Inside, Aliyah felt relief. But she knew her family would never accept her as a lesbian. She decided she would live two separate lives, one as a lesbian, the other as a devout Muslim daughter.
Aliyah turned 18 in October. Six months later, her father died of heart failure.
Aliyah mourned, weeping into the dark over his death, while feeling thankful he never found out she was gay. Aliyah continued to keep her secret from the rest of the family.
She took a job at a real estate agency operated by a family friend and moved into her own apartment. Aliyah's boss snooped into her life, one day asking if she was a lesbian. Aliyah told her yes. Her boss told her aunt.
Unaware that she had been outed, Aliyah called her aunt. Aliyah remembered her aunt telling her: If you're going to tell me you're a lesbian, I cannot and will not be associated with you. Her aunt hung up. Aliyah sat on the steps outside her apartment, staring at her phone. Not long after, she received an e-mail from her brother saying something similar.
Aliyah left her job. In January 2006, she packed her belongings and headed to northeast Pennsylvania with a friend from the LGBT center.
'It firmly states in the Koran: 'Ye without faults will be replaced. But those that commit sin, repent,' " says Aliyah, sitting on a shaded patch of grass in Manhattan's Union Square one afternoon. It is her day off as a security guard. Since returning to New York in September 2007, she has been living meagerly.
"Allah doesn't want you to be perfect," she continues, pulling on blades of grass. "He doesn't want you to be without faults, he doesn't want you to be without sin, he just wants you to repent. And if you are without sin, you will be replaced by someone who commits sin."
But is homosexuality a sin?
Aliyah knows the story of the city of Lot in the Koran, which is often pointed to as an argument against homosexuality. "It's the whole story about the city being destroyed because they were gay," she says. It is the same text as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which has been used to condemn homosexuality in Christianity and Judaism.
"I am living an upright life. I try to be charitable," she says. "But who decides what is sin and what is not? It's not for man to decide."
She knows her family would allow her back into their lives if she repented, and renounced her homosexuality.
