Neither here nor there
A feeling you can’t put into words, an identity you can’t name
May 29, 2026 | story by Noor Sukkar
illustrations by Delia Rose Sauer
This story is from Atrium’s Spring 2026 magazine, which released April 2026.
“Did you spill any secrets when you got your wisdom teeth out?”
I hit send before hiding my phone between my textbook and my laptop. I’m 16, sitting on the kitchen counter and staring at my AP Chemistry homework. My mother lies in her bedroom a few feet away. I can’t focus; I’m getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow.
“I can’t remember, why?” my friend replies.
“You’re the only person I know who’s out, so I’m trusting you when I say I may be bi-curious,” I write.
If I’m going under, I cannot come out. With my mother sitting in the same room, my teeth won’t be the only thing I’d lose.
“Thanks for trusting me with that,” she responds. “I think you’ll be OK.”
I can’t just think, I need to know. But I have no way of being sure –– whether I’m gay or whether the anesthesia will numb the pain or worsen it.
I only know one queer Arab through the family friend grapevine: Nada Ayyash. After years of “doing things very boy-like,” Nada thought, “there’s no way she [their mother] doesn’t know.” Almost a year ago, their mother interrogated them regarding their gender expression and sexuality.
“Look at my baby photos … I’m wearing jerseys. I’m wearing sports. I’m wearing snapbacks. It’s all there,” they told her.
A pansexual, non-binary identity in an Arab household wasn’t acceptable.
“I basically don’t have a daughter anymore,” their mother said.
Unwelcome and disowned, Nada hasn’t spoken to her since.
I could suffer the same fate. The hypothetical cycled in my thoughts as I sat in the dentist’s office.
“We’re just going to numb your gums,” the dentist said. “We don’t put patients under for the procedure here.”
Thank god for the New York City healthcare system.
I swallow the bloody saliva of truth.
The motherland
Every summer, my mother, sister and I packed half of our belongings to fly to Amman, Jordan. We would practice our Arabic, roam the streets of the underdeveloped city and down unholy amounts of hummus.
We attended dozens of “3azoomehs,” or social gatherings, where we’d feast, dance and play. We foraged through wooden closets stuffed with our clothes. My mother narrowed our options down to “conservative clothing.” Our jean shorts and tank tops collected dust in Florida, despite the scorching Amman summers. Frustrated, I realized being Arab coincided with being Muslim.
“It’s 3ayb,” my mother scolded us anytime we wished for our normal clothes. She often resorted to using the Arabic word meaning “shame.” It’s a quick response to enforce cultural norms, a word stronger than “no.”
At a 3azoomeh, I could tell which family member was which based on their signature dish, whether it was rice-stuffed eggplant or mansaf, a Jordanian dish made from lamb or goat cooked in a fermented dried yogurt sauce.
Before being rewarded with a mouth-watering dinner, I had to answer a series of questions successfully.
“How’s your dad doing?” Answer wisely.
“You’ve gotten chubbier.” Swallow your truth.
“What’s new in the states?” Respond selectively.
In the corner of our eyes, my mother sent us signals. A glistening smile of confidence if we responded correctly. A bold stare if what we said was 3ayb. Between our broken Arabic accents and our frozen expressions, we heard the same joke every year: “These kids are definitely American.”
For Arabs like my family, being a cultural hybrid involves blending our ancestral culture with American culture to create new, distinct identities. It manifests in a combined language, music, cuisine and social practices pieced together. The phenomenon is so widespread that researchers from Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia published a study giving it a name: bicultural identities. It can feel like a negotiation between inherited traditions and the experiences of living in a new homeland.
But, which one is my homeland?
Foreign flavors, familiar feelings
Mouth full of Andes mints, I’m surrounded by addicts inside a Culver’s in my college town of Gainesville, Florida. We just got out of a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Seated like children in a school cafeteria, we exchange random pieces of our lives.
“So, Noor, where is that name from?” someone asks me.
“It’s Arabic,” I say. “I’m Arab.”
She proceeds to list dishes she loves that may or may not originate in the Middle East. I scrape at the bottom of my cup, yearning for the minty flavor to linger as I mistake her curiosity for ignorance.
“You know, I think it’s stupid that people don’t like mint ice cream because they say it tastes like toothpaste,” I interrupt.
I wonder if their grandmas’ grocery lists regularly included fresh mint.
“Dude, I love mint,” she says. “Some Brazilian dishes I’ve had, they like put it in like everything.”
Well, I guess for every Jidda in the states, there’s an Abuela.
I smile and look up from my cup.
“My grandma would make black tea with mint all the time,” I say.
The others’ eyebrows furrow.
“Exactly!” she agrees.
My disdain, my isolation, dissolves like the last taste of mint on my tongue.
My provocation was merely an attempt at connection.
A double consciousness
My younger sister and I slurp the last of our Shirley Temples in a booth over from the adults’ table, where clouds of smoke puff out between gossip and Arab slang. My mother’s eyes bat toward us, a wordless warning to behave. My dad watches the Miami Heat game on the flat-screen TV inside his buddy’s Mediterranean restaurant. He passes off the hookah pipe as the commercial break comes on.
The restaurant lights go dim, and the sparkle of a belly dancer’s bedazzled bra catches my eye. The familiar beat of a Tableh accompanied by shakers reverberates against her hips. “Shik Shak Shok” is turned up on the speakers, my favorite.
Only several years old, I stare in awe, ready to shake my hips the moment she notices me. My youthful eyes admire her sultry gaze, and my mother hands me a dollar bill. I slip the bill into the crevice the dancer makes accessible to me. My cheeks burn when she smiles at me.
These nights were regular weekend routines for a while, a manifestation of the Arab culture I knew. The smoke, the shish kabobs, the seduction. A third space between Amman, Jordan and Hollywood, Florida.
Who am I?
I stand by the Shake Smart at the University of Florida’s student union. I have 20 minutes to wake myself up before my three-hour evening class. As I scroll on Instagram, I’m interrupted by two women decorated in floral dresses.
“I love your hair!” one of them exclaims.
I thank them with a smile and am met with an invitation to their Bible study.
Their energy is too pure to shrug off.
I let them finish their pitch before I respond, “Thank you, but I stand firmly in my belief in Islam.”
Where’d that come from? Do I?
Their smiles don’t waver as one of them asks, “And what does that practice look like for you?”
I don’t know. I just am who I am.
The frog in my throat no longer croaks; it leaps out of my mouth as I explain my existence.
“I believe faith is an individual practice, and I like to practice spirituality outside of the culture of organized institutions of religion,” I say. A revelation I have faith in something above all else.
They nod and offer another invitation in case I ever find myself curious. I thank them, wishing them luck in spreading their faith as they leave.
“For Noor?” The Shake Smart employee sets my shake down at the pickup counter.
With a salivating appetite and a satiated soul, I savor the sweet, refreshing treat.
