This, the tour guide reported, was where gay people fought back against yet another police raid, igniting weeks of protests and kick-starting a movement that demanded the end of persecution based on sexual orientation. I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or disappointed that I had missed the celebrations by a few months. She ended up being one of my only friends at HWS that didn’t graduate from a New England prep school. During orientation, I joined the small contingent of international students in a meeting to fill out all the necessary government documentation to legally reside in the United States during the next four years. To me, Americans were Americans. “Aren’t I Asian?” “You are not Asian, you are white.” Apparently, whatever government agency created this form didn’t realize there were tens of millions of people living in the Middle East and northern Africa. As I walked around the activities fair, where all the clubs and student groups on campus gathered to recruit new members, I couldn’t help but notice similar divisions. There were clubs for international students, Black students, and Latin American students. There was even a club for gay and lesbian students (at the time known as LGB students). I didn’t pray. On the night before they left for Jordan, my parents asked me to bring some of my suitemates to their rented lake house, where they would cook a Middle Eastern feast for us. Later, when I realized that I had moved to a town that didn’t contain a bite of authentic Middle Eastern food, I would curse myself for not savoring that dinner more.
A few days later, Kevin didn’t so much introduce himself as appear beside me Steve came from money; Kevin didn’t. But they were two of only a handful of out men, so they stuck together or were stuck together; it didn’t really matter which.) For those few hours, it felt possible that being gay didn’t have to feel secret and shameful, that in fact it could be a part of my life other people could appreciate and enjoy. Kevin and Steve weren’t too impressed with Ithaca’s nightlife and soon planned a trip for us to New York City. For so long I had thought I was the only one with these feelings; how strange and liberating it was to be in rooms full of people just like me. I could dance and smile and flirt with any girl in the bar, didn’t have to imagine the boy I was dancing with in a skirt or makeup to make him more feminine. My suitemates couldn’t fully appreciate the magic of the gay bar, and my classmates didn’t seem half as enamored of the privilege that our classes provided us—a space to ask questions and voice our opinions without fear.
We, teachers and students, knew better than to criticize the Jordanian government, for example, or to discuss the social issues that were pervasive in our country and region. Outside of school, I had been taught that the blue stripes on the Israeli flag, for instance, represented the Nile and the Euphrates, and the white space represented all of the land in between, land the Jews would take for their own if given the opportunity. In school, my textbooks didn’t even show Israel on the map. I was the only non-Jewish student in the class. I didn’t want to know the answer. “Boring?” “I mean, it conflicts with my schedule.” “Mm-hm.” I was realizing she wasn’t going to sign the form if I didn’t tell the truth. And she didn’t. The class didn’t end up changing my perspective, but it made me more aware of nuances and other sides to a story. (“It’s a small country in the Middle East, sandwiched between Iraq and Israel/Palestine.”) And it quickly became apparent that if my classmates thought about the Middle East at all, their impressions had been shaped by either the Gulf War or some movie like Lawrence of Arabia.
With the two humps, it’s more comfortable—you can relax and don’t have to hold on too tight.” Other fibs I told about the Middle East weren’t as playful, like when Vanessa asked about how gay people were treated in Jordan. Thankfully, Vanessa didn’t question this brazen understatement, sparing me from having to talk about—or dwell on—my still uncertain future. One of the school’s gay professors was attacked on National Coming Out Day; he walked into class the next day with two black eyes. And then there were the academics, which didn’t feel particularly challenging. Once, I sat low in my seat, blushing as my writing professor wondered aloud to the class how the Jordanian student had managed to write a better English paper than kids who grew up only speaking English. That there, I would find the diversity I obviously craved—of ideas, of international students, of women who cared about the things I did.