Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Saira (We Are Lady Parts)

 

*Saira-related spoilers.*

I love seeing wildly different autistic-coded characters just click onscreen. Aziraphale & Crowley, Ted & Beard, Elphaba & Galinda. On paper, they seem like they’d drive each other bonkers, but you see them together, and somehow, it just works. That’s what Saira and Amina are like on We Are Lady Parts.

I’ve already talked about Amina, my dorky, anxious, fluttery beloved. One of the show’s chief joys is watching her address her struggles and fight through them to become radically, beautifully herself. Through that, she gets a lot of help from Saira, who’s also deeply flawed and struggling but in almost entirely opposite ways.

If Amina is nervous and indecisive, Saira is intense and driven. She eats, sleeps, and dreams Lady Parts—not just the band itself, but her vision of what the band represents. She’s penned a manifesto about what they stand for, and even as she wrestles to achieve her various ambitions for the band, she doesn’t want to deviate from her ideals. Whether it’s preparing for a big audition or trying to earn enough cash to pay for studio time, her bandmates are sometimes unable to reach her through her single-minded focus. It’s always the band. Everything else comes second.

That intensity extends to her decision at the start of the series that their sound is missing a lead guitarist. Regardless of what Bisma, Ayesha, or Momtaz think of that, Saira has made her mind up: she needs a lead guitarist. The guitarist auditions are a wash? She’s undeterred. Reconnecting with Amina makes Saira decide that she’s the one, even though she hasn’t heard Amina play since primary school. Amina doesn’t want to be in the band because she has crippling stage fright and gets violently ill if she tries to perform in public? Doesn’t matter—Saira’s sure she can find a way around that.

Saira reminds me a little of the Twelfth Doctor in that she does the caring thing more often than she says the caring thing. She’s prickly and guarded, and her cold fury isn’t something to be messed with. She’s not all that good with touchy-feely stuff or vulnerability, and that can come back to bite her—a big part of why her relationship with Abdullah falls apart is because she simply can’t admit how much she likes him and wants to have him in her life. Yes, she frequently puts the band before him, and that’s a factor, but when he tries to get close to her, she goes cold or freezes instead of opening up. We’re talking about a woman who flicks her casual guy’s nose as a way of declaring them an “official” couple.

But despite her spiky demeanor, Saira is actually very loving. She has a difficult relationship with her mother and has never recovered after losing her sister to cancer, but her bandmates are her family. It’s something she builds for them. In season 1, she never stops trying to help Amina overcome her stage fright—not just because she wants Amina in the band, but because she knows the band is good for Amina and Amina deserves to let herself be heard. She supports her band sisters and wants them to be the best versions of themselves, whatever that might look like. It’d be easy to look at Saira and think she’s just bad with people, like her completely awkward exchanges with her superfan Taifa in season 2, but really, the circle of people she’s comfortable with is just very small. Even if she isn’t a soft person and being vulnerable is hard for her, she badly wants to show up for the people she cares about.

Relationship Spotlight: Saira & Amina (We Are Lady Parts)

*Amina-Saira-related spoilers.*

It’s been a while since I reviewed We Are Lady Parts. We’re still waiting on series 2, but in the meantime, I wanted to revisit the central relationship between Amina and Saira, one of the best parts of an excellent show.

On the surface level, they couldn’t be more different. Amina is precise and a little prissy, a neat hijabi who’s dedicated to her studies and is anxious to get married while also dreaming of a love story worthy of an old movie. She has a life plan and isn’t prepared to accept any deviations from that path, even as she recognizes that she doesn’t quite mesh with her precise, prissy friends. Amina wants something more, but she often feels too timid to go after it.

Saira, meanwhile, is the opposite of timid. She’s surly and spiky, doing whatever she wants and not looking to anyone for permission or approval. She embodies the punk philosophy of the band she fronts, bold and unapologetic in everything she does. She’s seeing someone but holds him at arm’s length—even Saira craves and needs connection, she feels the need to act like she doesn’t, not allowing herself to be vulnerable in front of others.

In short, they’re pastels and black. Frills and a spiked collar. A simper and a snarl. But when Saira sees Amina, she knows that the prim, fussy guitarist is exactly what they need to complete their sound. Amina has paralyzing stage fright to the point that she can’t perform in public, preferring to stay behind the scenes coaching her young guitar students, but Saira is undeterred by Amina’s tendency to throw up when she’s in front of an audience. Knowing that Amina would never come to an audition of her own volition, Saira schemes to convince her in another way.

From the very start, there’s friction. Amina doesn’t want to want to be in the band, both because of her stage fright and because of her concerns that being in a punk band, even an all-female Muslim one, would be improper. But after she agrees to join, she quickly rubs her bandmates the wrong way by getting judgy about their lyrics and song subjects. Her waffling attitude constantly aggravates Saira.

Incredibly, though, the Saira who’s averse to all things soft and vulnerable refuses to give up on Amina. When Amina questions the propriety of having a song called “Voldemort Under My Headscarf,” Saira keeps Ayesha from biting her head off and tries to explain the defiant, ironic bent of the song. When the other bandmates question Amina’s ability to perform, Saira continually stands up for her. When Amina risks missing an important band audition, Saira comes to collect her, and when Amina freezes onstage, Saira tries to shake her out of it.

The band isn’t just music to Saira—it’s a way of life. She sees Lady Parts as a way for her and her friends to decide what sort of lives they want as Muslim women, and she wants to show Amina how to be a part of that. Not simply doing things for appearances or to appease others, but doing things because she has a passion for them. Taking up space and being confident, speaking up before the world has a chance to push her down.

Amina feels that early on, but she can’t quite allow her head to believe or accept it. She repeatedly tries to back away, even as she’s floored by the incredible possibilities that the band opens up for her. But as the season goes on, Saira draws her in, helping her with her stage fright and showing her that she gets to decide what being a Muslim woman looks like for her. Amina’s version of that will never look like Saira’s, but that’s okay. She learns how to be herself and not apologize for it, and in turn, her sweet, soft personality keeps Saira from running when things get too real. Saira might at times be positioned as Amina’s punk mentor, but Saira needs Amina too, and over time, the precise, prissy guitarist has a thing or two to teach the surly, spiky frontwoman.