This Way Out

by Tufayel Ahmed

Funny how life works like that. It can completely knock you on your ass, like you’ve gone twelve rounds with Tyson, and then lift you up and dust you off, as if to say, We cool now? No, life, we definitely are not cool.

I think she instinctively realised I was different from the others. It was never overt, but there was always a degree of unspoken acceptance – even if she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

I might be a son that brings shame on the family, but in an alternate reality, I’d be a model daughter.

Religion, colour, anatomy . . . It doesn’t matter compared to the quality of the person.’

until now. I am angry, too, at God. If being gay is a sin, how could a kind and merciful god make me this way? Make my life so difficult? It is cruel and unjust to be punished for what I can’t control. I never chose to be attracted to men, to fall in love with a man, and there have been so many times I’ve considered how much easier my life would be if I were like Abed or Asad or any of the other Bengali boys. But I can’t live a lie. I have to live my truth.

‘It breaks my heart, seeing you hurt,’

There is no one to help you pick up the pieces, no wand you can wave, no magic pill to make your problems go away. You pull yourself up by the bootstraps and go on.

Mundane everyday activities that other people take for granted. To me, they feel like the spoils of a lifelong war.

No wonder people don’t get therapy, if we aren’t equipped to deal with mental health the same way we do a burst appendix.

White people, in my experience, tend to be a little hostile and uncomfortable when confronted about their blind spots when it comes to race or culture. It’s almost like the accusation of racial or cultural bias is more offensive than the behaviour itself.

Working at the bookshop may not come with a six-figure salary,

bookselling may be perceived as an archaic career to some people, but I know this is where I belong.

A book is a beautiful object. Each page should be treated with love and care.’

Love is companionship, feeling content and safe in the arms of another person. It is the mundane moments when you know the other person is there but you don’t need to speak – their presence is enough, the meals shared, the walks taken, not just sex. What is so wrong about that?

We’re raised to be good sons and daughters,’ he says with an affected South Asian accent. ‘You have to be strict, practising, have a wife and kids, a house, like our fathers and their fathers before us. To be the man of the house. Or you’re a failure. You’re not a man. They buy into it so much they don’t see how bullshit it all is. We’re not our forefathers’ generation. Men can cook and clean, too, you know?’

‘Because you are a good person. You don’t need to put on a performance for the world to prove it,’

True cruelty isn’t dropping bombs on a faceless enemy, but what we are capable of doing to the ones we claim to love.

‘He’s not you. All I could think about was you. How I wished I was kissing you.’