Then Karim woke up
He was sweating profusely
His head was feverish
His heart was throbbing heavily
His temples were pounding with anticipation of the same dread
which he had experienced so many times before...
The same nightmare of entrapment
Which he has been dreading since his adulthood...
Always appearing in the form of nightmares...
He can't leave the place he is in...
Can't get out
Can't escape
Trapped...
Always this feeling
Being late for some thing...Something important...
Can't get out
Can't get there in time...
He will fail
Fail in everything
Everything he will encounter he will fail in ...
Doesn't take much to go on...
Make an effort to go on...
Go on....
Go on where?
Where to?
To hell and back
Maybe...
Certainly...
To hell and back
Hell is the night mare
And back is after he wakes up and is
Relived that it was only a night mare
And why this night mare is persistent?
That's been the search of Karim's life...
All his life he has been fighting this feeling of being trapped
Trapped by his circumstances
Trapped by the poverty
Trapped by his shyness to approach people who could help him
Trapped y the love of his family
Trapped by the moral obligations towards his family
Trapped by the sense of duty
Trapped by the self sacrifice
Trapped by his desires
Trapped by his own sexuality
Trapped by his fondness for boys
The guilt
The tremendous guilt he feels if he ever
Try to do anything good for himself
He can do a lot for others but not for himself
Trapped by the sense of generosity for others
But the sense of stinginess for himself
Trapped by the sense of martyrdom...
When he wakes up he is relieved as usual
"It was just a nightmare."
'But what a nightmare!"
"But why?"
He has been asking this question for so long now...
He is thirty two years old
He has no lover
Neither a man nor a woman
He loves woman
But not that way...
A different way of love for women
Like sisterly love
Like motherly love
Like a love so intense towards an intensely beautiful woman friend
But towards a man?
He feels differently
His heart flutters so fast when he sees a man
With whom he would love to exchange
kisses .....
Just the idea, mere idea of that makes him feel
He is going to collapse with the sense
of sin...
Sense of sin so heavy a burden like a marble slab
On his chest crushing him with all
kinds of moral ambiguity and guilt that he feels
He is crumbling to smithereens long before he
Will ever have a chance to even touch a man that way...
He thinks he will die a virgin...
How can he disappoint his family
His society
His ambitions
His duty to produce a heir to the family to keep their name alive
Poor or not, his family is very honorable...
How can he bring so much dishonor to the poor father
And grand father and his mother and his sisters...
His sisters will die as old spinsters
No man will every marry them if
They find out that Karim desire men...
No, he can't do that to his poor sisters
They have to be married and have children
What is a woman if she is not married
And is not taking care of her husband and children?
Maybe after all his sisters are married,
Then and maybe then he can love a man...
How long would that be?
Maybe he would be forty by then
Or fifty even...
Which man would love him when he is fifty years old?
With no shape and no muscles to be proud of...
He has muscles now but he is not proud...
People find him very handsome...
Handsome, dark, tall, lean, well shaped, strong....
But he loaths himself...
He can't desire like the others
And if he desires like the others, this tremendous shame
And sense of ominous danger falls upon him...
Why does he feel this way?
Why is this burden his responsibility?
What is it?
This concern for the other?
The family
The humanity?
Is this the burden of love?
Is this the burden of shame?
Is this the burden of un-fulfilled desire?
Why does he desire men?
When he is a muslim?
Isn't it forbidden in Islam to love men?
Is he a bad muslim?
Is he a muslim at all?
Is it all pretending?
Should he sitsdown with his father and grandfather and all his clan
and declare,
"Listen, I desire men and that's that."
Can he imagine what will happen at that precise moment?
Perhaps the sky will fall all over him and them
And that would be the end of many generations...
Right there and then and the story will end
And he will be so proud in death...
But if the sky doesn't fall and
Kill every one in an instant,
Then what will happen?
They will shoot him with their powerful guns
And than shoot themselves
or stab him seven times
like the whole clan stabbed Ceaser...
After-all they are Pathans, Pushto speaking Pathans of tribal areas...
WITH THE EXTREME SENSE OF HONOR AND MANHOOD.
"Guess what, the only son of Pushtoon speaking tribe
of Amnunstan, the real Pathans, the only clan left
In the Hindu Kush mountains of South Asia
And that son will never have a son himself because he is gay."
'Imagine that!" "Just Imagine that!"
"No, I can not do that..."
"I can never do that..."
"I can never desire and fulfill my love for a man."
'I can never confess my desire openly....Never."
"I am a Pathan"
"I speak Pushto"
"I am the heir of a proud clan who has to produce many more proud Pushtoons."
I am the muslim soon to be the head of a fierce, Pathan clan
fighting for their honor, their land, their women, their country."
"I AM A MAN WHO IS FORBIDDEN TO DESIRE ANOTHER MAN."
"I am a proud muslim man, a proud Pathan."
"My desire, my fever, my anguish, my passion for a man will
Make me a weak man,
A man who trembles at the sight of blood and war,"
"A weak man who only desire beauty
And aesthetic of beauty,.
Who hears violence in every cry for love,
Who dies for a kiss on the lips of desire,
Who cherishes the taste of love even after his death."
"No, I can't be that weak man.
Full of beauty and devoid of violence."
"I have to fight a war...I have to kill my enemy
Who is coming to kill me."
"I can't love, I am not ready for love,
I want to love a man and I am not ready.
And no one is ready for it either.
My tribe, my family, my religion."
And that's what keeps Karim awake and anguished
Every night and when he sleeps
He has his constant night mares of obscure and abstract nature
Snakes running after him
And daggers drawn at him by the sea urchins
And all kinds of horrible fires engulfing him and burning him to mere ashes...
His love of man is the only thing he desires
And desire passionately and
That is the only desire he wants to completely destroy.
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