Hair.

Understanding my Bangladeshi Identity and gender expression

ELLIE KURLANDER // FLAT HAT MAGAZINE

“Should I just ... start?”

“Yeah, let’s do this.”

I am nervous but ready.

I squeeze my eyes shut as I used to when I would get shots at the doctor’s, steeling myself.

The flashes of the purple lighting in the room fade and so does the music in the background. Lucy takes the scissors and holds a few locks between her fingers.

Snip.

The earliest memory I have of anyone cutting my hair is my Ma. It was one of those long Midwest summer afternoons, where it seemed like all of time was still. She had spread out a garbage bag on the carpet, picked me up, and sat me down on a stool. I was pouty about the haircut; I thought it was strange because all the girls in school were growing out their hair. She would always cut my hair really short back then, calling them Princess Diana cuts, and parted my hair to the right, humming old Bangla songs and telling me not to fidget. I faced our backyard seeing heat waves dancing on the grass and resigned to ask her about the summers in Bangladesh.

She would always respond,”Oikhane khubi bepsha, nishash naowa jai na.” “Ar ekhane, Amirika te... agun.” [It’s so humid over there that it’s hard to breathe. And here in America... it’s like fire.]

In the avenues of my childhood, I teetered between these two worlds. Bangladesh and the United States.

At school, my sister and I would eat burgers and fries, and when we came back home it was Ma’s rice and curry. I ate with a spoon while everyone else in my family ate with their right hand. As a toddler, I babbed in a half mixture of Bangla and English when speaking to my family. My relatives firmly believed for a while that I was totla, that I had a lisp, because of how indiscernible they found my words. Ma always understood me regardless (and always mixed my rice so that I could properly scoop it up with my spoon). I didn’t believe in the Boogeyman, but I got terrified by tales of Shakchunni, the demon woman with gold bangles. I believed in Santa Claus, but I was worried that he wouldn’t come to our house because we didn’t have a chimney nor a Christmas tree. When I first met my grandma (my Nanu), my sister and I had a hard time reconciling the cookie-baking sweet old ladies we had always heard our friends talk about with this cranky, hardened woman who had red hair dyed by henna and chewed on betel leaf. Yet, she would hold me close whenever there was a thunderstorm or a tornado warning, praying gently and telling me stories. That was better than any cookie. She would go on long walks with us around our neighbourhood, leaving the house bundled in her burqa, and I used to joke she looked like a black crab scuttling around. She would cackle at that when my mom translated my broken Bangla. We would help her up the hill behind our school and we could see corn fields for miles and miles in every direction. That was our whole world at one point. Nanu would tell us the jute fields of her village were better.

My awkward mistakes in English and Bangla were hardly the full extent of our troubles. I remember how Ma would pick me up from school during her 30-minute lunch break and ask–beg– neighbours to babysit me for just a few hours until her or my Baba’s shift was over. She usually got turned down. I think it was in those early years thatI learned what guilt was. I felt guilty that she had to go to such lengths for my sake. I remember how my sister came home crying because they had learned about 9/11 in class and her classmates stared at her as if they had no idea who she was anymore. I once felt proud to show off the patterns of henna that my aunt had put on my arms, like many constellations of red lace. At school, my classmates laughed and said it looked like blood. As I grew older and learned to eat with my right hand, I became more and more aware that I was different in my small town.

Snip, snip.

I still parted my hair to the right when Ma told us we would be moving to Bangladesh for a few years. Up until that point in my life, Bangladesh had felt microscopic, confined to my house and stories that felt as far off as dragons did in the fantasy books I buried myself in. I left behind everything I had ever known but I thought that maybe I would finally feel like I fully belonged somewhere.

The first year there was almost unbearable. I was unused to certain honorifics and customs, and I felt embarrassed of myself. I remember the Bangla teacher whose class I was exempt from asking me, “Tomar Ma, Baba kokhono tomake Bangla shikhaini?”[Your parents never taught you how to read Bangla?] My parents had to work multiple jobs for hours upon hours just to keep food on the table when I was younger; they just didn’t have time during the day to sit with me and my sister and teach us to read and write in an entirely different language. But I didn’t tell her that. Classmates used to tease me about my accent, saying I talked like a “foreigner.” I remember going to a salon and asking if my hair could be cut short and the hairdresser saying, “Meye ra chul boro rakha uchid.”[Girls should grow out their hair.] I didn’t know then why that comment bothered me so much. It was small moments like these that made me feel suffocated.

Yet, so many moments in Bangladesh were beautiful, even with this lingering sense of unease. I made lifelong friends and caught fish in the pond behind my grandparents’ house. I went to see the jute fields Nanu always talked about. I grew to learn more about the side of myself that I was never fully in touch with when I was in the United States. Bangladesh became my second home. I remember asking my friends to help me write a letter to my Ma for Mother’s Day in Bangla. My handwriting ended up being worse than a five-year-old’s (and I assume my spelling too). Yet, Ma had tears in her eyes when she read my letter. She was so proud of me. “Amar mei amar jonno chiti lekhse!” [My daughter wrote a letter for me!]

Her daughter.

It was around that time that I started to feel uncomfortable in my own body, it was as if the word “girl” was caging me. The more I learned about gender, the more confused I became. And I felt as though I was betraying myself by thinking like that. When I moved back to the States, it was deeply rooted in my mind that I was not allowed to be both a girl and more than that — I had to choose between them like the two other facets of my identity, either being Bangladeshi or American. I felt the same guilt from my childhood, as if by being so fractured I was burdening my family.

I’m still navigating some of that guilt today, that sense of not belonging to either part of myself. Years of healing and surrounding myself with people who care about my well-being have helped. Also, a lot of rice. I still trip over my words in Bangla, but I’ve learned how to read and write in it, and I definitely flaunt the henna on my hands. I still sometimes feel like an outsider, even on campus, but I know that I have a right just as much as everyone else to be here. Being queer and Bangladeshi-American feels so heavy to bear some days because of fear. But I also realize how beautiful all of me is–sometimes my identities may feel like they clash with each other, yet they all make up the constellation of my life. They are all authentically (I know Kelly Crace owns that word) me. I’m no longer burning or suffocating, either with being Bangladeshi or American, or queer, but it’s like being half in and half out of water. The best of both worlds, if I want to quote Hannah Montana.

Snip, snip, snip.

That is why I asked my friend Lucy to impulsively cut my hair on a Tuesday night.

I look into the mirror and run my hand through my new cut. I look more androgynous, with my hair being shorter than it’s been since I was five. I can hear Lucy screeching at how good I look, and I smile. I feel more like myself than I have felt in a long while. I also have a call to make, the first step I’m taking to come out to my parents. This time, I part my hair in the middle.

I video call my sister and she runs to my Ma, excited. They’re both flabbergasted, Ma thinking it’s one of those new filters on Messenger. When she realizes that it’s real, she grins (a bit like my Nanu) and says,“Bah, tomake toh onek shundor lagche!”[You look so beautiful!]