized one of the women from the international student orientation. I had seen the leader of the group, a hijab-wearing Pakistani woman named Amina, in Dee-Ann’s dorm room; they were both head residents. It wasn’t hard to figure out; somehow, through Dee-Ann or some other kind of social osmosis, Amina knew that I was gay. All of these women were so different—some veiled, some not; some in Western clothes, others in Muslim tunics; some with olive skin, some with brown—they were all welcome here. On the walk home through a now-dark campus, I thought about the bismillah, the most important phrase in Islam, the words we say before we pray, or eat, or do good deeds: Bismillah al-rahman al-raheem.