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.

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara’s desolate tome about the trauma of abuse, self-harm and suicide, was not exactly light reading in the midst of mourning, but it had appealed to my maudlin sensibilities.

Two weeks ago, Joshua proposed. I said yes, of course. Now I have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Come out to my family.

My cultural heritage dictates that matters of marriage are discussed with your elders in person, usually over tea, as a mark of respect. But there is no rule book on the ‘done’ thing when you are gay and Muslim.

In summer, though, he becomes a furnace, threatening to turn me to cinder by morning light. And yet I can’t sleep without him. If I am to burn, so be it.

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

The boy can barely handle medium at Nando’s.’ ‘But, you see? He wants to try to eat spicier food for you.

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.

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.

I joke to Joshua that I am certain he is going to Get Out me on one of these trips.

I am not worried – but, I mean, I’d be a lot more not-worried if I saw more melanin.

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.

That’s what the likes of Josephine will never see or understand, because it doesn’t fit the narrow caricature of Muslims they subscribe to. To them we are two-dimensional characters, not humans with emotions and complex lives.

Just outside the coffee shop in Spitalfields, I discreetly dropped Malika my location on WhatsApp just in case. If she doesn’t hear from me again, she’ll know where to begin looking for my mangled body.

The Quran doesn’t prescribe a specific legal view on homosexuality; the story of Lut, which you probably know, has been interpreted by academics over the centuries as condemning the act of sex between two men. Other interpretations, however, view it differently – as a condemnation of sexual violence, such as rape. There is no one right interpretation, no one way to believe.’

The Quran says that Allah “created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquillity in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy”.’

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?

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