The First "Faggot"

2009-03-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

Will US gay soldiers have 69 during combat?

The joy I feel at Dupont Circle, at the heart of Washington DC's gay district, is unexplainable. I am like fish in water after remaining 41 years in closet in what I call Cluster Fuckistan, or Pakistan. Maybe like a free bird, out of the cage.

When I reach Dupont Circle in Washington DC for boy gazing all my worries melt away. White boys, brown boys, black boys, yellow boys -- you name it, they are there. Some even ready to roll if you care to look at their fruit baskets.

I felt the same excitement that comes with the feeling yes this is where I belong when I used to visit Castro in San Francisco some years ago.

But then my blood boils to think about the discrimination prevailing against gays even today in the US.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have promised equal justice for all, including gays in the military, but the US army seems oblivious of what the political leadership is saying.

Decadent and obscurantist views about gay lifestyle still prevails in the US military. Change it seems, the promised change, for gays in the US army is not coming soon.

The Associated Press's Anne Flaherty had a nice report on Thursday that said the Army fired 11 soldiers in January for violating the military's policy that gay service members must keep their sexuality hidden.

In a statement released on Thursday, Moran said the discharged soldiers included an intelligence collector, a military police officer, four infantry personnel, a health care specialist, a motor-transport operator and a water-treatment specialist.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have promised equal justice for all, including gays in the military, but the US army seems oblivious of what the political leadership is saying.

[Source: mustikhan.newsvine.com]

Ask any adult and I think most will reply the sixty-nine position is one of the happiest and luckiest moments in life.

But it makes me sad to think Pentagon policy-makers believe US soldiers who are openly gays will be having sixty-nine during times of combat? If that is the case, then the heterosexuals are in a majority in the army and men and women should not be allowed to mix at all. Heteros can have as much with sixty-nines, if not less, I think.

In some ways, the US society is very sexist and homophobic. Many open-minded gays find the society so suffocating that they emigrate to more open societies like Belgium, Netherlands and Canada, for instance. This is a shame.

The fact that the upcoming census in 2010 will not address the gay issue --determine the numerical status of gays-- is a shame.

[Good news, homophobes: The 2010 Census is going to make homosexuals disappear. Well, OK, they will still exist, just not officially. That's because the census will neither ask about sexual orientation nor recognize gay marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships. Married same-sex partners with a child won't even be considered "families." The U.S. Census Bureau simply isn't interested in a person''s "lifestyle," explains spokesperson Cynthia Endo, "This is all about the numbers" -- and gay people just don't count.

Source: salon.com]

Not to stereotype any race -- I might be totally wrong --, but if President Obama has African blood in him I would like to think he may not mind going both ways, so to speak. At least the man who was host in Pakistan, Ahmedmian Soomro --a family friend who used to call me his son--, was widely rumored to love going both ways.

I mean the late Soomro was believed to be bisexual.

2009-03-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

The guilt I carry....

To be sure, it ain't easy to be gay, openly to be precise.

There are guilt feelings. Most of all because of the marriage with a woman. I look back and think of it as one of the unkindest things I ever did in my life. My worst sin.

Just to fit in society I committed the hoax.

Had it not been for that strange wet dream, only one in my 50-year-life when I saw a woman, many years ago I would not have opted for it. In my dreams it was always well-endowed men, muscular men. The first such dream I saw when I was barely eight. I woke up scared, what if an elder asks what I had seen in my "weird" dream.

I thought I might change if I get married.

But prior to that I was informally engaged to a cousin. To be honest, I went and told her dad I had no interest in women and the engagement dissolved abruptly.

After that I proposed through family to a woman whose grand dad was a close confidante of Indian independence leaders Jawaharlala Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, and their point-man in Pakistan's southeastern Sindh province.

That politician was Sardar Allah Baksh Soomro. Had Soomro not been killed prior to partition, Pakistan might never have come on the world map, many believe.

The rumor goes that Soomro had taken half million rupees in the early 1940s to get one of the most powerful spiritual leaders, the Pir Pagara, freed from prison. The real story was the British wanted the Pir Pgara to give them donations for their war efforts during World War Two. But Pagara, being anti-British, refused. He was branded a terrorists by the raj and jailed for peadophilia. It was alleged that he had young boys kept in cage and would use them for sexual purposes.

Finally Pagara was hanged after a train massacre. Soomro, who was Sindh's second governor and chief minister, was shot dead as he failed to keep his word about Pagara's safety.

Any ways, my wedding night on October 16, 1995 was one of the main social events in the 12-million population Karachi at the Avari Towers. The then defence minister of Pakistan, Aftab Shahban Mirani, sat on my right and Sindh chief minister Syed Abdullah Shah, later disgraced on a charge of corruption, sat to my left.

One of the most influential and richest Pakistanis, Seth Abid real name Sheikh Abid Hussain, was among the rich and famous of Pakistan present at the wedding among many other heavyweights.

Of course, even as i sat on the groom's stage I was eyeing some of the handsome policemen dressed in uniforms.

2009-03-04T00:04:00.000-08:00

Coming out, the challenge of a chakha

I came out with a vengeance when I reached the US.

Maybe those who live in the West will never be able to understand the fear and shame a chakha in India or a gandoo in Pakistan faces. Chakha is the Hindi and gandoo the Urdu equivalent of faggot.

In my native Baluchi language the epithet is bugga and in another language spoken by my Brahuvi, the hate term is paindoo.

In my own coming out, I faced many nasty comments and hate emails. I receive the hate emails even today. I lost some very close friends, but I do not regret that because if they can not care for my honesty, I do not care for them either.

Someone who I knew and developed differences over political issues, wrote in a public post:

After all a gay is always a gay and can not and must not be trusted at all.

Just the other day, I launched a blog called Penis Times [www.penistimes.blogtimes.com] and got a hate message asking me to commit suicide.

I responded to the sender:

"Have peace and grow up."

I mean I am the same person: yesterday when I was closeted, I was accepted and today when I have come out to be honest with the world, I am despised. Call it the hypocrisy of some eastern cultures.

Even in America one faces a strange reaction in the countryside. I don't know what is the problem, but one sheriff in a small town in the US who came to know I was gay would always scratch his "fruits", rather seductively, whenever I went to interview him.

I really felt flattered as his young wife is stunningly beautiful, while i am an old fart nearing 50.

Some friends from South Asia ask me whether they should succumb to their family's pressures and get married to a woman. I tell them NO.

But to those who are planning to come out and belong to homphobic cultures, my advise is: first count your dollars. I mean if you come out at a time when you are financially unstable just like I did, life would be extremely difficult.

2009-02-27T14:51:00.000-08:00

Allah loves gays, one organization believes

There is at least one group of Muslims on Facebook that genuinely believes their Prophet, Muhammad, was secretly gay still the Muslim world remains in denial and gays can be punished by death in at least seven countries --Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Association, ILGA.

In fact, I had sex with men from five of these seven nations and they were all incredible.

Al-Fatiha, the first worldwide organization dedicated to representing Muslims who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, and questioning or exploring their sexual orientation and/or gender identity (LGBTIQQ), and their families, friends and allies as well, began its first-ever survey of LGBTIQQ Muslims this year.

Al-Fatiha attempts to promote a liberal and progressive view of Islam and to “work in order to enlighten the world that Islam is a religion of tolerance and not hate, and that Allah (God) loves His creation, no matter what their sexual orientation might be.”

The 54-question survey will help the organization’s educational and advocacy work on behalf of LGBTIQQ Muslims.

The questions cover all aspects of a gay person's life.

Though Muslims deny it, the Facebook group's "Gay Muslims for a Gay Muhammad" [http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=28756010109]says: "Muhammad set the ultimate example for us when he engaged in a homosexual relationship with Abu Bakr, father of Aisha! We must emulate him in everyway. All Muslims are obligated to have a homosexual relationship with their father in law Insha'allah!"

Muslims generally show very little tolerance for and understanding towards gay issues.

Last year, an Iranian artist Sooreh Hera had to go into hiding in the Netherlands after she put on display pictures of young Iranian gays wearing masks of Muhammad and his son in law Ali.

“They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men,” Hera was cited in The Times newspaper of London. “Works of art can be provocative. It is not an artist’s job just to paint flowers. Art should shine a light on social issues.”

2009-02-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

Dubai bans novel: the fact is the sheikh is gay

There is wide spread anger among the progressive, liberal and gay writers community in the UK over Dubai's decion to ban a gay novel The Gulf Between Us.

My salutes to Canadian author Margaret Atwood for boycotting the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in solidarity with freedom of expression and in defence of gay rights.

According to Bookseller.com, Penguin, which had planned to launch Geraldine Bedell's The Gulf Between Us at the event, was informed in September it could not launch the book at the fair, which is due to open on 26th February, because it was anticipated that the book would not get past the censor.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, my dear friend who looks gorgeous in his "Now I see Queerly" T-shirt, and said the decision was "deeply regrettable."

Bedell in a blog for the Guardian newspaper was at a loss and calling the fair organizer's objections "weird-sounding."

But what my dear friends in the West don't know is there is a reason for all this: just like Sultan Qaboos of neighboring Oman, the president of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Khalifa is widely rumored to be gay. The 61-year-old UAE president is also the emir of Abu Dhabi . Had Dubai allowed the book, it would have created a lot of bad blood between the two sisterly sheikdoms in the UAE federation.

I have lived in Dubai and the smugglers paradise is actually quite gay, secretly. I must admit I had some of the best 'fun' in Dubai. I miss the nightlife.

Sheikh Khalifa had outed himself under influence of alcohol while his father Shaikh Zayed was still alive, those who have lived in Abu Dhabi know.

In a statement 17th February Isobel Abulhoul, director of the fair, said: "I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities."

Penguin, being a busines played down the row saying it was very excited about the books forthcoming publication elsewhere in the world.

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2009-02-13T01:14:00.000-08:00

Homosexuality banned in Oman

He has got at least 700 handsome men in his royal retinue, or harem, but the subjects say their king still sometimes goes on nightly gay cruising.

Sultan Qaboos, 68, of Oman is the world's first gay king.

Still, the Sultanate of Oman officially is a country where homoexuality is banned under strict Islamic provisions.

Qaboos himself decreed, the Royal Decree No. 7 in the Penal Code of 1974. Article 32 prohibits sexual intercourse between males (sodomy) and between females (sahq), and carries
a penalty of six months to 3 years imprisonment, according to Daniel Ottosson of the Brussels-based International Lesbian and Gay Association.

Imagine a nation being run by a gay king for four decades, but the gays enjoying no rights this is the inherent perversity of some Muslim societies, unfortunately.

A bachelor, Sultan Qaboos overthrew his father's rule to become the ruler of Oman when he was just 30 years old in 1970.

2009-02-10T02:09:00.000-08:00

Why do gay men marry a woman?

Mainly because of societal pressures. The chains of social history, if you may.

As a young gay I did not have a role model to follow. To be sure, I began to relaize something is "wrong" in late teens. Before that there were "brotherly hands" and "friendly hands" and everything seemed perfect.

But when in the late teens my peers talked about girls and I felt like yawning that was the time I realized something ain't working right.

Even women in Pakistan are forced to get married. Rumors abounded about the lifestyle of former premier Benazir Bhutto and in particular her intimacy with her sidekick, Naheed Khan, former sister-in-law of Pakistan ambassador to the United States, Hussain Haqqani. However, all this could be totally untrue as in feudal and agrarian cultures, dominant women at times become labelled as gay.

There is one very highly respected Pakistani woman who is known to be a lesbian, however. Her name is Anita Ghulamali and she was a former education minister in Sindh cabinet. In fact, Pakistan coup leader-turned-president and army General (R) Pervez Musharraf had wanted Ghulamali to become a federal education minister, but she declined most probably to stay close to her partner.

She lives with her partner in Clifton and on the wall next to the door is a painting that shows two women in love.

One of the blessings of the United States is you can find a group of like-minded or like-situated people, or peer support group.

One group that exists in the Washington DC area is called GAMMA or Gay and Married Men's Associations.

The members of the group identify themselves as gay or bisexual or are simply attracted to men, and are now or have been in a relationship with a woman, or are contemplating such a relationship.

According to GAMMA, its membership is drawn from men "who are in satisfying, conventional marriages," some in less happy ones. Some are separated or divorced, some have lovers. Some have never had a sexual experience with a man and some have worked out unique living arrangements.

"Some have had free and open discussions with their spouses and children. Others have never spoken to anyone about their feelings."

I am exactly not sure how a gay man can ever have a satisfying. conventional marriage other than moonlighting on the side or perhaps the other half has some kind of toy and very good at using it.

GAMMA meets on the second and fourth Friday of each month at the very liberal St. Thomas Episcopal Church near the Washington DC's gay meeting area called Dupont Circle -- when I am at the circle, I feel like fish in water and of course sometimes I also try to fish. I shudder to think what might happen if gay men can ever hold such meetings at a Muslim Mosque anyhwere in the world.

The first meeting of GAMMA was called by a Jewish rabbi at a private home following a tragic fire at a film theatre called the Cinema Follies in October 1978. It was infact a dating place for married men who were secretly gay.

Eight people were killed in that fire.

2009-02-07T17:46:00.000-08:00

Indian queers get celebrity support

Recently one of India's top celebrities and Miss India 2001, Celinia Jaitley gave a big boost to the gay movement in India and in fact entire Indian subcontinent --India is the mother of South Asia -- by launching a Facebook group page to have India's sodomy law repealed.

Celina Jaitley summoned all her friends and fans in joining her in a movement to have section 377 of Indian Penal Code, which bans consensual gay sex, to be amended/overturned as the law has been used to systematically persecute, blackmail arrest and terrorize sexual minorities.

"Let us join together in the worlds largest democracy and bring forth tolerance and rights for our gay friends," she said.

Jaitley, 27, was also a finalist for Miss Universe in the same year she became Miss India.
The controversial law, Section 377 of the penal code, effectively bans gay sex and makes sodomy or any kind of "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal" punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The draconain, black law has been widely used to intimidate and harass gays in the world's largest democracy.

Indian liberals in major cities tolerate gay openness, but for the vast majority being openly gay is taboo, though male-to-male and female-to-female sex is prevalent. One prince, Manvendra Singh Gohil, was disowned by his family for being gay.

"Gays are talented, creative, imagine a world without us," Reuters news agency cited the flamboyant Gohil, 42, at the event dedicated to promote gay and bisexual artists and raises awareness about HIV and AIDS.

Jaitley cited a quote of Martin Luther King. Jr.: "Take the first step in faith you don't have to see the whole staircase ...just take the first step"

“Due to personal reasons also this cause is very important to me.” she said, without elaborating if she is lesbian.

“I do not think she is gay,” said noted activist Aditya Bondyopadhyay, Asia Director of the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association.

“She [Jaitley] came and attended the Mumbai Pride March and mentioned there that some of her closest friends are gay and she has closely witnessed how these friends have suffered because of the laws and because of the society's attitude to their sexuality,” Bondyopadhyay said from Mumbai.

Last year there were gay pride marches in major Indian cities. The march in Mumbai was held on August 16, just a day after India celebrated 61st independence anniversary from British colonial yoke.

The choice of the date was symbolic demonstration that gays in India were still living without freedoms because of the archaic and black 377 penal code.

Celinia Jaitley said every great invention came out of "one" thought and that "one" thought pursued made a difference.

Though the British had enforced the 377 anti-sodomy law in 1860, in Britain itself, the law against sodomy was revoked in 1967

Ten years ago a lesbian movie "Fire" created quite a stir in Indian society.

Jaitley is scheduled to play the lead role in the Hollywood movie, Quest of Sheherzade, that will be released next year.

2009-02-06T18:01:00.000-08:00

Being gay and alcoholic

Three out of 10 gays in US are alcoholics, and I am one of the gay alcoholics -- thankfully have not drank a drop in the last 23 months.

I had to cross the Atlantic to come out with a vengeance and publicly declare myself as being gay, escaping imminent harm in "Cluster Fuckistan" --Pakistan. No one can come out in Pakistan as gay -- a highly closetted gay friend was angry with me about my earlier article on prominent gay Pakistanis--, though in neighboring India things are fast changing and there have been gay pride marches in recent years and a lot of gay visibility.

The other main blessing of coming to the US was that, alas, I accepted myself as being an alcoholic.

Yes, I clearly remember the evening when I drank for the first time. It was November 1979 and I was 20. Those were some of the toughest days in my life. As a 20-year-old gay man in Pakistan, I was unwilling to accept myself as homosexual and did not know whom to tell about my heart's inner desires. To me the male organ is the most beautiful thing on earth, more beautiful than Niagra Falls -- I could not tell this to anyone.

The self-repression was extreme. I used to tremble.

For quite some years, in my late teens, the 7Up bottle, made of glass, was one of my favorite sex toys. I shudder to think about it today. Just two years ago I was a reporter in the picture pretty town of St. Mary's County in Southern Maryland when I heard something similar. A 14-year-old boy had to be transported to a hospital after the handle of a broom got stuck in his rear. The police report said the boy was sweeping when by "accident" he shoved the broom handle in his rear. I only smiled and told a colleague, "If that is the case, believe me lot of people would be cleaning all the time."

The fear of being exposed as a homosexual was overwhelming back in Pakistan. What if the community, friends and famiy finds out I am gay?

So the bottle came in handy, to numb my feelings. I mean not the 7UP, but alcohol bottle. From June 1990 until my flight to the US October 2000 I used to drink daily, from dusk to post-midnight.

The dumbest things I did, while I drank, I shall share momentarily.

There were some dry patches in between, especially after I married a woman from a wellknown Sindh family, called Soomros. I would never had married, but for one dream in my adult life in which I saw a woman. All my life, since I was eight, I dreamt about men. There was just one single wet dream in my life in which my partner was a woman. I thought maybe I never experienced a woman and my desires would change with due exposure.

I did of course delay my wedding as long as possible. First all my peers, classmates and cousins my age, began to tie their nuptial knots. Then my nephews and nieces began getting married. I began feeling like a blacksheep.

That single dream in which I saw the opposite sex gave me some hope that I might be able to change my sexual desries and should give marriage a try. So when I decided to marry a woman, I was drunk, drank most of the time I was married for two-and-half years, and on the day of divorce I was dead drunk. After that, I drank even more.

Had I not been drunk, the following story, in Piqua a smalltown of only 20,000 people, might have been avoided.

Gay-bashed among the American Taliban

[Editor's note: A Pakistani immigrant's rosy view of freedom-loving Americans is shattered when he was frank about his homosexuality and was viciously attacked in the small Midwest town he was coming to call home.]

PIQUA, Ohio--The happiness, the relief, the triumph in knowing you are out of harm's way -- only those who have escaped imminent injury by crossing borders or oceans to America can understand my elation upon reaching this land. Though not American, I was truly proud to be in America.

"Yes, children of decent fathers can turn out to be weirdos," the intelligence officer from Pakistan's dreaded Inter-Services Intelligence agency had said to me outside my apartment in Karachi. His meaningful smile told me that Pakistan's premier spy agency, angry over my writings against the nation's nuclear and jihadi follies, had begun blackmailing me over my gay sexuality.

Soon afterwards, I escaped to U.S. safety after winning a journalistic fellowship. Barely 10 months later: "Jesus Loves All." Member of a Protestant church, I carried the handwritten pink placard at a nearly 1,000-strong rally of a religious leader in the local football stadium. Then, as the clerics and the gathering looked on, I spun the placard to its other side: "Gays, Lesbians Bisexuals, Transgendered and Blacks.

Perhaps such in-your-face protest was wrong, but I felt justified in my anger: I went to the "religious crusade" after being badly wounded in a gay-bashing incident. The featured speaker, whom I will not name here, lamented that "America is becoming the drug and homosexual capital of the world."

I was incensed all over again -- why put a person's sexuality in the same dirty basket as drug addiction? Imagine a man who for half of his 40 years suffered with silent shame over his same-sex preference in a Pakistani society of medieval values. I even got married, in part to conform to societal norms, but mostly to challenge my orientation and try to return to the mainstream. No dice.

So in America, in celebration of my newfound personal freedom, I decided to come out of the closet. I no longer hid that I was gay. I felt safe. But I discovered that Taliban-style attitudes are not restricted to Afghanistan and Pakistan. They exist tenaciously in American towns like this one.

Sometimes tolerance prevails in small towns; other times the dark fears and hatreds of the "American Taliban" -- vicious fundamentalists -- are resurgent. "This town once had the reputation of being a little bit like San Francisco," said one resident, Ray C. Others agreed, recalling more live-and-let-live days.

Just a block from a statue of the town's founder had sat the town's openly gay bar, Water-on-Main. Outside stood a statue of a female pink poodle, which relieved its bladder male-style -- with one leg raised.

Those days are gone.

Today, gay-bashing seems to be acceptable, and out of fear, many people here remain in the closet.I am leaving Piqua with some fond memories, but also with a police report, and the emotional and physical scars it outlines.

An officer writes of coming to the department's lobby to hear of an assault. "Upon arriving, I made contact with Ahmar Khan ... Four white males in a sports car had seen him walking and had yelled 'hey faggot' at him. Mr. Khan, who is openly homosexual, advised that the four males had then stopped, exited the vehicle, and one of the subjects, a white male with a muscular build, struck him in the face with a closed fist."

The operation at the local hospital lasted more than two hours. My jaw was broken in two places. For 50 long days I was on a liquid diet, unable even to eat Gerber's baby food.Those who attacked me have yet to be brought to justice.Before leaving Pakistan, I imagined white Americans were the embodiment of liberty.

Whenever I had thought of America, I thought of freedom, and when I thought of freedom, I pictured white Americans -- the Founding Fathers, all U.S. presidents to date [until the Obama revolution recently] , most in Congress. And I had considered that small towns like this one must be "pure America" -- standing for freedom of speech and expression -- since most here are white.My mistake. I don't mistrust all white Americans now, nor all small-town Americans. I'm just much, much more careful.

2009-02-04T11:34:00.000-08:00

Gay poet attacks, ridicules Obama

He -- or you may call her she -- is a very different kind of Punjabi. In spite of being a Muslim her "husband" is a Sikh.A Punjabi, generally speaking, will not embrace a Sikh or Hindu who would be an equal Punjabi only because of religion.

And Punjab, which means the land of five rivers, is a place where religious bigotry reigns supreme and many people love bin Laden, fondly calling him baba.

As the world celebrated the ushering in of the dawn of a new era in the US, a renowned gay poet from Obama's hometown of Chicago -- originally from Punjab --, Ifti Nasim, attacked the new president.

HIS MASTER'S VOICE
(on the inauguration of the President of The United States of AmericaBarack Hussein Obama)Washington is rejoicing
The inauguration of the president
Barack Obama Minus his middle name
Who is looking for some change
In the White House
Just like his brother on the street,
asking"can you spare some change"
but there will be no change.
The whole world is duped again.
Little Terrier is still on the record label
Listening to his master's voice
But this mutt is going to speak his master's voice.
Right now America is like an economic souffle
Crumbling and deflating
And Oprah Winfrey is renting
A hotel to celebrate the Change
Which is going to be celebrated
With firework in Gaza,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq
And possibly Iran,
Burning the children alive.
America is going through the Change,
a Cultural, political and moral menopause.
And you want me to celebrate
Because a black is in the White House
Not a real black
½ black
1/3 black
2% black
less filling black
but as long as he is going to finish
his master's dirty job of bombing.
He is ok because he is brown.
He can stick around.
So this my gift, a poem ,
to you Mr. President
and all the casualties of women,
men, children,animals and the house mice,
you are going to drop bomb at.

Not sure what is wrong with our Punjabi friends, even the liberals. Just last fall celebrated author, Tariq Ali, whose family is widely respected among liberal circles in South Asia, was visiting Canada. But he echoed the Pakistan military viewpoint and defended the Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is strange: but some Pakistani liberals feel the Taliban are playing a progressive role by fighting the US and West. There can be no bigger intellectual bankruptcy than this kind of a view point.

It is unfortunate but most the problems in South Asia stem from the bigoted mindset of Punjabi Muslims.

It was cleart Ifti is anry with Obama because of his plans to rid the world of the Al Qaeda threats by pursuing them inside Pakistan.

The Baluch and other minority communities living in Pakistan will welcome the Obama move of ridding the world of terrorism.

There should be an undeclared perpetual war on terror, especially in places like Pakistan.

I can only hope Ifti will realize, Obama is one of the best things that has happened to America in the last one century. I am also positive gay marriage will be legalized in the US under Obama. Trade unions will return under Obama.

It is sad Obama had to face the music over Tom Daschle. But people of Obama's background, who believe in the inherent good of all humans, can make such mistakes. "I screwed up," he frankly admitted. Viva Obama.

2009-01-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

Pakistan UN envoy among famous gays

Pakistan is one of the strangest countries when it comes to gays. There is lot of gay sex, but the subject is a big taboo.

Majority of men, even those married, would not lose an opportunity to have sex with another man, however.

A number of top Pakistanis are secretly gay.

One of the most prominent gays in Pakistan today is the country's present representative to the United Nations, Hussain Haroon. Likewise his brother Hameed Haroon, who runs the Dawn newspaper is also gay. Among the two, Hameed is said to be more flamboyant than Hussain.

Old timers in Karachi say the Haroons deceased father Saeed Haroon and their uncle, Yusuf Haroon, who contributed lavishly to the Reagan presidential campaign, are widely known to be gay.

Haroon is not the first high-ranking diplomat whose sexuality is an open secret. Prior to him Zia Ispahani, former ambassador to the US was quite a flamboyant gay.

A gay chat room in Karachi almost ten years ago had two very prominent members: Asim Raza, son-in-law of coup leader-turned-president Gen. President Pervez and Ameer Bhutto, son of former Sindh chief minister Mumtaz Bhutto.

More than five years ago, the head of a state government in Pakistan was caught in the eye of a political storm after descriptions of his gay lifestyle were leaked to the press in bickering between the country’s spy bosses, reports from the mostly military-ruled nation said.

Pakistan’s Friday Times weekly published an exposé that the chief minister of Pakistan’s southeastern state of Sindh, Ali Mohammed Maher, was gay and loved late-night dancing parties, sometimes in women’s clothes.

In a follow-up report, the now defunct U.S.-based South Asian Tribune attributed the press leaks in the conservative Muslim nation to an infighting between two army generals—Ehsanul Haq and his deputy Ehtesham Zamir Jaffery—both of whom command the country’s infamous spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

“I commend Maher (for being less discreet than other closeted officials),” said Hasan Mujtaba, an openly bisexual intellectual and writer originally from Maher’s home state. “This is something ideological, really mystical, as it has never happened before in history. Not even during the Mogul era in India, when some rulers and princes were highly closeted gays.”

The local Sindhi vernacular press blacked out the news item because of Maher’s tribal and political clout. Mujtaba added that the way Maher’s sexuality was presented in the “homophobic” media was all the more deplorable.

Mujtaba said, “In Pakistan’s peculiar context, none would come to (Maher’s) defense. This is a prime case for international human and gay rights bodies to lobby and fight for him.”

Two other famous gays from Sindh are are Makhdoom Khaliquzzaman, who belongs to a highly spiritual family and Saleem Shehzad, a leader of the pro-terror outfit Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

From Baluchistan, newspapaer publisher Fasih Iqbal was one of the more prominent gays. A second was governor Fazle Agha. Quite a few nationalist leaders in Baluchistan are also bisexual and love men, despite being happily married.

As per Islamic law, called Shariah, which cannot be challenged under Pakistan’s constitution, a gay person can even be sentenced to death. Though no such sentence has ever been actually passed, the law hangs over the heads of gays in Pakistan.

As in Oman, Palestine, Morocco, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, there are closeted gays in Pakistan’s power structure, but any “coming out” is simply inconceivable. Public disgrace and stiff penalties, even death, befall common gay men.

According to the late Abdul Fatah Memon, Pakistan's slain premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto admitted to having gay sex. "But he said it was forced on him by a male servant."

The prominent gays now deceased, include President Ghulam Ishaq Khan -- who also liked cross-dressing--, former chief minister of Frontier province Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, Pakistan Peoples Party politician Pyarali Allana, and one of the country's founding father Abdur Rab Nishtar.

2009-01-28T21:23:00.000-08:00

Fart in public, kill yourself

It happens even today — a Baluch who farts in public commits suicide -- but a Briton in England said he came out of retirement to resume his farting performance on popular demand. Mir Nadir Jamali, a nephew of former Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali, once narrated a tragedy that befell two brothers from the Baluchistan town of Usta Mohammed in the early nineties.

He said a Baluch youth was playing volley ball when people heard his fart. “He went home and committed suicide.” About three years later his younger brother was playing the same sport when he farted. “The second brother also committed suicide,” Jamali said.

The Baluchi word for fart in Baluchi is tirr and farting is considered one of the worst taboos, called aib.

Most Baluch children are told how shameful a fart is at a bedtime story.The story goes there was man who farted in public and fled his village out of shame. Many years later, he wanted to find out how his family was faring so he returned in the darkness to see what was going on.

He peeped into his hut and heard his wife cussing him in front of his son and recalling his fart.

According to Wikipedia there are 15 million Baluch worldwide. A huge part of Baluch society is mostly tribal and tens of thousands of them still eke out a nomadic existence in the tough, but resource rich, region.

The native land of the Baluch is called Baluchistan--in fact the land is named after the people--divided among, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The area under Pakistani army occupation is slightly bigger than New Mexico. The area under Iranian mullahs is the size of Nevada, and that under Afghanistan is the size of West Virginia. A bloody insurgency is going on in Pakistani annexed Baluchistan, while U.S-backed Baluch militants are also challenging Iranian rule in Seistan-o-Baluchistan.

Majority of Baluch intellectuals shy away from discussing the subject of fart, repeated queries made by this writer showed.

London-based Baluch intellectual and writer Koulmir Namiran says it is nothing wrong for fart to be considered bad in Baluch society. “Common sense, it is bad because it smells bad. Many people don't like bad smell, especially Baluch because they have fresh air and open spaces,” Namiran said from London.

The stink in fart is mostly because of hydrogen sulfide, butyric acic and carbonyl sulfide. The other gases in fart include methnae, hydrogen, cabon dioxide and oxygen.

The Baluch live their lives under a strict honor code. The British after studying them had come to the conclusion: Respect the Baluch.

The reason why a Baluch man commits suicide after farting in public is otherwise is that he would remain a butt of ridicule for the rest of his life. One main reason fart is taboo is because it is associated with anal sex -- in Baluch culture a male is not allowed to have passive anal sex.

Also among the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan, that lies to the north of Baluchistan, fart is considered taboo, though they do not kill themselves on farting in public.

In contrast in the West, fart is sometimes considered funny.

According to Bob Woodward, President Bush had a penchant for cracking fart jokes with his advisor Karl Rove. Once in 2005, Woodward wrote in his book State of Denial, Bush conspired to have Rove sit in a chair that would have caused a big fart sound by remote control. But that was the day when the 7/7 bombing news broke out and the prank was postponed—to be carried out two weeks later that left Rove, one of the world's best known Neocons, nonplussed.

[Timothy Noah writes in Slate, “A robust tradition of fart jokes exists within Anglo-Saxon culture, going back at least as far as Chaucer, and the fart joke holds a venerated place in English politics. Legend has it that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, once farted in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I, whereupon he went into exile for seven years. On his return, the queen reputedly greeted, "My lord, we had quite forgot the fart."(Read full article: http://www.slate.com/id/2150806/]

In some Western European nations, farting has been turned into a performing art.

There is at least one performing artist in the world today. His name is Paul Oldfield, a Briton. Oldfield, also known as Mr. Methane, has an interesting web site where he writes farting is fun.

"We all do it, even the Queen of England breaks wind," he says, recalling, "In my case it all started quite by accident at the tender age of fifteen. I was practising the Full Lotus position encouraged by my Yoga loving sister when I discovered the ability to breath both fore and aft, so to speak."

[See web site: http://www.mrmethane.com/mr-methane-farting-history/]

To a query from this correspondent, Oldfield, 42, who prefers to go by his stage name of Mr. Methane, said that he briefly retired and then started up again about 2006 ish on popular demand.

"I got tired of the road really but then after resting a while I got back at it as people started offering me decent money if I would come out of retirement and perform," he said. "So I guess the motivation to come out of retirement was monetary or at least a monetary recognition of my farting talents."

Prior to Oldfield there was a Frenchman named Joseph Pujol, better known worldwide as Le Petomane who died in 1945.

2009-01-27T21:44:00.000-08:00

Born different

It's so nice to be born different. All my siblings were born at home, I was the only one born in hospital in Rangoon, capital of Burma--now foolishly renamed Myanmar. I think I was four pounds when I was born. A small piece of brown shit. The eighth piece, among nine, to be exact. We could have been 13 in all, but four died at birth.

The flight from Rangoon to Karachi was a memorable one, for me. I was happy as a lark on getting cups full of sweets from the air hostesses. I was just too innocent to read the solemn looks on my parents faces, first cousins both born filthy rich in Burma. My dad Anwer Mustikhan was 43 and mom Zohra Mustikhan, 37.

Overnight they were reduced from riches to rags as the army under megalomaniac General Ne Vin, with a promise of Burmese way of socialism, had seized power and wanted the foreigners out. Though both my parents were born in Burma--my dad was 50 percent Burmese as his mother Halima was pure Burmese--, but that did not count.

In Burma to be considered Burmese one had be 100 percent Burmese. Interestingly, among the Baluch also one had to be 100 percent or be doomed. A mixed Baluch carries the epithet darzadag, which means alien-blood. There are a very few scenes from Burma that I remember to this day; but am surprised at my memory since I was barely three years old when my family fled Rangoon. One of the scenes is from the countryside. I was in the car and saw packs of elephants roaming in the open fields. I was scared and began crying.

In Burma, the elephants perform the same tasks camels, bulls,buffaloes, donkeys and horses perform elsewhere in south and southeast Asia--transporting load. Yet another scene was from a ferry ride. I thought I would drown when my parents took me for a ride on a ferry boat in the Inya Lake. A third scene was of our watchman's death. I remember him go to a sink and wash his face. Moments later he collapsed and was dead. I heard the other siblings shout and scream. A little later there was sound of jingle bells and I ran to the gate of our mansion as the candy man had come. I think I was naughty from the very start.

One particular scene is from a room in the upstairs when my mother is trying to feed to me cereals and I was in no mood to eat. I was running on the large spring bed and watching the glimpses of trees from a huge window. All of a sudden I saw the entire bowl of cereals smacked on my face and I began to cry. The fondest of the Rangoon memories is the farewell party my eldest brother Mazher and sister Shama--classmate of Daw Aung Sang Suu Kyi all throughout her school years at the Methodist English School-- threw for their classmates.

As the now antique gramophone record player "His Master's Voice" played the early 1960s music, I joined the party for a twist. To this day I am really fond of dancing. I can barely forgive mother for choosing Karachi, Pakistan, to migrate to where another despot General Ayub Khan was in power, in stead of staying back in Rangoon or going to London or Toronto. At the time Ne Vin seized power, both the United Kingdom and Canada liberally opened its doors to refugees from Burma. Many well known business families settled down in those two countries. But mom decided against staying in Burma or go to any destinations in the West, following an old Baluchi adage that says among your blood-and-bone you may be poor but not lost.

She also said dad was fearing his arrest any day. Her concern was the daughters should not sleep with non-Muslims. In my half century on Mother Earth, as a gay person, I have slept with both Muslim and non-Muslim men and can barely tell the difference! One of my uncles, my father's half-brother Shajehan Mustikhan, who was a cross-dressing gay and very successful in business, did not leave Burma and was arrested and put in jail. But perhaps he knew life in a Buddhist country would be much better in Burma than Pakistan or Iran. He stayed back.

Ne Vin did meet my uncle Akber Mustikhan in London on his first visit after the 1962 coup. He had known my uncle since his junior days as a major in the Burmese army and used to play golf with him. At times my uncle would support him financially. But at the London meeting, he told my uncle, "We don't want Buick's and Cadillacs in Burma, we want bullocks."

PAKISTAN is one of the strangest countries the British designed through their proxy and agent Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Both Jinnah and one of his sisters, Fatima, look very much like Parsis and there is a whispering campaign among Pakistan's top hierarchy that the two were in fact illegitimate offspring of a Parsi businessman. Interestingly, Jinnah made one of his Parsi students elope with him but when his daughter married a Parsi he publicly disowned her.

The daughter still has Indian nationality , earning Pakistan the dubious distinction of being the only country on earth where the founding father's daughter is a citizen of a "hostile" neighbor. Likewise, Fatima Jinnah's secret love with a Bombay dentist is a Pakistani state secret. She is said to have given birth to a son who is a Parsi dentist in Bombay. The wife of first governor of Sindh, Lady Sughra Hidayatullah, confirmed to me about Fatima Jinnah's love affair.

The word Pakistan never existed in the Urdu lexicon until the 1940s. The logic forwarded for its creation was Hindus and Muslims can not live in peace after the British departure from the subcontinent. The irony is that Hindus and Muslims had lived peaceably with one another for hundreds of years before the British set foot on Indian soil. Even when the British ruled India, Hindus and Muslims had peaceful coexistence until the Englishmen connived the divide and rule policy and as a first step divided Bengal into East and West Bengal on religious grounds in 1905.

From a purely Muslim standpoint the partition of India was a death blow to their numerical strength. More Muslims were left in India and even today there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan and Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan. From day one Pakistan was a no-brainer as the fall of Dhaka and subsequent creation of Bangladesh proved in December, 1971. Pakistan is a strange paradox. The country's president and former army chief, Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf-- an alcoholic and one of the sleaziest in the country's chequered history-- for his survival is dependent on a party that the country's Inter Services Intelligence believes gets liberal financing from its Indian counterpart, RAW.

The life of luxury and comforts that Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Altaf Hussain, a former New York cabbie, and his army of advisers have lived in London does raise serious questions about their money trail. Since Musharraf became the army chief, the MQM had largely adopted a docile posture but showed its fangs May 12, 2007 when the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry visited Karachi.

Many innocent civilians were killed by MQM goons and thugs to help Musharraf. Maybe the only good thing about Musharraf, if any, is that his son-in-law Asim Raza is gay. The way Altaf Hussain was developed by the I.S.I. in the mid-eighties is quite well-known. For instance, at a meeting of 125 wealthy Pakistani businessmen at a house near Hill Park in the Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society, the late General Ziaul Haq personally telephoned the host and asked the participants to donate generously to the M.Q.M.

Altaf Hussian who had come to attend the meeting on his famous red-color Honda 50 motorcycle thanked the donors for donating half-million rupees apiece-- a grand total of a million dollars--, but at the same time threatened them: "Had you not given us the help, we know how to snatch that from you." The killing of top Urdu-speaking businessmen including Hamdard founder Hakim Saeed showed the MQM's founder meant business.

My Darkest Secret

I come from the Gorgej, a Baluchi tribe that spans the Baluchistan areas of all three countries. The tribal chieftain is based in Afghanistan. Fleeing poverty and hunger, my grandfathers — my parents were cousins — and their two brothers left their homes in an Iranian part of the tribal territory to go to Karachi, now the commercial capital of Pakistan.

In search of greener pastures, they went from there to Australia and India (Assam) and finally to Burma in 1902, where lady luck smiled on them and they became rich quarry and rubber estate owners. Among the first successful Baluchi business people anywhere on earth, our family enjoyed celebrity status back home. I was born in Burma like both of my parents.

My eldest sister was classmates with Burmese freedom fighter Aung Sang Suu Kyi; in Burma this is deemed as being best friends. After the 1962 military coup in Burma, my family was forced to go back to Pakistan. We were reduced almost to paupers. I was just three years old. Family Values Despite having lived elsewhere for years, my family continues to adhere to many tribal values. They remain committed to the Baluchi struggle for freedom, back in Baluchistan; they are also fervently anti-gay. "Bugga" is the derisive term tribal Baluchi people use for gay men like myself who take the "passive" role.

The word is actually synonymous with the English epithet, "faggot." In Baluchi culture, no male person is considered worse than a bugga. There's a saying that for a male it's all right to do anything other than to steal or take the "passive" role in sex with another man. Like neighboring Afghans and Iranians, Baluchi culture does not stigmatize the man playing the "active" role in gay sex. The cultural stigma of homosexuality is further compounded by Islam's threat of hell for gays, as almost all Baluchi are Muslims. As a child, I heard family gossip that my dad's eldest half brother was a cross-dressing gay in Burma. Mom never forgave my uncle for that. She cast him in the role of a villain, and used his example to brainwash me against gays.

This played havoc with me when I began grappling with my own homosexuality, growing up in Pakistan as a middle-class teenager. Cardinal Sin Pakistan was a poverty-ridden society wallowing in dictatorship, and ranking as low as 140th on the United Nations development scale. Pressure to conform to societal and family expectations was so intense, I actually married a woman. It was the cardinal sin of my life, which makes me feel like a criminal to this day.

The night of the wedding, when grooms in the East are supposed to "do and show," was the most tormenting night of my existence. I had nothing to show or do. Eastern aphrodisiacs did work miracles later, and I had a son, but the stormy marriage was dissolved within three years. I was severely depressed afterwards, empty as never before, until finally, with psychiatric counseling, I began to accept that I was gay.

To my pleasant surprise, the psychiatrist himself came out to me as gay, greatly helping with the healing process, and introduced me to the highly secretive gay community in Pakistan. I couldn't believe there were so many others. Earlier on I had enrolled in a medical school and then in psychology classes to understand what was wrong with me, but dropped out as there were no ready answers in either field of study in Pakistan. The head of my psychology department, to whom I went for clinical counseling, actually told me that being gay or straight was like some preferring "tea over Coke," and that the tastes could be changed by practice. Feet to the Fire In 1997, after a decade of work in Pakistan and Gulf newspapers, I became an Internet journalist writing for online publications in the U.S. and elsewhere.

My worst nightmare began after Pakistan's top intelligence agency, ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), began blackmailing me so that I would censor my own articles, including those denouncing the nuclear tests in my home region. Like most old-time secular families, mine was opposed to the 1947 separation of Pakistan from India, which was supposedly done for religious reasons, as part of post-World War II British machinations. With such renegade political beliefs defined as "anti-State" in Pakistan, plus my writings critical of the nuclear testing, the ISI's threat to reveal my sexual orientation, along with their threats of physical harm, meant that I had no freedom of expression.

Unlike the chief minister of Pakistan's southeastern state of Sindh, who was outed last month in an internal war within the dreaded ISI, I had no powerful backers in the spy agency, and I was extremely fearful and nervous: being openly gay is inconceivable in Pakistan. I decided to leave.

Imagine my happiness on October 20, 2000 when I first arrived in the land of the free and the home of the brave, which ranked as high as 11th on the international freedom scale until 9/11. I can't describe the awesome feeling when I saw the Stars and Stripes and the Statue of Liberty. Outside New York's JFK airport, dressed in my native shalwar-kamiz, the baggy shirt and trousers, I turned around to see if someone was watching, lest they think of me as crazy, and I kissed the U.S. soil. I was like a bird out of the cage, migrating into heaven.

Here, I could proudly say that I was an open "bugga", the first from an entire ethnic group of over twenty million people, including the diaspora community. American Beauty To see couples kissing in public in big U.S. cities, and gay couples in underwear kissing in bars, all of it was like a dream for me. I felt like the tribal woman who, seeing a light bulb glow for the first time in her master's home, back in Baluchistan, asked, "Master, what is this magic? May I take it home for my children?"

From the cradle to the grave, millions in my ancestral Baluchistan never see an electric light bulb glow. I'd never seen gay men so visible. Even before the ISI blackmail strengthened my resolve, part of me had always wanted to be honest and open about myself. Once in the U.S., when I went to stay with relatives in Ohio, I came out to them. Overnight, I was no longer welcome in their home. I found shelter in a halfway home called Buckeye House, in the small town of Troy, Ohio.

They took me in and even treated me rather regally. The other guys were in a large common room, but they gave me a private room. Imagine someone from the Third World being treated better than white Americans. Later, St. Paul's United Church of Christ in the nearby town of Piqua accepted me into their congregation even though I told them I was gay.

They made me feel I was a child of God and deserved to be respected and wanted. Most people at the church — all of them white — were very kind, warm and welcoming. I began to wonder what made Americans so nice, the white color of their skin, their Christian faith, or the colder weather. For me and America, it was love at first sight.

Reality Check

My first indication that not everything was "bold and beautiful" in the U.S.A. was a group home in Piqua for U.S. veterans where I volunteered after staying 50 days at the town's halfway house. It gave me a horrific glimpse of the ravages of war. Homeless soldiers from World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War, were picked up off the streets so they could have a roof over their heads and three meals a day.

The derelict porch and the unkempt garden adjacent to it were strewn with innumerable cigarette butts. One veteran jokingly compared them to soldiers discarded by the Pentagon after its occasional wars. Still, my confidence in my beloved new country remained unshaken. I never hid from anyone in Piqua that I was gay, not knowing the extent of homophobia in small towns, and in America, in general.

"Curse of the generations" is how one very well meaning missionary described my condition when I told him frankly that I didn't want to hide my sexual orientation here in the U.S., since it was in my genes. I was stunned when a second pious Christian told me God would not answer my prayers because I was gay. Another pastor gave me a booklet that said AIDS was a divine punishment for gays. Finally, I was severely gay-bashed one Saturday night after I cruised a group of four white men I had seen in supposedly gay-friendly bars. When I walked back home, they followed me in their car and attacked me. My jaw was broken and wired shut for two months, but the St. Paul's UCC stood beside me like a family.

The episode emboldened me and two weeks later, when an evangelist made an anti-gay speech at a public rally, I returned with a pink placard that read, "God loves all--Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgendered and Blacks." Right in front of the entire town.

My immigrant infatuation with the United States took a real downturn after the terrible tragedy that befell the country on 9/11. I was still in Piqua when it happened. I liked the people there, even if many would be dismissed as "rednecks." They remind me of my Baluchi people: shy, reserved, proud and straightforward. But to my utter dismay, I began facing nasty remarks and suspicious looks.

Editors of the U.S.-based Environment News Service, for whom I had been working, helped me relocate to Las Vegas, where I began working again as a freelance journalist.

American Taliban Since 9/11

American neoconservatives calling the shots have made the U.S. environment so hostile towards Muslims, and free speech in general, that many, including my estranged American relatives, have become afraid of discussing anything important in public places. I'm back in contact with some of my relatives. They are very concerned with Islam-bashing, and the brutal policies against the Muslim world, including the deteriorating conditions in occupied Iraq. The hate-mongering, censoring U.S. neoconservatives increasingly remind me of the Taliban I left back home. Pundits on the Fox network indulge in eerily similar rhetoric excusing the murderous rampage in other people's homelands as America's holy duty of liberation.

The policy Rumsfeld advocated of shooting Iraqi looters on sight, exceeds even the zeal of the Taliban for executing common criminals. More and more, the United States joins forces with Islamic states and the Vatican to undercut international AIDS programs, erode women's health programs, and deny human rights to lesbians, gay men, and the transgendered. As a sympathizer of a gay humanist and universalist agenda, I had detested the warlike posture of turbaned people like bin Laden.

To my utter dismay, the suit-wearing and clean-shaven leadership in the U.S., are proving no better. Something has gone awfully wrong with the "B" name: bin Laden, Blair, Bush. I am so glad the American people voted Barack Obama. I also love Joe Biden. I was working as a waiter at the Newseum when Senator Biden came to attend an event there. I so very much wanted to say hi to him since he is a firm believer in the concept of balkanization of failed states. Pakistan is one such state.