There was a boy.
There was his family.
There was a village.
There was a sheikh.
There was Islam –
There was this boy.
His memory grievously entangled itself
As a rope around his neck,
Around his neck was
A rope,
A loss,
A life, not to be lived.
There was a boy
And this boy was my friend.
We were teenagers &
He was funny,
Weirdly beautiful,
Wildly queer –
Allah didn’t approve.
The community didn’t approve.
The sheikh didn’t approve.
His family didn’t approve.
His village didn’t approve.
His entire being
Disapproved,
Rejected,
Shunned.
And so the rope
Landed on his neck,
Somewhere inside I felt
The tightening of his life
Not to be lived,
And I can still feel the ripples
of this tragedy
Causing me pain,
Robbing me of my friend
Over and over and over again.
Reading at CEMB’s Pride event in London
Back then,
There was no word for it.
There was no word for who he was.
In my language,
They called him “Naag Naag”
Meaning “woman-woman” or “double-woman”.
Meaning he was not normal, in their eyes.
But in my eyes
He was just a funny kid!
So hilarious,
Weirdly beautiful,
Wildly queer.
Here comes the memory of the rope again,
The rope around his neck
That rope.
Me robbed.
Him gone.
Back then,
There was the sheikh,
There was the family,
There was an entire village,
There was a fuss;
There was them.
And then there was us –
He made me laugh
He made me laugh so hard
I could not stop and
I was naive and ignorant and
He was unsure of his own body but always
we had fun,
Laughing and talking, and giggling, and running;
Him smiling his gorgeous smile
And his electric laughs and yes –
Sometimes
He was confused
But oh…… so, so, so, so lovely.
I tried to kiss him once.
Turns out, he was into the boy next door.
We almost died laughing
At the absurdity of it all.
He told me
“I don’t know why but I feel…nothing”
I could not verbalise
That I knew,
I knew he was different.
I knew that was okay.
He was my friend,
I loved him
And he made me laugh.
That rope again.
The rope tangled around his neck.
The rope,
The pain,
His face,
All horribly gone.
Every minute,
Every moment,
Every memory…….
is a union of
the rope & his character.
The rope, painful.
His character, beautiful.
His tales, strange
and told with utter wit.
The day they found him out
is another vivid
haunting memory.
They beat the crap out of him
and the boy next door as well.
They told my parents
I wasn’t allowed to hang out with them anymore.
Remember,
There was a village.
And in this village,
there was a sheikh.
And there were whispers
He is gone now.
The rope around his neck
The dark mark of the whispers.
He never got a chance to find answers to his wonderment.
There was a boy
In that village,
With his family,
And their sheikh,
Within Islam.
And
His name was Abdi.
His name was Abdi.
His name was Abdi.