The Parable of the Paradox.

When asked to recall my earliest memory, my thoughts go to a particular day in my home in Pakistan. The housing structures there are much larger than that of London, to which I can somewhat proudly profess that we lived in a mansion with a courtyard surrounded by fences and endless amount of space for children to play, maybe too much space to choose from.

In the middle of the courtyard, a frail tree statured and protected by teal blue tiling and going around the tree was a perhaps four-year-old Shahmir, riding a rouge tricycle. On this scorching day, my older brother returned from school which was down the road. He arrived carrying food as always and chucked his rucksack aside and headed towards the tree. I remember speeding up so he wouldn’t get near me. I sped up and screamed telling him to leave me alone and let me have my extravagant cycling session.

At his annoyance, he pursued me around the tree trying to catch me. His weight leaped into the back seat of my tricycle crushing the seat into pieces, causing my teddy bear to rocket into the sky. He found the moment amusing indeed. I did not. I told him what’s what and continued to ride.

Once again at his annoyance, he pursued me and only this time did his anger drive his passion to cause me pain. Dramatic much? of course, honey. In the courtyard, towards the fence, we had the bathroom but in order to get there, a teal blue tiled staircase of three steps beginning from the courtyard upwards was positioned. The increased forced from his pushes caused the tricycle to crash sideways and I was flung into the second step of the tiled staircase, a piece of it piercing into the right side of my face, near my eye socket. Blood. More blood and much blood was the last piece of imagery that I have from that memory and a scar next to my right eye which all of you often ask me about.

A later memory comes to me from time to time from around the age of five. A sweaty and flustered Shahmir playing with his line of cars. I had so many cars lined up that I spent quality time appreciating each and every car. I would walk around the house, shirtless due to the heatwaves melting my skin. I would often steal my mother’s traditional scarf and be wrapping it around myself to feel the texture of the fabric against my skin. Silky and smooth but a bad combination when you’re sweaty and it sticks to your skin. There is photographic evidence of me waiting to snatch her scarf, with myself photo-bombing my mother as she is wearing it.

I have the memory of my sister being born and being brought home. I’m eating (as always) and in comes a marching band and many many many relatives. There is a delicate lifeform wrapped in white pleated sheets. My sister. Yay.

My memory skips a lot and the next image I have is flying to England around the age of six unsure of what vehicle I am in and who the people around me, sat in their seats are.

Being in a new country and not knowing or comprehending what language anyone spoke was a huge shock to my little self. I was enrolled at a primary school which was conveniently across the road. I went straight to Year 1. It was absolutely baffling to be immersed with such a diverse set of individuals that I had never knew existed. All races, shapes, sizes, and names!

My social and language development was nowhere to be found. I was placed in a special needs class with children who could not speak English, and or had a poor ability. Intense daily sessions to pick up the language in a group of 3 other kids helped me settle in. I felt somewhat integrated into a proportion of the community.

My first English word was a swear word. Yes, I learned the word ‘fuck’. I remember a confrontation with a boy in Year 3 when I had interfered in his ‘premier league’ football match. The word was used so much that it had become a key asset in my vocabulary only for the language teacher to scold me and eradicate it from my speech.

I developed and I am proud to say that I am a quick learner, I picked up the English language quite quickly and by Year 2 I was fluent and landed a spot on the spelling bee team and earned my way to becoming Star of the Week on Friday mornings. YAS, I became a nerd at an early age, but who doesn’t love a smart icon, right?

Year 3, 4, 5 went by. Done and dusted.

Year 6, you are lions of the school. Oldest ones in the building. You felt elite. I felt shooketh. I started to develop differently from that of my peers. Boys became obsessed with girls. Girls became obsessed with boys. I became obsessed with the art of acting.

Acting normal. Acting like the others. Acting to fit in. Acting to stay with the crowd.

Year 7: I know what it’s called now. I understand why I wasn’t like the others. But if you weren’t like the others, the others weren’t going to like you. If you didn’t spend endless hours waiting on the science lessons about sex then where you even normal? I didn’t care. If you weren’t in the ‘it’ crowd, you were not in anything.

A new wave of dialect flooded my high school experience; slang. Slang was cool. Slang was good. Slang was derogatory. If you weren’t ‘it’, you were too ugly, you were too fat, you were too dumb, you were too dark or you were gay.

I was what? Wait what does that mean? Could someone explain it to me? What was that word she used? Wait did he say something?

I googled gay as you do circa 2011. It was blocked on the servers. I googled gay at my local library and became flooded with a world I did not know I was a part of all along.

I went from crowd to crowd, forcing myself to talk about girls, which girls were cute and which were ugly. In year 9 sex education, straight straight straight dildo condom sex sex straight vagina condom plastic dildo demonstration pregnancy straight straight straight and then a slide on ‘gay and lesbians etc etc exist, respect it’ and the crowd begins to jeer mouthfuls of hate at people they don’t know.

Wait am I that? What do I feel? Am I even sure? What even is anything anymore?

A constant self-reflection of my sexual identity alongside Islam and a Pakistani heritage, from year 7 through to year 12 left me with a suppressed depression and internal agony that I have partially overcome today but never stopped feeling and remembering.

I told myself to bury it and be what my culture and religion needs me to be and what will keep me safe from a societal wrath of bullying and torment. The bullying commenced anyway. The emotional burying of my actual identity carried on anyway.

Throughout all the years, I sought help but never found anyone else in my position. There were LGBT+ teens being kicked out of the house, being sent to care homes, becoming homeless and their stories seemed to have silver linings and a happier ending. I was yet to find something to hold onto. Hope was thin. Very thin. Gay Muslim was terminology that was somewhat unheard of. Gay-friendly sites portrayed the average skinny white male in struggles, with a drop in of one black individual every so often. I found no one that I could be like ‘yes yes, you understand me’.

Gay and Muslim and Pakistani felt so taboo that the oxymoron itself decided to cancel itself out of existence. Was I just incredibly wrong that no one else was like me? Did I draw the short straw in life? Time went on and I researched and researched to find hope.

Along came a guy that I randomly came across and he was from a town in Birmingham, a very highly south Asian populated region of England. I do not recall his name but I do remember he was the first gay Pakistani Muslim that I had ever been exposed to. I suddenly did not feel alone. A meeting of ‘paradox people’ led to a feeling of assurance that there are more of us somewhere, just hidden as I was. He enlightened me on his experience and confided in me the trust to say that he was proud of who he was even to the extent that he told his parents.

His story was such a divergence from the average white gay Christian male in that he was up against a Pakistani community immersed in religious Islamic values. His parents disowned him. He lived with them as a ‘thing’, not a person or a son. They saw him as something demonic and incorrect. This did not help with my already crippling perception of the world and future. He carried on his story and said albeit the challenges he faced, he lived as an out and proud gay Muslim in his community in Birmingham. Over time, his parents adjusted to what he was but never accepted it. He told me he’d make the best of his time within the family before it was time to leave home. We’ve since lost contact and it’s been many years.

So. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t need to tell. Avoid situations in case you get asked. Look at the floor. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Stay invisible. Remain quiet.

My morality suffered a great deal. I’m being indulged in a westernised learning environment, an ancient religious learning environment and a value based home system. It was like being with multi-personalities and having to alternate 24/7 to each environment I was exposed to just to watch my back and keep safe.

A moral dispute within myself left me questioning Islam, questioning sexuality, questioning life, questioning worth, presence, guilt and at times death. Could I meet the demands of being a pious Muslim with being myself? NO.

Could I devote my life to Islam and cut the reigns tied to otherworldly affairs? NO

Could I invite myself to accept my identity and tie it to my faith? I am trying.

Having no interaction with any other gay individuals in person left me feeling pretty isolated, often transcending to a dark realm of my conscious mind with unwanted thoughts haunting me every minute. I took a step to explore more of the internet and try to make contact with others like me. I tried to give myself self-help therapy, in other words, I researched ways of administering conversion therapy. I wanted a cure, a simple easy way out of this situation. Nothing ever worked. Nothing was helpful. Nothing was enough.

Agonising months and years went by and my inner conflict worsened. I had to accept it and nurture who I was so that it would stop damaging me so deeply.

I got the ever so famous app ‘Kik’, you can talk to whoever as long as you have their user and it’s all cool. I had this shitty broken tablet which crashed so many times but when it worked, its where I had any time to watch shows, youtube, and or even interact with the online world.  On Kik, I came across a particular guy and if you’re him reading this then ‘Hi, how are you? Let me know’. This was a moment in time where I realised that this particular guy interested me. He had a certain charm and a certain way about him that made me feel attracted. He’s an American boy, never knew they were my type but I guess my 13/14 yr old self, figured that out. We got talking and he told me how he wasn’t out and proud about his identity and that’s how we connected and bonded. We spoke almost every day, I’d stay awake late at night just to get his messages and he’d do the same. The time zones were killer but we enjoyed each other’s company.

A year or so after, I got a laptop and we proceeded to Skype when we could, and it was honestly great except the fact he’d screenshot the worst images of me and he’d always have some sort of Skype filter on which would annoy me. The time we spent talking, the more comfortable and normal I began to feel and I thank him for that. I won’t go into all of the details of it because I just wanted to credit his impact on my life and till this day, I claim him to be a close friend, albeit not always talking but if we meet, people would feel the many years we’ve known each other virtually.

I started to feel like I was normal and that being who I was, was something so common and normal but just criticised by society.

The reunion of my faith and my identity around the age of 16 forced me back into depression. Living different personalities is exhaustive and deadly. This depression was profoundly due to Islam. What did I believe? Am I taboo within the religion? I am a paradox. Muslims can’t be gay. Gays aren’t Muslims. Gay Muslims equate to non-existence. Equation solved. Literature goes on to condemn homosexuality. However, this literature condemns homosexual lust. There are so many factors that confused me and left me trembling, fearful of my fate. My eternal damnation which was reiterated at the local mosque. Reiterated in my home. Reiterated on the Islamic Channel. Reiterated by my peers. I felt doomed. To a degree, I still do.

My enlightenment began when I began to enlighten myself, my image, my worth, my confidence and I counted the blessings I had. It began, ironically with relating to the queen of rap; Nicki Minaj. One of the reasons I relate and thoroughly love her is because of what she went through so much and how she came out of it and surpassed all expectations. These were the quotes I recited and lived up to:

• There is nothing more beautiful than a smile that has struggled through tears.
• You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don’t make moves and you don’t climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you’re not competition
• Everything I’ve been through could’ve killed me. That’s why it really ain’t nothing you could tell me.
• Beauty might bring happiness, but happiness always brings beauty.

I no longer downplay my worth and my presence. I am an intelligent individual whose success is not restrained by societal pressure to conform to a norm. I exceed expectations and surprise those around me.

I will no longer enslave myself to my inner saboteur.

Two years ago a documentary surfaced about the gay scene in Pakistan, led by a Mawaan Rizwaan, a gay Muslim Pakistani. This documentary was one of the saviors that enabled the person I am today to prosper. This was content so rare within the LGBT+ community which had any relation with me. I felt represented by this documentary in its raw form, that many others like me were able to understand the struggles of being Pakistani and Gay and Muslim. A minority to the power of three. If I weren’t exposed to this material, I’d have felt another year of being lost and isolated.

The individual I am now is the strongest, sharpest and proudest character built from scratch. There are far more factors involved which have not been talked about in this post but nevertheless, the struggle has been real. I wanted to share this with you last December when I wrote the majority of this post. I want you to understand that you may know of me or be in my presence but know that it has not been easy to get to where I am. Whenever people get into a struggle and or find a time in their life hard to get through, I want you to know that spilled milk is something to cry about. Forgive yourself for that. Clean up the mess. Walk to the sink, rinse your hands. And try again.

Guess what? It gets better. It truly and honestly does. Do you think I could have ever imagined a gay Muslim marriage in the UK at the age of 12?

I’ve survived and prospered and until recently to have heard about the first Gay Muslim becoming married to his spouse in the UK. Jahed Choudhury and Sean Rogan got married in July of this year. A South Asian from an Islamic family, who suffered and went through the same struggles I did, has risen to live his best life.

So I’m telling you the truth of the people and my most honest truth; I made it to my best self. I did what? I did THAT.