"I want to be a part of my family," Aliyah says. "But what is the price that I have to pay? Honestly, I would rather die than go back to that person I was."
One evening in February, Aliyah stops by the LGBT Community Center, which is holding a seminar on hypnosis. She notices a young woman, bundled up in a scarf and coat, walking in front of her to sign in. The clerk asks the woman's name. She replies: Stella.
That's a beautiful name, Aliyah says.
Stella turns to thank her. All Aliyah sees are green eyes. Once inside, Aliyah strikes up a conversation.
Stella Zagori, an artist, is four years older than Aliyah, and grew up in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, moving to the U.S. when she was 14. Stella has known since she was 9 that she was gay. Like Aliyah, during her adolescence she wasn't interested in dating. Where she grew up, being gay was not accepted either.
With each day, their connection deepens. They fall in love.
Two months later, Aliyah decides it is time to pay a visit to her aunt.
It is a gray and drizzly 50-degree morning in April. Aliyah is wearing her black trench coat, a blue collared shirt and a black necktie. Her hair is gelled, and her eyelids are coated in sparkly silver-purple eye shadow. She left home in such a nervous rush that she forgot her cellphone.
The brick building where her aunt lives is down the block from Rockaway Beach. "This is it," Aliyah says, lingering at the front doors. Inside the lobby, she presses the elevator button.
Her aunt's fourth-floor apartment smells like West Indian spices. Her aunt, who has prepared a beef dish, looks shorter and rounder than Aliyah remembers. Her aunt glances at Aliyah, and says she looks like a boy.
Sitting down to eat, her aunt immediately asks if Aliyah has dealt with her problem. Aliyah acts as if she doesn't know what she's talking about.
They hurry through the meal, and Aliyah says she wants to get some air. Her aunt drives her to the boardwalk and parks her blue minivan on a bare wind-swept road. Gusts of sand swirl outside the windows as they sit in tense silence.
Aliyah tells her aunt she is in love with a woman, who is not a Muslim.
Her aunt does not understand. She tells Aliyah she is too intelligent to be gay. It is the influence of the shaitan, she says, the devil.
Aliyah seethes. She realizes she will never change her aunt's mind. She could return, behaving as her family dictates, belonging to a family in which love comes with conditions. But that life is not hers anymore.
