How I built confidence within my South-indian muslim heritage by Hanaa Haleem

How I built confidence within my South-indian muslim heritage by Hanaa Haleem

For the majority of middle school, I dreaded each India trip. Wearing kurtas, stuck in the sticky heat with annoying cousins, and judgy relatives everyday for TWO MONTHS? Yup, there was no way I actually wanted to do this every single year.

The relatives I was stuck with passed down many generational traumas. Since I was only 12, I couldn’t stand them repeatedly telling me to wear the hijab to cover up, even though my outfits were not even that bad. And kurtas (traditional wear) — there was no way I would ever want to be SEEN wearing those.

This is the mindset I kept for 6th and 7th grade, which just made each trip feel even worse. Although I began to feel prettier in Hijab in 8th grade and looked forward to wearing traditional dresses, I still dreaded each India trip. I could not stand having to play with my younger cousins the entire time. The first word that came to my mind was “BORING” each time they were mentioned; I just wanted to get away from them. However, my recent three-week trip changed all of that. I was already burnt out from taking the chem course (endless studying each day), meaning that I no longer wanted to study in India just to use as an excuse to not play with my cousins. All I wanted to do was romanticize each aspect and moment of this trip. I wanted to LEARN my culture, appreciate it, enjoy it, and make it my entire identity. 

Instead of getting mad at my cousin each time she just wanted to sit next to me while I studied/watched movies, I offered to play various games with her, do the silly dances she dreamed of, help her with her homework, and make her appreciate her culture and religion even more. Sadly, I only had three weeks to do all that with her. I never expected that I would actually tear up during the train ride from my hometown  to Chennai (the city I always look forward to going to during the vacation). My mother’s house there deep down holds the times in which I was insecure of my culture, but also the times I appreciated it, meaning that I will never forget what I used to be in order to form my current self.