Remember how, as a kid, a lot of your time was spent looking up at adults with a fiery curiosity? Remember how BIG every grown-up seemed? How each grown-up was like a speculative mirror to your future self, and you imagined yourself living the incredible lives you presumed they had? And there were some grown-ups who seemed different to any other grown-up you’d seen before – who took on a prophetic status, as if your paths crossing was an act of divine intervention? There were two such adults in the pantomime – and they were the grown men playing the Ugly Sisters. Both were from England, in their late thirties/early forties, and with hindsight I think they were a couple, but at the time I believed them to be best friends. From my minuscule height they seemed to have imposing, manly frames, yet they gestured with their hands as if they were flicking wands, oozing wit and comic flare – what we might term ‘camp’. ‘Were you in CATS?’ I asked them one evening with complete sincerity, at which they laughed from the belly, one of them commenting: ‘Darling, I wish.’ Yes, I wish too. We get each other.
During one dress rehearsal, I was completely blown away when both men came onto the stage in women’s clothing. I remember their costumes vividly; one of them had bright orange pigtails, radio-active fuchsia lips, and freckles dotted all over his face, while the other had a plum-toned up-do of a shape not dissimilar to Umm Kulthum’s. The former had what looked like a pink chequered apron flowing down his body, while the other was strapped into a purple corset and black thigh-high boots. With little conception of my gender or sexuality at this point, I can’t remember processing my own dysphoria or sexual orientation within what I was seeing – the overarching feeling I had was, ‘is this allowed?’ I looked around the room, seeing the rest of the cast laugh and celebrate both men in their feminine get-ups. The pair were melding the masculine and the feminine, transgressing both, relishing both, and there was nothing dangerous about it – all it brought into the room was a feeling of collective joy. Just as Umm Kulthum’s voice could apparently overcome audience gender divides, again I was witnessing the potential of femininity to alter social space. Rules and codes of behavioural conduct formed a major part of Islamic teachings, so the idea of a man transgressing his gender codes was not something I thought I’d ever see publicly in the Middle East. But here, in front of me, were men wearing women’s clothing, and the only reactions they provoked were ones of enjoyment. I was smiling goofily, and, as I turned to my mother, I could see that she too was enjoying the performance of the two infectious, loveable queens. Mama’s enjoying this too! Maybe not being a manly boy will be OK with Mama! It seemed that in our secret club, these other ways of being were tolerated – celebrated, even. Perhaps I had nothing to worry about.
But, as I would shortly learn, Mama’s and my bubble was going to burst. And in the next phase of my life, nothing could have prepared me for how sharp a turn Mama would take to stop me being different.
The first proper realisation I had of being gay was at the age of ten. I was at home watching TV when the cartoon of Robin Hood aired. And let me tell you: I crushed hard on Mr Hood (the cartoon fox, not the actual historical figure). Now I promise you I’m not into bestiality, but the arousal I experienced was an extension of the titillation I had felt for the men wearing spandex in CATS, only this time it was tangibly sexual. The cartoon character wore a remarkably progressive gender-queer T-shirt, which was long enough to cover his groin, but he wore it with no bottoms, and cinched at the waist with a River-Island type belt. The way the garment billowed around the character’s pelvis had me fixated, and I was desperate to know what lay underneath – to be frank, I was hungry for a bite of it (minus the fur, but definitely with the balls). His stud status was accentuated by muscular thighs and an ability to penetrate enemies with his bow and arrow, and, as I watched, I imagined myself by his side, a little damsel in distress who he would make it his mission to protect.
I knew that it wouldn’t be the best idea to verbalise my crush to anyone – but I needed to investigate my desires more closely. So when the whole house was asleep one night, I locked myself in the bathroom, got naked, and lay on the marble floor, imagining Robin Hood – yes, the cartoon fox – next to me. The texture of the cold floor against my sweaty torso created a tingling sensation, and the pitch-black midnight of the room made for a psycho-sensory experience. Pretty quickly, it felt like Mr Hood was next to me, and I started writhing around the floor, my aroused body fusing with the galactic space around me, as if the desire in my body poured through my skin and into Mr. Hood’s soul, which was totally consuming me. As the experience intensified, the more out-of-body it became, and I lost all sense of my physicality, floating in a foamy limbo of ecstasy, as if every atom of my being were being engulfed. The next thing I knew it was 7 a.m., and someone was knocking on the door. It was time for school.
It wasn’t long before we were warned about the perils of homosexuality at school. As a Muslim, you were already in a committed, non-negotiable relationship with Allah; the rules, according to our teacher, were that you could open this relationship if it was with a devout Muslim of the opposite gender. A Muslim man dating a non-Muslim woman? Eternal damnation. A Muslim man dating a man, period? Eternal damnation ad infinitum. The closer we got to puberty, the more insight we were given into what actually went down in hell. And it was in these lessons that feelings of terror and shame attached themselves like a bloodthirsty parasite to my sexuality.
It is worth noting that it’s not entirely clear whether the Quran actually condemns homosexuality. The only passages in which it seems to, in The Story of Lot, are ambiguous. In the story, Allah punishes the men of a city for their indecent sexual activities with male visitors. Yet it is not the homosexual act that is being denounced, but rather that the visitors were being raped. It is the way such Quranic passages have been interpreted by conservative Islamic scholars and lawmakers that has partly led to such institutional homophobia among Muslims.
So as I’ve explained, whether we ended up in hell depended on the points between our left and right shoulders – if those on the left exceeded those on the right, then hell it was:
But he whose balance [of good deeds] is found to be light, will have his home in a [bottomless] Pit. And what will explain to you what this is? A Fire blazing fiercely! (101:8–11)
Cute, right? The snag for me was that I was taught that homosexuality resulted in an automatic infinite number of sins, and no kind of good deed – not even curing cancer or solving climate change – could help compensate. But I only have a crush on Robin Hood THE FOX – the Quran doesn’t say anything about fancying foxes? I clutched onto this minuscule loophole of hope – I had to. For the punishments of hell were described to us with intimate detail. While water in heaven was a redemptive, cleansing element, in hell we’d be forced to drink and bathe in boiling water. ‘Close your eyes and imagine the heat on your skin and in your stomach,’ our teacher would tell us. With my eyes shut, I clung onto the lifebuoy that was DR. ABC – but it was no longer enough to stop my whole body from boiling. Another fabulous little treat in store for us was The Tree of Zaqqum, a deceptive piece of foliage whose fruit we’d be forced to eat. When I say ‘fruit’, I mean little devil heads disguised as fruit, which would mutilate our insides once ingested. And what to drink to wash off the horrific taste? Boiling water, of course. DR. ABC – what’s your cure for a shredded, incinerated gut? Nothing.
The intensity of hell’s punishments had a domino effect that debilitated DR. ABC’s capacity to hold off the terror, spreading around my brain like a wildfire that just couldn’t be controlled. And then came the final blow in our classroom tour of Satan’s lair: the overarching punishment of hell would be our regret that we hadn’t changed our behaviour on earth – that we lost Allah – coupled with the knowledge that nothing would placate Allah’s rage. We were stuck here for eternity, and it was entirely our fault. Eternal self-blame was Allah’s ultimate punishment, and it’s a feeling that has seeped into absolutely everything I experience.
To this day, every single time a traffic light goes red, I experience a pang of anxiety because I fear I’ve incited its fury. I’ve tried and tried to shirk this, but it is so engrained into my neurological make-up