I Want an Answer Qari Sahab !

I was his phys­i­cal need. He was thir­ty years old, a man from Bangladesh who had nev­er been mar­ried. I was six years old and dur­ing our encoun­ters he was endeav­or­ing to pro­vide a com­fort­able area for my elbow to reach his “beak”. Curi­ous as I was the long and hard bone excit­ed me and I began to find excus­es to reach his beak – which he nev­er refused. After a while I was used to find myself on his laps dur­ing our com­mon Quran lessons. Between his laps he had this hard and long rod which touched and rubbed my butt. After focus­ing on this move­ment for some min­utes, his exci­ta­tion became more intense and he mourned and held my arms tight­ly. With­in those moments I was hor­ri­fied which seemed to even more stim­u­late him until he sud­den­ly released some­thing wet in my butt.

My par­ents, my Ammi and my Abba, both devot­ed to the Islam, pious, their char­ac­ters deter­mined by reli­gious faith; two peo­ple too eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed by a man of God. He was my Qari Sahab and he used to abuse me dai­ly – but how could I tell my par­ents? I was so scared to tell any­thing. Instead a dai­ly rou­tine came to its ter­ri­fy­ing exis­tence. Every day, my moth­er hand­ed him a cup of tea as a ges­ture of cour­tesy and/or reli­gious duty and while drink­ing tea he enjoyed me, or some­time after get­ting through me he enjoyed the deli­cious tea.

From that time onwards men start­ed to be the main pro­tag­o­nists in my fan­tasies. While grow­ing up I allowed dif­fer­ent men to abuse my body. Ini­tial­ly I began to explore my fan­tasies with the ser­vant of our neigh­bors. While the time was pass­ing I was tak­ing greater risks – dur­ing a pic­nic with my fam­i­ly I got to know a for­eign Pash­tun and also the father of one of my class fel­lows showed more than usu­al inter­est in me. How­ev­er, all the jour­neys and expe­ri­ences final­ly led into my first time when I was nine­teen.

I tried a lot. I’m help­less and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly I’m to some extent com­fort­able with it. Although I stopped all kind of phys­i­cal rela­tions, I can’t stop think­ing. I tried a lot. A great, black beard is now cov­er­ing my face. Reli­gion may hide my pref­er­ences from me, or maybe it is just me using reli­gion as an escape from real­i­ty. But oth­er exits didn’t func­tion. My mar­riage failed because I sup­pressed myself and there­by wasn’t able to express my feel­ings open­ly. How should that have been pos­si­ble any­way? But if I could make peo­ple under­stand my emo­tions it would facil­i­tate many things. Now, my career and my men­tal con­di­tion suf­fer and it will end in a dis­as­ter if things do not change. My fam­i­ly already believes that I’m under a spell or that I’m haunt­ed. What an irony. I need some­one to whom I can talk open­ly – a coun­selor, psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chother­a­pist – any­one pro­fes­sion­al but I’m in a finan­cial crunch and not able to afford it.

Nev­er­the­less, I’m not the only one feel­ing that way. Peo­ple like me are every­where: in Masjids, in uni­ver­si­ties, in parks, in the Imam Bar­gah, just every­where! And although I’m from the depth of my heart a Mus­lim, I love my Allah, my Deen, I’m a Momin, I’m part of this soci­ety, I can’t fig­ure out what is wrong. Why are oth­er Pak­ista­nis threat­en­ing me, call­ing me a sin­ner despite the fact that I’m total­ly help­less? Does the fact not count at all that peo­ple around me com­mit major sins which direct­ly hurt oth­ers while I just feel good and want to feel good with­out hurt­ing any­one? How can love and desire be such a wrong thing when it does not harm any­one?