Molasses and Mirrors: A Journey to Self

Jehan Loza

When I was five, my mother took me by the hand, knelt on one knee and asked, “Gigi, why aren’t you responding to roll call?”

I gazed into her honey-coloured eyes, almost seeing my molasses-coloured ones reflecting at me. 

She was beautiful, my mum, with her round face and soft pale skin. 

“The envy of many a woman,” the village women said, before looking at me with a slight shake of the head. “Not at all like her mother. Her skin is too dark, and those eyes…” They clicked their tongues. 

“The colour of molasses,” my almost-teenaged uncle once said of my eyes. “Yuck,” he added, his face scrunching as if tasting something bitter. 

His words plunged, like a knife, into my chest. 

I stitched myself back together in the knowing that my mother loved molasses. I closed my eyes and, searching for her, found her in the kitchen spooning mouthfuls of the black syrup straight from the jar.

“Here, I’ll make you a sandwich,” she said, licking her lips as she lathered a piece of flatbread with the sticky stuff, rolling it up and handing it to me with a kiss on the forehead. 

“Gigi, why aren’t you responding to your teacher when she calls your name?” she asked again. 

“She never calls my name, Mama.” I complained. “She says everyone else’s name, but never calls out, Gigi.”

My mother let out a rambunctious laugh. “That’s because your name is Jehan, silly. Gigi is what we call you; it’s not your real name,” she said, still catching her breath.

I accepted her explanation without question, and the next morning, when my teacher called my “real” name at roll call, I raised my hand. 

But back home, I remained Gigi – a name wrapped in the warmth of my mother’s affection, as soft and comforting as her embrace. 

It would be this way for several more years. 

In July 1977, as Australia’s multicultural policies were being written, I arrived in Melbourne as an almost seven-year-old with my family. My passport said ‘Jehan’, but my parents, unaware of Australian norms, enrolled me in school as Gigi.

“Say good morning, Gigi,” my teacher prompted on my first day. It was a gusty winter’s day, and my mother had dressed me in a pair of brown ADIDAS tracksuit pants that were too big, and a matching sweatshirt that was too small, both chosen carefully from the bag of clothes donated to us by the Red Cross.

A bunch of white skinned, rosy-cheeked Grade One kids sat cross-legged before me, their blue eyes pricking me like pins, making me aware of my very different, molasses-coloured ones. 

Yuk. My uncle’s words lunged at me, the scar they left on my chest pulsing.

“Good morning, Gigi,” the kids said in robotic unison. 

I imaged them whispering about the molasses in my eyes.

That lunch time I sat alone on the edge of the schoolyard, straddling a forgotten log.

“Dirty Wog,” an orange-haired boy spat my way and, though I did not know the meaning of the words, they came at me with such force they winded me, leaving a dull ache in my stomach.

The next day, and for what seemed like endless days that followed, I clung to my log. From my perch, with wide eyes, I studied the other kids. 

Could I ever become one of them? I wondered, making metal notes of my observations: See how the girls giggle as they swing from those metal bars, how they wear skirts and tie their hair in little tails and how their lunches consist of neat slices of white bread with thin fillings. Always an apple, never cucumber.

At home, I overturned my drawers, yanking out every skirt and dress, arranging them in neat piles. The next morning, I wore a skirt and sweatshirt. As my mother tied my hair into pigtails, I stared in the mirror, pleased with my reflection.

“Two thin pieces of bread, Mum, with the mortadella in between. No cucumber,” I said, schooling her on the art of sandwich making. 

I skipped to school, confident in my new creation, cheeks aching from smiling so much. 

Then, my teacher opened The Ugly Duckling and began to read the story of a black duckling so ugly no one wanted to claim it. I felt a dozen blue eyes burrowing a hole into the back of my head. 

This time, I swear I heard them whisper about my ugliness. I swallowed my smile along with the lump rising in my throat.

“Gigi,” said Donna, the prettiest and kindest girl in my class, “do you want to play kiss chasey?”

I looked up from my writing book, where I’d been perfecting the letter G.

Of all the games, this was the one I had been watching from the sidelines, longing to be one of those girls being chased by one of those boys. 

“Me?” My heart thudded, surprised someone like her would invite someone like me into their world. 

That lunchtime, I ran with all my might across the schoolyard, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds, hoping to see Jim chasing me.

“He might chase me tomorrow,” I thought, drifting off to sleep.

But just before lunchtime the next day, with my stomach flipping in anticipation, Jim pointed at me and, to the entire class, said, “I’m not playing with her. She’s a nigger.”

His words landed like a punch I didn’t see coming. For a moment, the world around me blurred, my ears ringing as if I’d been struck. 

When Miss Sullivan looked at me with eyes brimming with pity and said nothing, I knew nigger meant something dirty.

They’re right, I thought, trying to focus on my workbook, though distracted by the imagined fleas crawling on my skin. 

I began to see myself the way they saw me.

I was eight.

When I was ten, crouched on all fours playing hide-and-seek in the library, Mr. Walsh startled me from behind. “Are you pretending to be a gee-gee, Gigi?”

I tilted my head, confused like when my mother asked why I wasn’t responding to roll call.

“Don’t you know what a gee-gee is?” His awkward smile stretched across his freckled, pink face. “It’s a horse. Are you pretending to be a gee-gee horse?”

Laughter erupted around me.

“Gee-gee horse,” someone mimicked, and a wave of shame crashed over me, burning my ears.

I stood up slowly, and as I did, it hit me – I must have looked like a horse, crouched there with my brown skin and frizzy black hair, hanging down my back like a mane.

When I was twelve, we moved suburbs. I changed my name.

“Jehan Loza,” I said to the woman filling out the enrolment form.

“How do I spell that?” she asked, without looking up.

At dinner, I told my parents, “Don’t call me Gigi anymore. It’s not Australian.”

My father nodded in appreciation. “Did you know you were named after President Sadat’s wife?” he said, nostalgia creeping into his voice.

“His wife is beautiful, just like you,” my mother added. “In Arabic, Jehan means beautiful flower.”

Later, I stood before my mirror, trying to find that flower. But all I could see were the roots of a weed: a Wog, a Nigger, a horse with molasses-coloured eyes.

“Yuck,” I muttered. “An ugly duckling that doesn’t belong.”

“Yohun,” A boy called out one day, trying to pronounce the words someone had chalked on the back of my sweater.

“It’s Jehan,” said my friend, Jane.

It was the mid-eighties. Multiculturalism was gaining force, and my friends were trying to embrace this new world of difference. 

“Yehan, Johanna, Yohanna, Yohan, Juhan,” they fumbled. “Where are you from?”

I am Australian, I wanted to shout, but I answered. “I am Egyptian.”

They oohed and aahed, as though I were an exotic specimen. In their multicultural delirium, they teased, “Do you walk like an Egyptian?”

Which was worse? I wondered: the colour of my skin and horse-like name, or the exotic, unpronounceable strangeness of my identity? Either way, my identity seemed immutably etched into my skin and attached to my name. 

I can never be like them. 

This irreconcilable difference causes me to rage until one day it erupts. 

“Fuck you,” I say to a teacher, storming out of class. The words surprise me as much as they surprise her.  

“Actually, fuck you all,” I mutter, storming off to the toilet for a secret cigarette.

Later that day, I am still simmering with agitation and turn to a male friend. “Go fuck yourself!” I say, and God, it feels good.

“You’re a loud-mouthed bitch,” he shoots back. 

I swallow those words whole, letting them mold, shape, and define me.

For years, I carry them like a badge of honor.

Finally, I have a voice.

But I know that words don’t erase the pain of not belonging.

“I wish I was like you. You’re so strong, so beautiful,” Jane says, catching me off guard, causing me to choke on my rissole roll.

“What the fuck?”

“You do swear too much, though,” she adds, with a grin.

I am nearly sixteen.

Back in front of my mirror, I study the face looking back at me. 

A beautiful flower. Is it possible? I ask my reflection, in disbelief.

“Jehan, the beautiful, loud-mouthed and strong!” I declare and burst into laughter.

In a country where multiculturalism has woven into the fabric of its society, I’ve come to realize that identity is never static. It’s shaped by the names we are given and the ones we choose for ourselves, by the histories we carry, and the cultures that surround us.

Like a flower, I’ve grown and shed old petals, making room for the new.

My name may still be hard to pronounce, but my skin has been embraced by diversity and kissed gently by loved ones. And like molasses, my essence remains sweet, thick with history, and unwavering.

I keep a jar of it in my pantry, a reminder of the sweetness that has always been mine – even when neither I nor others could see it.

My flower keeps evolving, and as it does, I discover new names for my being:

Fighter, survivor.

Compassionate, curious, passionate.

Mother, friend. 

Lover.

I am Jehan Loza.

I am all the names I have ever been.