Straightening Ali (19 page)

He went to the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and urinated. When he’d finished, he held his head in his hands in anguish. “Why is this happening to me?” he muttered to himself despairingly. “I hate myself.”

He felt the urge to scream and wail loudly at the injustice of it all, but instead he cried silently making no noise at all in case someone overheard him.

Sajda, his poor wife, had been expecting something memorable from her wedding night, but all he could give her were vague promises that he wasn’t sure he would be able to keep. All her romantic ideas of the wedding night had been ruined. She had even tried to initiate sex with him, but Ali had completely rejected her. The thought of this brought fresh tears to Ali’s eyes. “I’ve ruined her life and mine,” Ali thought sadly to himself.

He got up off the toilet seat and went to the washbasin, turning on the tap to wash his hands. He glanced at his face reflecting back at him from the mirror over the washbasin. “I look haggard,” he thought. His eyes gave away the trauma that he’d been through. They looked bleary and red from the lack of sleep and the crying, but most of all they had a pained and haunted look about them.

Ali turned on the coldwater tap and tried to soothe his sore eyes by patting cold water onto them with his hands. “I should just end it all,” he thought to himself. The pain he was feeling was unbearable, and there seemed to be no end in sight. His head seemed overloaded with misery, and there was only one way that Ali thought he could stop it.

He went into the kitchen, took out a large stainless steel knife from the rack and walked back to the bathroom with it. He felt the edge of the knife with his index finger. He gasped as it bit into his finger making a fine cut and drawing blood. It was very sharp. “I can’t take anymore,” he thought to himself.

Ali closed his eyes and rested the cold blade on his wrist. He imagined his family finding his lifeless corpse on the bathroom floor next to a pool of blood in the morning. He knew that it would hurt every one of them terribly. It was as if he’d finally have his revenge for the hurt they’d all caused him.

However, the sudden image of his wife lying in his bed stopped him. “What about my wife?” he thought. She might start worrying that he’d not returned from the bathroom and come looking for him. She’d be the one to find his body in the bathroom and cry in horror, wondering whether it was something that she’d done that had caused him to kill himself. It would completely destroy her, being made a widow on her wedding night.

“
I can’t ruin her life. It’s not fair,” he thought, but the sensation of the cold steel against his wrist felt good and inviting. Ali scratched himself, brushing the blade sideways along his wrist. It was soothing. The mental pain he was feeling diminished as he felt the sharp physical pain on his wrist take hold.

He put the knife down and using his finger nails scratched his wrist again and again, causing large red welts to appear. The pain on his wrist felt real. This was pain he could deal with. It took away the pain in his head that he had no control over and gave him something physical that he could concentrate on. His wrist felt sore and stung painfully, but Ali felt better. He went back to the kitchen and returned the knife to the rack.

He then went to the kitchen cupboard where his mother kept all the medicines and looked for the bottle of painkillers. Having found it, he took out two pills for his headache, which he washed down with a glass of water. Taking two puffs of his inhaler to ease his breathing, Ali crept back up the stairs to his bedroom, guiltily holding onto his left wrist.

“
Ali, you’re back! You’ve been gone over half an hour. I was getting worried, thinking that something bad had happened,” Sajda said tearfully.

“
It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m back,” Ali reassured his wife as he got back into the bed.

“
What’s wrong, Ali? It’s like you don’t want to be with me. You don’t want to kiss me. You don’t want to make love to me! Do you not like me? What have I done wrong? I just want to do my duty to you as a wife,” Sajda cried in distress.

“
You have done nothing wrong. It’s just me. It’s a problem with me. I need to know you before I can get any closer to you. I don’t really know anything about you. All I know are details of when you were born, what you do for work, and about your family, but nothing about you as a person,” Ali said trying to find a way to make a connection with her.

“
When your family came to ask for my hand in marriage, my life changed completely. It suddenly felt as if I finally belonged. I felt special for the first time in my life. I was so proud to have been chosen by you,” Sajda said.

“
That is nice, but tell me about you,” Ali said. “What do you like doing? What are your goals and ambitions?”

“
Well,” she said, cuddling up closer to Ali for some warmth, “you know about my job. I’m a trainee manager in human resources. I really love working there, and I’ve made lots of friends, but I don’t have to work there if you don’t want me to.”

“
So do you want a career?” Ali asked.

“
I would like one, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t go back. I’m on a week’s holiday at the moment, but I won’t work if you don’t want me to,” Sajda said submissively, as if seeking permission to work.

“
It’s your choice whether you want to work or not. Things are different with our generation. Most Pakistani women your age want to work,” Ali said.

“
Now that I’m married, I belong to you. It’s your decision whether you want me to work or not. I’m happy with whatever you decide. I’m not like all those other Pakistani women who want a career. I know where my place is,” Sajda said.

Ali was shocked by her words. He had assumed that Sajda had a modern outlook on life, but she almost mirrored his sister Yasmin in her views. For some reason, Ali had believed her to be very independent-minded, but it was more a picture of her he’d created himself. She had been raised in virtually the same family environment as he, but seemed to have accepted the values around her without question.

“
I don’t mind you working,” Ali said. “It’s your choice. I want to support you in everything you want to do. You don’t have to ask my permission. So what else do you like? Do you like movies? Theatre?” Ali asked.

“
I’ve never been to the theatre. I go to the cinema once a month with the rest of my family. You have to be careful about what you are seeing though at the cinema because of my nieces and nephews. They make such dirty movies these days, even when they say that they are PG,” Sajda said.

“
I don’t mind movies,” Ali said. Sajda’s views and attitude seemed to be the same as Yasmin’s without knowing it.

“
So do you want to have children right away?” Sajda asked. “Or do you think we should wait a few months?”

“
I’m not sure. I’ve not thought about children at all,” Ali said, remembering what Steve had said to him. If he had children, Steve would no longer wait for him, but life with Steve already seemed a distant thought.

“
I think we should have children straight away,” Sajda suggested. “That is what everyone will be expecting from us, and we should have them young, so we can get on with our lives afterwards.”

“
You’re probably right,” Ali said, trying not to think about it. Instead, he concentrated on the pain on his wrist.

“
We can start tomorrow night, maybe?” Sajda asked.

“
Yes, tomorrow night will be good. We will be less tired, so it will be better,” Ali agreed half-heartedly, knowing that tomorrow night he would have no excuse and would have to consummate the marriage.

“
We will be at my mother’s house tomorrow. It will be very special, making love at my parents’ house where I grew up. It will be good for you to see where I have lived all my life. I can’t wait for tomorrow night,” Sajda said excitedly.

“
Shall we try to sleep? It’s three in the morning,” Ali said, looking at the clock on his bedside table.

“
You’re right. We should sleep. We can’t have you tired tomorrow night,” Sajda said giggling. “Could you hold me while we sleep?”

Ali put his arms around her and closed his eyes. He felt her breathing gently in his arms. There was no spark or sexual attraction. What was he going to do tomorrow? For anyone else, tonight would have been the best night of their lives, but for Ali it was one of the saddest.

Sleep did not come easily to Ali. He found it uncomfortable lying next to the unfamiliar form of Sajda, and his asthma was persistently getting worse. He tried to control his panicky breathing without using his inhaler in case he awoke her.

At some point, the room had started to get lighter, and he could hear the birds chirping noisily outside. He desperately wanted to escape from the bed and to start to do something active, but he feared it would appear suspicious if he left the bed so early. He felt his wrist. The stinging had gone, but it still felt sore.

Ali looked at his wife lying in the bed beside him. There was a gap of a foot between them. She slept lying on her back, her face pointed toward the ceiling, her breathing regular with her chest moving in rhythm. Ali knew that she had pretended to fall asleep, but eventually all pretence had fallen to one side as real sleep had finally taken her.

Ali could not deny that she was very beautiful, but she held no sexual attraction for him. She was the wrong sex. He noticed that her face was still coated in the makeup from the wedding day, but it still looked surprisingly fresh. Her arms were stretched to her side outside of the duvet, and her heavy gold bangles glinted in the early morning light.

Ali watched her quietly. “I can’t kill myself. I could not hurt her like that,” he thought unhappily remembering his feelings from the night before. She looked young and vulnerable, and sleep seemed to have washed away the hurt of the wedding night away. Ali felt a strong urge to hold her, but he stopped himself. “What am I going to do?” he thought to himself, feeling confused. “I don’t want to make love to her. All I want to do is hold her and make her feel better,” but he knew that this would not be enough.

“
This is my wife. I’m finally married,” he thought again to himself. “I’m gay and I’m married.” Feeling his breathing becoming strained, Ali took out his inhaler and hid his face under the duvet before using it quietly, so as not to disturb Sajda, and waited for the medication to take effect.

He pulled his head out from under the cover and glanced at the clock. It was eight in the morning.

Ali contemplated whether he should wake Sajda and ask her if she wanted breakfast but decided against it. Without making a sound, he crept out of the bed. He found his clothes, using the light coming in from the sides of the curtains, and dressed quietly, so he wouldn’t awaken her.

Ali went downstairs to the lounge and sat down on the sofa deciding whether he should go to Haseena’s. All he wanted was to be hugged by someone whom he felt genuinely cared about him.

He heard some noises in the kitchen next door and went to investigate. It was his mother.

“
Sit down and I’ll make you some breakfast,” she said, glancing at Ali before returning to what she was doing.

“
I’m not hungry, Ammi,” Ali said, watching her knead the dough for chapattis.

“
Was everything fine last night?” she asked. “I heard you go downstairs.”

“
Everything was fine, Ammi,” Ali said reassuring his mother, before returning to the lounge and sitting back down on the sofa again. He considered his options for a few moments. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to go and see Haseena. It felt like she’d ended the friendship the last time he’d seen her, but he needed her now more than ever.

“
I’m off to the cash point to get some money!” Ali announced to his mother through the kitchen door and then rushed out of the house before she could say anything or follow him.

Ten minutes later, Ali was knocking loudly at Haseena’s door. Haseena opened the door wearing a nightdress. “Ali, for some reason, I knew it was going to be you. Thanks for waking me up at this time,” she said giving him a big hug and letting him into the house. “What are you doing here so early?”

“
I just needed to see you,” Ali said hugging her again, relieved that she still appeared to be his friend.

“
How are you feeling?” Haseena asked, studying his face.

“
Terrible. It’s horrible. I just want to kill myself,” Ali burst out. Haseena tightened her hug, feeling sympathy for what her friend must have been through.

“
I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do,” he blubbered through the tears streaming from his eyes and wetting Haseena’s nightdress.

“
It’s okay.” she said gently. “It’s all right now. Let it all out.” Haseena stroked his head as if he were a ten-year-old child. She’d known this was going to happen, but Ali had not wanted to listen to her. The words “I told you so” crept into her mind, but she dismissed them quickly knowing that they were highly inappropriate.