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?