As queer people, many of us resent our parents – for Amrou Al-Kadhi, re-writing their mother’s narrative was an act of forgiveness
"In my late 20s, after years of minimal contact, I finally confronted my mother about her severe reactions to my sexuality and gender transgressions - and what I learned blew me away" writes our columnist
After not speaking for a long time, my mother and I decided to meet up to hash out decades of turmoil. She had long held a deep aversion to my sexuality and my being a drag queen, and home life was tumultuous and devastating. In my late 20s, after years of minimal contact, I finally confronted my mother about her severe reactions to my sexuality and gender transgressions. What she confessed blew me away: “Do you know what I have had to suffer because I am a woman? Being a woman is hell. And you, my special Amoura, with your special brain, choose to dress like a woman, even though you are lucky enough to be a man? I don’t understand it.”
I had forever perceived her rejection of me and my lifestyle as a form of hatred — pure, unadulterated homophobia. It’s sometimes easier for us to position those who have hurt us as pure evil — it robs their actions of nuance; it simplifies the narrative in a way that our brains can compartmentalise and make sense of.
Perhaps this flattening of the truth is a coping mechanism. It’s a binary emotional response that keeps things black and white. But when I heard my mother’s response, I began to see that her treatment of me was not born out of hatred, but jealousy and resentment. Her entire life, she had been corseted by the expectations of femininity, and her womanhood was a duty she felt pressured by. When she witnessed her son find freedom in a femininity she had long felt ensnared by, she was consumed with a fiery jealousy.
“My expression was a repudiation of her restriction”
My mother is a woman who played by the rules her whole life — she felt religiously, culturally and societally bound to do so. As a result, she hasn’t had as much autonomy as she deserved — and nothing like the opportunities I’ve been blessed with. I imagine that seeing her son break all the rules that she believed were immovable, and then to find an individuality and freedom in doing so, felt like a judgement on her entire life’s decisions. My expression was a repudiation of her restriction, and she responded out of resentment. A trauma response.
I am in no way excusing some of the things that were done and said to me growing up, and they have left their unwelcome scars; the point I am making is that only judging the action can obscure the truth behind it. We live in a scary world where lots of horrific things happen.
For me, attempting to understand the trauma behind behaviours I disapprove of allows me to move past a reading of things as ‘evil or good’. It has helped me find forgiveness within my own family, and to form relationships and friendships with people whose viewpoints contrast from mine. Of course, no one should have to surround themselves with behaviours or attitudes they find totally detrimental to their wellbeing, and there are unquestionably actions by people in this world that can only be met with contempt.
But as a professional screenwriter, this perspective has also helped me to never write a character as a ‘villain’ or to explore emotion through a moral framework. Instead, I’ve found it more worthwhile to investigate the trauma fuelling the actions of characters that I would otherwise judge, and to always search for the emotional truth.
And on a broader level, this way of thinking has helped me move through this world less in a state of defensiveness, and more in a mode of empathy, searching for the good, even when it feels most elusive.
This article originally appeared in Attitude issue 359, which is available to download and order in print now and via our app.