The Henna Wars

by Adiba Jaigirdar

everything about a Bengali wedding is so palpably heterosexual that it’s almost nauseating.

It’s this weird, suffocating culture that tells us exactly who or what we should be. That leaves no room to be anything else.

“I can’t believe we’re supposed to eat like white people even at a Bengali wedding,” I complain in a whisper.

guess my type is . . . beautiful girl. Which is a lot of them. Most of them? Pretty much all girls.

Chyna fit into the party like the final piece in a puzzle. I fit into the party like somebody really bad at puzzles had tried to super glue a piece in out of frustration.

I’m stuck on the fact that Ammu and Abbu can leave their entire world behind, yet they can’t pause for a moment and consider who I am. How can they sacrifice everything for me and Priti, but they can’t sacrifice their closed view of sexuality to accept me as I am?

There’s no way Flávia is going to take advantage of my culture because of Chyna’s popularity, because she has white friends who’ll make her henna look chic and adaptable to Western culture.

Because of course Muslims can be gay. How can anyone even think otherwise? The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I am living, breathing proof.

If you have to think that hard about the last time you prayed to Allah, I don’t think you get to hate gay people on the basis of God.

White people like to pretend that race is only as deep as the color of our skin—maybe because the color of their skin gets them so many benefits.

What I want more than anything else in the world is to feel like being myself isn’t something that should be hidden and a secret. What I want is for my parents to be outraged that someone betrayed me, not ashamed of my identity.

Walking side by side on this deserted road, with the wind whispering all around us and the rain obscuring our vision, feels like we’ve stepped into our own private universe. Like the students and teachers we left behind at school don’t exist anymore. Like our destination is just an idea, not an obligation or something that holds any weight. Like everything in the world has fallen away to make space for this moment, for the rhythmic breathing of the two of us, side by side.

“Maybe . . . sometimes people don’t see the things they do as wrong, but they can see the wrong in what other people do—especially if it’s done to someone they care about,”

It doesn’t seem like much. But sometimes just being yourself—really, truly yourself—can be the most difficult thing to be.

It feels kind of surreal: The warmth of her hand. The tenderness of her gaze. The way the setting sun illuminates her face. The fact that I’m weaving my very culture into her skin. This is one of those moments that I want to bottle up and keep with me forever. Not because it’s extraordinary, or because it’s the kind of thing you would find in a Bollywood movie. But because it’s the kind of moment I could never have dreamed of having in a million years.