Missing Kids in the US – fyi

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FBI Crime Alert for Eddie Harrington 

Safaee Pesh Karna

Many things have happened in the past months that have caused me to pause and wonder about writing in public. Also, some major live events have caused me to take a break because I have other, more pressing concerns.

But I realized today as Lovely and I were having dinner with a fantastic lesbian couple we met recently, that at some point I will have to explain some things, in public or in private, to some people. Please forgive how cryptic this is – I’m a private person, in some ways, and I like talking about issues in public, but I don’t, as such, like talking about my life in public. The issues might be relevant in a public sort of space – I don’t know that individual details in my life are relevant. Anyway. I was talking about explanation.

The entire process of loving a woman who was in a straight relationship and having that love catalyze a change in her status – these are things that have drawn recrimination. Lovely’s relationship with me might have started out as a dalliance; now we’re long-term exclusive monogamous partners.  And all the people around us that were affected by our decision to be together have grievances, some legitimate and some not, against us.

But some of us are more discrete than others, and some more forgiving. I am not forgiving, as such, but I am discrete where I need to be.  Others are not. As a result, Lovely and I have gone through some shit, and will go through more. And some of that shit is about who will take sides with whom. I personally don’t believe that Lovely should eschew anyone I have a problem with, or vice versa. Other people have different ideas about loyalty. And so we come to the situation I find myself in now.

I love a woman who used to be married. She is no longer married. She and I are together.

I make no apology for these simple facts, though I am sorry about certain things that have happened, certain hurt feelings that have occurred.

My partner was in a marriage that was very bad for her. She left that marriage honourably. Now both she and I are being painted as villains in the lives of people who made adult decisions and now refuse to take responsibility.

I require no apology for any of this. I wish it would stop. I wish people would take responsibility for their own part in a bad situation. I wish her husband would. I know her family does. I wish some of our friends would.

But people speak ill of each other. And people like to gossip. This is Pakistan. It happens. I am not particularly interested in explaining myself apologetically to anyone. I think that, on balance, if everyone takes responsibility for their own part, the discomfort and unhappiness left in the middle can be attributed to chance and circumstance. Shit happens. You live the best life you can.

Since the day-to-day drama and trauma of living toghether and coming out to her family has stopped, Lovely and I have been focusing on the future, and the happiness of the present. Today, friends asked us how we met, what went on, how we felt. And we couldn’t stop talking. Now that we’re home, Lovely has turned to me and said, “We’ve been keeping this in so long. We don’t talk about it. The more we talk, the sooner we’ll get over it.” And that’s really true. That’s why I haven’t written here in a while. One out of ten comments questions me and us, and I couldn’t handle that for a little bit. When you get questioned daily in your real life, your online existence needs to be rosier.

But I think I’m back now. A lot of stuff has happened. If you have questions or challenges, please remember to be kind.

Fear

Lovely is my girlfriend. Her family knows about us. Mine doesn’t, entirely – at least not the business end of my family, which is my dad. Soon we’ll be telling. And already the crap has begun to fly.

Aaj TV apparently showed a programme on how wrong homosexuality is and how homosexuals do not get relief or forgiveness from God in this world or the next (jannat o akhirat). And L. was asked by her family: why can’t you just try this marriage you’re in? Why do you have to do this? Do you know what our family’s going to say? Everyone will talk. What about your sisters?

The concern for the sisters, incidentally, is that no one will want to marry the sister of a lez.

Lucky for me I don’t have sisters and my dad isn’t religious. His arguments, when they come, will be more esoteric. Equally debilitating though.

So last night was a shitty night. We came home from her family’s place and attempted to have sex, collapsed in a fit of argh, had a mini-fight, cried a bit, managed to succeed in having sex, got a lot happier and went to sleep at 3:30 am.

And the questions raised were:

S, do you really want to do this? Because my family’s going to suck.

L, are you sure you can go through with this? Because your family’s going to suck.

L, my dad’s going to suck way worse.

S, they’re all going to try to flush us down the toilet.

And so it was. Today, she’s feeling generic fear and I’m pissed off and tense.  And we’re both shit scared of how big this is going to get.

Calling All Desi Queers!

Having spent some time hanging out with the mostly US feministie group, I gotta say – they’re great but have nothing much to do with us. I don’t know who us is – Pakistan, South Asia, Muslim, some combo – but it’s not them. It’s just a different world out here.

So where are you guys? Girls, more specifically, but I’ll take the guys. What are we talking about? What does queer even mean? Does someone have a definition? Because to me it’s more than an alternative sexuality. It’s a lot more.

And there needs to be conversation. There is already conversation in India, I know that. And there’s conversation off the internet, I’ve heard it. But let’s bring it online.

OR if it’s already online, tell me where it is. I’m quite tired of feeling so fucking useless. And I like to talk. Don’t you like to talk?

Bile

I’ve been doing the rounds of the feminist blogs a bit lately. And I’m finding them a bit difficult to swallow. The big ones, that is. They are a bit angry. A lot angry, actually. And the blog posts themselves don’t express as much anger as the commenters who visit the blog. So that feminism is this contested territory in which you can be a bad feminist or a good feminist, depending on what you are in favour of (pornography and sex worker rights!) or against (pornography and sex workers!).

The American blogs, anyway. There’s only about five of us desi feminist bloggers, so we just huddle together for warmth (Hey, Ladies! How you doin?) It’s not that I don’t get anything out of these blogs – I do – but a lot of the content is at such a far remove from anything that seems really relevant that, like all foreign hegemonic systems, I wonder if it doesn’t need some sort of counter strategy.

And there’s the bile. The vitriol. That’s just pointless.

I wish there were more desi feminist bloggers though. It’s not like they aren’t out there. And it’s not like they’re too busy fighting off dowry death and shaking their fist at the government. There just isn’t much writing. Or talking. Or expressing interesting things, organic things, that come up from here, from us. It’s all a little hard to swallow.