Spiritual Edge contributor Hana Baba remembers what it was like to grow up black, African and Muslim in this piece published in Patheos.
My parents must have felt this confusion, because that’s when they decided we would be going to Sudan a LOT more frequently. That a Sudanese identity would blend all these parts of me, of my world. That knowing my family, my lineage, culture and experiencing the warm dirt, hot tea, and the smell of the Nile River – would show me who I am. That seeing my OWN Muslim community was important- the Sufis whirling at Hamad al-Neel, the Prophetic Madeeh sung by men and women, the Mawlid, the sound of the Azan in Sudanese intonation. Experiences through which my identity would be solidified and not ‘majah-jah’, which is a Sudanese word I have yet to find an English translation for. It’s a sense of being neither here nor there. That, my parents decided, would not be my fate.
