This Way Out

by Tufayel Ahmed

I’d thought about telling my family the truth about myself for years, but if I’m really honest with myself, I never considered what came next. How they’d respond, react . . . It was always about the words being out there, but now I’m facing the reality of it and I’m suddenly afraid. Will I still have a family? How will I navigate between the siblings that accept my life and those that don’t? Will I miss out on my nephews’ and nieces’ birthdays? Will they be turned against me? Told that I’m a pervert? That I’m going to hell? I can’t bear to think of my sweet Oli poisoned against me; as his youngest uncle I think of myself as an extension of his parents, and haven’t I been helping to raise him for four years?

Doesn’t a mother always know?

Mum and Dad thought Malika and I were dating for the longest time. That they’d perhaps have to plan another wedding. I think they would have preferred that to the limp-wristed truth.

I’m basically shaking their core beliefs, making them question everything they thought they knew. I have to give them the right not to accept it.’

On a whim, I take out my phone and google ‘counselling’. I didn’t realise how many different types of therapy there were out there: Cognitive behavioural! Psychoanalysis! Interpersonal! I’m overwhelmed. It’s like being in an ice cream parlour and being asked to pick a flavour. Where can I just get some plain vanilla lying-on-a-couch-please-fix-me-I’m-broken therapy?

if only it were that easy!

Isn’t therapy for white people with too much time on their hands? And, more specifically, middle-class white mothers who are possibly addicted to little Heston’s ADHD pills?

‘Just a little shift in perspective might help lift you out of this emotional turmoil.’

period

The first time Joshua brought me to his family home, I joked that I thought I’d be sleeping in the servants’ quarters downstairs, leading to silence from Josephine and Mark. It turns out that jokes about class make middle-class people feel awkward.

I consider dropping into conversation with Josephine that her son loves bending over for me, but I decide it is best not to.

oop!

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.

But we can’t always take things into consideration if we aren’t told.

communication is key!

I recall bits and pieces from my memory, hazy as it is now, and work myself into more of a frenzy. We are so ecstatic to have you in our family and to have gained another son. Who the fuck does she think she is? I don’t need and nor did I ask for Josephine to extend her bony white-saviour arms to try to save me from my terrible life. I already have a mother.

Period

The thought of her walking around as if she’s some saint scares me. Do I really know what I’m getting into with this family? Am I just a social project to her?

For all the issues we’ve had of late, they are still my family and we are still tethered by a bond that can’t be broken or replaced, whether they accept me as gay or not.

I think about the concessions I’ve been making – something as simple as excusing Archie’s inability to say my name right – and that I’ll have to continue making for the rest of my life, giving up more and more of my own identity to fit into Joshua’s world.

‘Oh, the gay one is here,’ he teases,

gagged him

Does he not recognise his blood in mine? All because of, what? A label? It is unfathomable that he can turn me away for a god that he’s never met. Is that more real to him than my flesh and bone standing before him?

But now I am realising that even people who seem like they are happy and thriving can have issues. I feel silly for judging therapy so harshly before.

we love to see growth!

‘So, Amar, you live with a white man?’ says Zeynab, leaning in over the coffee table, as if taking me into her confidence for a private chat, never mind that there are three other people privy to our conversation and a coffee shop full of people around us. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she says, and laughs. ‘I don’t think I could. They don’t wash their bums when they go to the loo!’

she kinda ate here

On the tube home, I think about the way that I’ve felt so detached from religion for so long, worried that my very being is sinful, and I haven’t fathomed that there could be a space for me. Now, there is possibility.

‘But I also see the vulnerable side of you, the part I just want to protect,’ he continues. ‘Your mum, your family . . . Maybe I can’t completely understand, you’re right. But I’ve learned from you, the cultural differences . . . and it’s made me a better person for it. What I didn’t realise, though, not until you brought it up, is that it’s not just enough to learn from you. It isn’t enough to just pick up things here and there from being with you. If I want to marry you, I have to be committed to understanding you and your culture and your religion. I have to make sure I put myself in your shoes and always consider, How would Amar feel?’

And when we have kids and they have questions about why they celebrate Eid and Christmas, I’ll be ready for that, too.

josh is so cute omg <3

‘Finally, a real chef in this family,’ he says. A small seal of approval that has enormous significance.

awwww

Abed isn’t sitting on the fence, but has made up his own mind. That Joshua is part of the family. And then, as if sealing the family verdict, Oli, who gives me a wet kiss on the cheek as he says goodnight, promptly plants one on Joshua’s cheek, too.

I no longer feel so relentlessly sad about Mum, but I still carry her with me. In the days before the wedding, I daydreamed about what she’d think of my suit, the ceremony, the food. I hope that she is looking down on us right now and that she is happy to see us – well, most of us – still here, still standing, as a family, just as she would have wanted.

love the way he talks about his mother throughout the book <3