Shades of Gay

PART I: THE ME THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
CHAPTER ONE
Curiosity is a strange thing. When confronted with something deemed morally repulsive, the instinctive response of averted eyes is quickly replaced with an insatiable desire to see what’s wrong with the picture. Satiating the cat in us, if you will. For no other reason do mothers browse through the magazines sons have horded beneath their beds, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads, but flipping through nonetheless. Should a conservative couple, catch a “modern” couple holding hands, laughing with lips inches away from mouths, the gut reaction of averted eyes is soon replaced by an occasional glance upwards to see whether the lips will meet and just how far “modern” will go.

It’s why reality shows will never go out of fashion, and home videos will always generate buzz. That X factor the adverts rave, is really cloaked curiosity.

So maybe it was curiosity that led me to Sarah Iqbal. The outsider. The rebel. Abstract adjectivity. There are so many ways to describe her without doing justice to any of them. I suppose it’s simpler to say she was me, or the me that I would’ve liked to be.

“Stop thinking about who you’d like to be and start thinking of who you are. Then analyse your life and see if you can rework the Past.”

I wish she was here, beside me instead of somewhere “out there” telling me how to live my life all over again.

CHAPTER TWO
When I first saw her, I think my only concern was how cool she was and whether she would ever be my friend. Life as children is far simpler, and then we grow up and forget what childhood was like.

She was a year older or I was a year younger but the age difference wasn’t unusual and came with the fondness for skipping a grade. The fondness ending at kindergarten.

Believing always that her life was fraught with too many rules and restrictions, she stood on a podium to affront. She had class issues, issues against morality, against status, against ethics, against life. Wherever there was a cause to confront, she was there, a consistent rally persisting in the depths of that brain where all things pointed to one element: Society. Her beliefs were not unfounded; playmates handed to her from birth weaving class laws with status differentiations, entrenching her with values she would rather not have.

Aside from the missions that peppered her daily existence, one that never changed was her resolve to alter my own, naïve outlook of the world.

One day, she said as we lay sprawled out on her bed, One day I’ll teach you how to be a cynic.

She didn’t have to. Life had its way with me.

PART TWO: THE ME THAT WAS
CHAPTER THREE
‘Tell me honestly, Di what do you think of intersect marriages?’

‘I-intersect?’ I repeated, ‘like Shi’a a-and…’

‘And Sunni, yes. That’s exactly what I mean. What do you think of the concept?’

‘Why?’ I asked her in alarm, eyeing her warily.

‘It’s just a question, bhai.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

‘Why? What if you just fell in love and that was the end of the story?’

‘But that’s not the end of the story, Sarah. You have a choice.’

‘A choice in love? This should be interesting.’

‘Look, it’s up to you – a choice. If it weren’t, women would be falling for men and the other way around.’

‘But that kinda is how the world functions, Di.’

‘Uff! Sometimes you can be so difficult.’

‘Haven’t you heard? Difficult is my middle name.’

‘Really? I thought it was the Rebel.’

She looked at me and laughed, ‘chalo phir, go on.’

‘Buss, that’s it.’

‘Nahi, I don’t believe that. There has to be something more, I know there is. Come on! You can’t just start something and not finish it, that’s not fair.’

I bowed my head and sighed, almost hating her for knowing me so well.

‘There’s always a choice – you can choose to spend time with a person or you can choose not to.’

‘And that’s the brilliant way your mind allows you to fall in love, is it?’

‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’

‘How will you ever know if you’re in love, if you don’t learn to spend time with someone? Love doesn’t need to be so discriminating, you know.’

‘There you go again,’ I retorted with a shake of my head.

‘There I go again…what? I’m assuming that sentence has an end.’

‘That’s it. I’m done.’

‘Really? I bet you’re just itching to get it out and over with, you’re not the containing kind.’

‘Oh I’m not, huh?’

‘Nope, but nice try,’ she smiled and patted my shoulder. I looked away and bit my lip.

Would things have turned out differently, I wonder if I had had the courage to speak up and voice my thoughts, without the insecurity that she would silence me with her better argument?

What was wrong with it, she had asked? What was wrong with it? Everything. You needed to be discriminating in love, you needed to know the rules that could not be broken – the do’s and don’ts. You neeeded to know the class boundaries, the sectarian differences, the financial status of not only the person but the family as well. After all, marriage was not only a union between two people, but of two families. How often I had heard the phrase, ingrained in cliché that it had become, but never put much faith into it. Until she voiced my own opinions aloud.

But was it with much conviction, I wonder? Or was it because I had to, because it was important that I know the difference?

CHAPTER FOUR
‘Why can’t you just apply to NCA, too? It isn’t too late, I know because a cousin just applied a few days ago.’

She shook her head and gestured for the pink tee lying on top of her newly bought messenger bagpack, and replied

‘This is something I need to do, Di. Look, as much as America might not be on the top of our Good Guy lists right now, they do have the best universities and there’s nothing better than to learn from the best. I mean, you’ve applied to Aga Khan too, haven’t you?’

Aga Khan University, the dream choice of many would-be future doctors.

‘That’s different and you know it.’

‘How?’ she replied tilting her head to one side, the way that always reminded me of a lbird.

‘I’m not the one flying six thousand miles away,’ I replied and bit my lip. She looked at me and smiled,

‘What are you so afraid of, Di?’

I didn’t reply and she put an arm around my shoulder and drew me closer. We sat like that for several moments before she continued,

‘We’ll call, email, text, chat, whatever it takes okay? Distance is directly proportional to love, remember? We’re not going to grow apart just because we’ll be in different countries pursuing different professions. We’ve been different people all our lives, Di and that hasn’t thrown us apart, has it?’

I mumbled a response and felt her nod, ‘you bet it hasn’t. And it’s not going to either.’

She dug her nose into my cheek, her childish gesture of affection, a gesture that took me years to get accustomed to until I finally put it down as yet another strange facet of her personality.

‘Now let’s get back to packing, shall we? I have a ton of books to pack and look at all those clothes,’ she groaned.

I grinned and the rest of the day was spent in packing clothes, books and various other miscellanii articles. I tried not to think of the fact that her departure was two weeks away and concentrated instead on how best to avail the time we had left, but it was difficult.

Eventually, I stopped trying.

CHAPTER FIVE
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

‘Is it thick or-or thin?’ I asked tentatively.

Sarah laughed, ‘am I allowed to pick it up?’

I nodded weakly and watched as she carefully picked the envelope up, the thickness apparent a mile away. She grinned at me in assurance and ripped it open, her eyes slowly digesting each piece of information before turning to me with the words I can never forget,

‘You did it. You’re going to be the next graduate of Aga Khan, Di!’

‘I…no, you’re joking,’ I replied shaking my head in disbelief.

‘You want me to read it out to you for confirmation? “Dear Diya Abdal, We are pleased to welcome you…” Here, read it.’ She thrust the envelope into my trembling hands.

Can a moment like this ever be appropriately commited to paper? The exact feelings of jubilation, accomplishment, excitement, ambition and a deluge of others? No. No. It’s impossible.

Aga Khan. I rolled the phrase around in my mouth.

Aga Khan.

Nothing could be better than that, nothing.

I don’t remember anything that happened afterward, although my parents did congratulate me, I know because my mother told me about it afterward.

All I do remember however, is clenching the acceptance letter in my hand and the two of us grinning stupidly at each other.

That was one of our last meetings.

CHAPTER SIX
I would never forgive myself had I been absent at the airport, it wasn’t an option either of us had considered or discussed. It would happen, that was all we knew.

She hugged me briefly, took one step back and said,

‘If I hug you again, I don’t think I’ll be able to go and I need to. But look at it this way, Di. It’s not like we’ll never see each other again.’

Did she believe that? Did she really know we’d never see each other again – that her decisions would break her family and circle of friends, while she calmly distanced herself from those who refused to accept them? No, I shake my head – no, she couldn’t have.

Whatever else she may have been – witch, bitch in disguise, a shade of the rainbow; Prophet she was not.

CHAPTER SEVEN
When she first told me, I wasn’t sure how to react although somewhere inside I’m sure I wasn’t completely surprised.

‘Are you crazy?’ I asked.

I knew she was shaking her head, somewhere past the telephonic lines of 1s and 0s that bound us now, ‘dekho things are different here. There aren’t the same prejudices, people just accept you and you’re pretty much free to go out with whoever.’

‘Yeah but don’t you plan on coming back? What are you going to tell your parents? “Oh and by the way, I’m dating an American non-Muslim”?’

‘Uff tobah! He’ll convert, it’s not such a big deal.’

‘But what if he doesn’t, Sarah?’

‘I think I know him a little better than you do, Di. Besides, we’ve already had The Talk and he knows what he’ll have to do.’

‘So he’s going to convert for you and you’re okay with that?’

She shrugged, ‘who cares? As long as he’s converting.’

‘I don’t know…’ I replied, voice trailing.

‘I’m in the gray area, Di and I know what I’m doing.’

‘What gray area? What are you talking about?’

‘The intersection between black and white, remember? Right and wrong? It’s a gray area, there’s no right or wrong in this one. It just is.’

‘But Sarah, think about it. I mean have you really…?’

‘I have. You’ll know…someday, you’ll know what I’m talking about and we’ll see how easy it is for you.’

She was right. I would know.

CHAPTER EIGHT
2004. The summer of love.

Muhammad and I met early in the vast crowd of Unknowables and Breakables, the ones you’ll never know and the ones that have the power to be broken and break you in return.

When does the line between love and friendship blur? When does platonism become neo-platonism and then disappear altogether? Do lines even exist or are they formed at will? When is the day you realise you’re in love? Is it marked on a calendar, in red with your name on it? Is there no reawakening? Does one wish there was?

I don’t know the answers, but I do know that summer I fell hopelessly, deliriously, blindingly in love.

Spending days together in the same room, walking to classes with hands just the required distance apart – a casual brush against fingers going unnoticed in the multitude, slapping an ant from crawling an arm just to acknowledge skin against skin. And the shiver, can anyone forget that shiver when you know love isn’t just a one way street? Write it down, the exact minute down to the last second when time freezes and you realise Want.

It’s the day you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. The day you realise you too can become a Breakable. Can there be dates for such things? Can you really put a red circle around the precise moment you knew? I like to think it’s a gradual shift, an understanding that things will never be the same again.

II
‘Di, short for Diya?’

‘Is it weird my name means candle-wick?’

‘No. It means light – can I become corny for a minute?’

‘No, I refuse to admit corniness is part of our wooing ritual.’

‘There’s a ritual?’ He laughed; the one that made me tingle from head to toe. The laugh that realised a hidden tryst – a secret known only to two.

‘Of course there is – there’s the whole hard-to-get routine. And the final understanding that yes, the girl does after all feel the same way and they live happily ever after. Of course, only after the guy has completely and entirely impressed the girl’s parents, and then they live happily ever after.’

He smiled and followed an ant’s course up my arm with a fingertip, before casually brushing it away.

‘About that – I have to tell you something.’

‘Haan, so tell me then – God knows you’re taking ten hours!’

‘Hardly! Suno, would your parents mind terribly if their daughter married a Shi’a?’ There it was, that heartstopping moment. When everything changed. I heard a repeat of my name before an indefinite silence – condensed into every corner. Shi’a.

‘Are you…kuttar Shi’a?’

‘As in…do I do the stuff at Muharram? No, but then not many do. That doesn’t stop me from being a Shi’a – look, it happens all the time. Your parents shouldn’t mind it.’

Shouldn’t mind it? What was he saying? There were some families that didn’t mind, but not mine. The way his family observed the Shi’ite customs would be irrelevant – all my father, the conservative and kuttar Sunni would see was Shi’a like a large neon sign in a Red Light district.

‘I-I’m sorry but I can’t.’

‘Can’t? What are you talking about?’

‘I can’t do it, Muhammad – I can’t put my parents through it. Maybe I was wrong – maybe I don’t love you.’ And just like that I walked away. Stop, my brain screamed. Wait – give it a few days, you’ll be able to sort it out.

But that would be a lie, and I knew it.

PART THREE: THE ME THAT IS
CHAPTER NINE
It’s been two years since that summer – that quirky, unknowing summer. I heard of Sarah’s marriage to David a few months ago. She got her happy ending. And me? I met Muhammad again a few days ago – the beginnings of a beard starting to show on his once clean-shaven jaw.

We indulged in meaningless conversation – asked about each other, casually omitting the details we most wanted to hear until, unable to take it I burst out.

‘I lied. When I said I wasn’t in love with you? I lied.’

‘It’s not too late.’

‘It is. I’m married, now. Things are different.’ He looked at me and then away, nodding slightly. He held out his hand which I shook unblinkingly, suddenly aware of a faint rustle in my fingers.

‘Well you know where to find me if you ever need someone to talk to.’

But is that all we’re going to do, Muhammad? Talk.

‘Yes.’

And in that fraction of a second, something changed – it wasn’t too late.

EPILOGUE
I look down at the folded piece of paper I’ve kept with me since Wednesday and trace my finger over the handwriting I once grew accustomed to as it raced across notebooks into pages of medical notes, and endless letters. I trace a fingertip – stroke by curve by line by crossed ts and dotted i’s, and see glimpses of the life I could have led in each opening.

My mind flies back to the last letter I received from Sarah, shortly before she disappeared to “somewhere out there”,

“When the line blurs, you know you’ve become a shade of gray. Don’t be scared of the intersection between black and white, Di. Because if there’s an intersection – if there’s a jump, a crossing, a sudden u-turn you know it’s Life’s way of getting back at you for that missed chance.

Don’t forget it’s okay for the line to blur, Di. Don’t forget there’s a You in the equation.”

I open my eyes and trace the letters of Muhammad’s scrap into the air – committing it to Time, Space, Everything:

‘I’ll never know about you, Di so I’ll wait.’