Again, I wish to enter this into the competition knowing I'm not resident in India, nor an Indian. I know This is my disclaimer I write it only for my friends on Writco. It's a hard hitting, non sexual romance, but a story that could be. To all those out there who would know...let the truth be heard and may we not judge, but listen with our hearts. 🙏





Sixteen and they want to make an example of me. I'm the stain on the white virgin sheets of a Country that says Love is NOT Love. They don't castigate or idly reprimand, they won't just shame you and name you and blot your copybook forever. They want you to pay for your crime, an eternal damnation for you and the sooner you are sent there the better. They want you to die. They claim they have that right, in the name of God. They will not wait for Him to strike me down, they wish to speed up the process. I am to be hanged today. I will die today. These are my last few words. This is my story.

My name is Abtin, and before we go any further, not that it is any concern of yours... but as God is my witness, YES, I am a virgin. I will not tell you my Country, I love my land but I do not feel shame for that. Instead I feel shame for a people who cannot love me, or find a place in their hearts to forgive the way I was born. They say I must quell my desires, hold back the love, fight my urges. But how does one suppress love? You can hate yourself, stay closed off and frightened, hurt and punish yourself for the feelings you have? But it availed me nothing. I stand before you a sinner at fifteen, a modern day warrior. Not in a battle against fellow man, but in a war against my own inclinations. My deep rooted desire to love and be loved, and I was losing.

At school I was popular boy. In my youth I was naturally athletic and a handsome boy. It is true I turned many heads, but I never went looking for love. I always had a feeling love would come find me, and I was willing to wait. I was sure the urges I felt since my earliest recollections weren't bad like my parents told me, weren't evil like my siblings yelled at me in private if I questioned them. Even my friends, the closest and dearest started to shun me if I asked too many enquiries.
"Do you feel like this?"
"Are you drawn to these things?"
"Do you ever question our philosophy?"
It was not my place to question religion, or Law or the society rules and the punishments doled out for transgressions. Not my place, not my right, not my life but God's. And I could live with this in part, as it made me fearful, scared of being who I was and what I was. Perhaps the fear would make me normal, terrify me into repenting my secret dreams and latent desires. And what was worse...I knew I could tell no-one, share with nobody not even my closest kin. For no matter what I believed, I was irrelevant, my feelings were nothing. To them I was a deviant if they suspected, and I was dead if they accused.

Would I have chosen this life if I'd had the choice. Of course not! Not in this Country, not with this intolerance and prejudice. Sometimes in the night I'd wake in a cold sweat about two things. My sexuality, and my fear of being found out and punished. I was paranoid about looking or acting "too gay", and believe me, there was a very long list of what that actually was. In fact, the list differed dependent on what region you were from, and what social status you had. I had no social standing, my family were poor, so I had to be extra vigilant. As I grew up I made sure I wore the right clothes and showed the right attention to women. I learned to do and fain liking "manly activities". The fact I like sport really helped mask my other less virile and masculine hobbies like art and writing. We have a beautiful cultural heritage in the Arts and sublime poetry and literature; but it was a very fine line and what you wrote or painted was scrutinised and criticised intently by all.

Oh this may sound very oppressive, but you always find outlets for it that others cannot guess or scald you for. Long walks in nature and trips to beautiful sites. Meeting new people (but always ensuring you were in the eye of others and never in the company of what others might deem "unsuitable" or "improper". I found it best to stick around much older people as I grew up, so that suspicion fell less likely on my head. I got by at school, I was well liked and I was doing very well outwardly. But inwardly, I was a mess. I had become over emotional, and my parents blamed it on teenage hormones and an attraction to girls that I could not have. Little did they know it was quite the opposite. I was feeling more and more attracted to the young men around me, and I was concerned always I'd be found out or slip up in some way. Living in fear and with anxiety every day made me hate myself, hate my life, hate everything. I got more withdrawn and started to fail at things. The more I failed the more I hated my life, and the more I blamed what I'd come to call "my curse".

I was fifteen nearing my sixteenth birthday and why I called it that was because of social conditioning. I know what the Western world said, but their way was not our way I was told repeatedly. Had I not been so negative on myself I might have followed my dream to escape abroad and go to university and sample this Western life for myself. See if it was as evil as I was being told, but alas I was failing in my studies. By this time my grades were not good enough to hope for escape abroad, nor of getting a job where I might be posted abroad. Others I had read in secret underground propaganda had suggested hiding in plain sight. To marry and have children and lead a double life. A life in the shadows, where others can deny it goes on but look over their shoulders ever worried one day someone will find them out or accuse them. A neighbour, a stranger, a friend or family. I did not want such a life. I did not want to ruin my life, that of my family and friends, nor of a future wife or our children. The choice was mine alone and I was losing in it, for it was either live a loveless existence and have the eyes and whispers of suspicion always pointed at me, or, keep to myself and seek an opportunity to find out how I really felt about love between my own gender. Oh of course, in theory the romanticised version of same sex love was appealing to me. Some even said that bisexuality was at least better, as one was only half a deviant. In my internal monologues I often appeased myself by lieing that I was indeed attracted to women as well, just so I only felt half as bad, half as evil, half the shame. But until I found out what physical desire was, it was all a mystery to me.

So when I was invited by a friend to a party, I went thinking I needed to be away from home and school. Away from the oppression, and it was my sixteenth birthday. I wanted to celebrate and claim my adulthood. I was eager to be a man, to set my own world in order. I was to meet my friend from the city in a local cafe, but he rang me and told me to meet him at a place some streets away. He said that I would like it there, it was a nice place to be for people like us. Yes, he used that phrase, and I admit it was not until I thought about it afterwards, standing outside the door of the place he said, that I began to wonder what exactly he meant.

I knocked, and a small flap in the door opened for two dark shifty eyes to check me over.
"Who invited you young man?" they asked rather nervously.
"Hassan" I said, and gave his surname. With that the door opened after the pull of three heavy duty bars could be heard being drawn across. And in my naivety, I walked right in hoping to meet Hassan inside. I figured they must know him because they knew of his name at least, or the guy on the door did. I admit, it was my attraction to Hassan that led me to be so reckless. We were on school teams together, and we had often caught each other giving sly furtive looks at each other in the shower rooms. We were very careful, but nobody is that good when your hormones are racing and curiosity is piqued about other guys' bodies. And I guess a very unusual sort of understanding grew between us. Not in words of course, nor would we be foolish to commit ourselves to paper or texts. Nothing incriminating like that, just looks, long smiles and small kind gestures. Once we touched hands for the shortest time, but that was when we had just won our best team's result and we were in a state of euphoria.

I soon found out what type of establishment this was. Hassan's dad was a politician, a very high ranking official. He always reminded me of his social standing because he wore the best clothes and had the best in gear that money could buy. That part wasn't good for me, it just reinforced how poor we were, but Hassan never treated me as anything other than an equal. I wandered into a room and couldn't see, so innocently turned the light on....and stood in shock. There were naked men in there, and they were having sex. The light went out almost within a few seconds, but I was still stood there, dumbfounded. It was Hassan that drew me away by the hand into another quiet, dimly lit room.
"Abtin you fool, don't you know anything?" he rebuked me hastily.
"No" I replied equally as snappy, " no I don't, Do you?" It was a challenge, a direct insinuation that he was the one who invited me here, not the other way round. Then I remembered we were still holding hands, and my ire at his tone vanished. I liked how holding hands felt. I liked it a lot, and I was forgetting about the shock of what I'd just seen. And then ... he kissed me!

Now I'd like to tell you how this felt. I'd like to tell you of the beauty of the moment and the way it made me feel happy and excited. But I'm sorry, I can't. I didn't have time for any of that for there was a terrible explosion at the door and police or soldiers stormed in and there was pandemonium. It was all confusing and awful, and my mind was too stunned to register what was happening. But myself and Hassan were caught in our embrace, in the semi lit room, where there were a dozen witnesses to what we were doing. And we were pushed and battered, shouted at and steam rolled into waiting vans. That was the last time I saw Hassan, the hot sting of his fierce lips just a memory on my own. Now I knew fear, now I had regret, but I was soon to lose one more thing before my life....trust.

You see they put me in a cell and beat me. It seems that a politician's son had said I had tried to seduce him. That I'd lured him to some secret address with the deliberate intention of corrupting him. I was a deviant, a manipulator, taking advantage of an innocent.
"No, no you have it wrong," I'd scream in denial, " I'm the innocent one!"
And all the time I was denying inside that Hassan would say such things, that it was just their tactics. That yes, I was poor, I was nothing, that I deserved this but at least my only innocent one true first love would not deny me. He would not deny the passion in that kiss. He would not deny the love and bond that had been growing this past year slowly between us. But the beatings were too much, the pain too great, the torture too degrading. I said what they wanted me to say just to make the pain stop. Death would be a merciful release in comparison.

And so to my execution. Death by hanging. I'm sixteen years old, barely a man but old enough to know the bitter sting of life. For when they took the blindfold off with the noose around my neck, there he was. Hassan was stood watching, my accuser, my betrayer, my love and friend. Now presiding at my execution, and a tear of this acknowledgement rolled down my cheek. They probably thought weakness, regret, too late for that now, sinner, freak. I do not know, my world was plunged into darkness. Forever.



© .Garry Saunders

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