ty-ing it all together: remembering saadia

By Ty Jalal

October 26, 2005: I first met Saadia a few months after I arrived in Morocco. One of the maids in my in-laws' house had left suddenly and they had gone to their farm outside of Casablanca to ask the caretakers there if anyone knew of a reliable girl who could fill in for a while. Someone knew someone who knew someone who had a strong, hard-working daughter who wasn't getting married anytime soon.

So Saadia returned with them. She quickly proved herself to be just as hard-working as my in-laws had been told. She was strong as an ox, and flexed to show off her muscles. She got along well with the other maid. She was an excellent cook. And so she stayed.

She and I hit it off almost instantly. I spent a lot of my time in Morocco befriending various household and factory workers, since I was extremely uncomfortable with the class stratification and considered myself much more working class than upper class, despite my education and the apparent privileges of even a lower-middle class American background. But with Saadia I felt there was even more of a connection. We understood each other, even through broken Arabic and lots of mime.

Shortly after she got to the house and was told she could stay on permanently, Saadia and the other maid were trimming each other's hair and she decided to experiment with her new-found freedom from her own parents. She chopped off all the hair in the front, leaving the mandatory ponytail in back. She trimmed the front and sides as close as she could get them. She showed me, running her hand over the top, and said "Look, like a man!" She beamed. Every few weeks, she'd trim it again and repeat the exclamation. I'd just smile at her. I understood. But I also wasn't comfortable enough with my own masculine tendencies to put words to it, to ask her what it was about looking "like a man" that made her grin like that. I was 18 and newly married and trying my hardest to be the dignified woman everyone kept telling me I should be.

Saadia insisted she was 16, but I had a hard time believing her. She seemed wise beyond her years, more sure of herself than any 16 year old I'd ever known. Where the other maid was still figuring herself out, realizing she had some agency in her own life, Saadia knew herself. She knew what she wanted. When people asked her when she was going to get married-16 being the right age for a girl of her class and culture to start thinking about that-she'd laugh and say "never." She knew what she was allowed to have and she knew what she could get, if she persisted. For example, it wasn't uncommon for the maids in that house to ask for items they could never buy, if they thought you were ready to part with it. They'd see a pretty shirt you'd lost interest in and ask for it, or ask for your old shoes when you bought new ones. It made me sad, because I wished I had the money to buy them all new things. Saadia didn't ask often, but when she did, she would keep asking until she'd persuaded me. She never wanted the pretty blouses or the high heeled shoes.

But she begged me for a multi-pocket khaki vest that I'd brought with me as a relic of my more androgynous teen years. I never wore it; she knew that. And so she didn't understand why I didn't want to give it up. So she kept asking and asking until finally it was hers.

She didn't have much materially to share with me, but she gave in other ways. When I was expecting my first child and was sick with "morning sickness" that lasted all day, she was the one that noticed I was losing weight rapidly, that I was getting weaker and sicker as the first months dragged on. My husband would leave for work early in the morning, retuning at lunch time and chide me for not eating, then he'd leave again and return at dinner time and insist I sit at the table even if I couldn't eat. The rest of the family took the attitude that I'd eat if I was hungry, and no one ever offered anything but the oily, traditional meals they'd prepared that I couldn't hold down. Saadia plagued me with questions: Did I want her to bring me some tagine (the traditional Moroccan stew)? Would I eat tuna? Bread? Cheese? Eggs? Finally, she discovered that I'd eat eggs if she brought them too me first thing in the morning. And so she did; every morning, after she had already mopped the whole house, done the wash, made breakfast for the rest of the family, she would bring me a cheese omelette, bread and coffee. Even with that sustenance, I weighed less at 9 months pregnant than I had when my pregnancy started. I can't imagine how I-or my son-would have survived without Saadia's insistence on feeding me.

After my son was born, I brought him back to the United States on a visit. When I returned, Saadia had left. She'd gone home for the weekend to visit her family and never came back. I kept waiting for her to return. She never did.

Years later, after I'd divorced and moved back to the United States with my son, I returned for a visit to Morocco so that my young son could see his father. On a fluke, Saadia chose a day during my visit to reappear from the abyss she'd dropped into. She dropped by my ex-husband's apartment to see us, having no idea I'd divorced and moved back to the States.
I was overjoyed to see her. We embraced like the long-lost friends we were.

She told me about her job, as a nanny. She still wasn't married and had no plans to marry.

Yet she looked different. In an embroidered jellaba, the traditional outer dress worn by Moroccan women of all classes, and shoes with heels, she looked like a mature young woman. Her hair was long and held back in a twist with a shiny barrette. She wore earrings, kohl on her eyes and a discreet shade of lipstick. Every trace of the tomboy I knew had been erased.

I asked her how old she was now.

"23," she replied. My age exactly. She had no reason to lie about her age anymore, but I remembered that she had once said she was two years my junior. At 18, when I'd known her before, she'd already been an adult. The tomboy I knew was not just a juvenile incarnation of the young woman she'd become. I didn't understand what had changed her, what had made her conform so much to standards of femininity she'd once mocked.

When she was leaving, I hugged her and said, "I hope I see you again. But without all this makeup and feminine stuff."

"What? Do you want me to have no life?"
I just hugged her again.

Years later, when I began transitioning, I thought of her constantly. In this country, in this culture, she would have been considered some kind of transgendered person. Maybe she'd use the word "genderqueer." Maybe "trans butch." Or maybe "FTM." It's impossible to say because this wasn't her country or her culture. In her culture, she was simply a woman, held to the same expectations as every woman. Here, even if her family saw things so simply, eventually she'd realize she had choices.

For her, the choice was very simple. To have a life, or not.

Ty Jalal is a female-to-male (FTM) transgendered man. He lives in the United States with his children. He has been a practicing Muslim for 18 years. Reach him via info@huriyahmag.com

Published on btm on October 26, 2005