Chapter 3 – Syed's Soliloquy
Syed was, for once, glad that he had the ability to shutter himself away from people. He liked that idea, the romance of a Swiss chalet with its wooden shutters you could pull across the window whenever you liked, and yet, still peer out from them. Sounds more poignantly heartrending than 'curtaining himself off' or 'pulling down the blinds.' Whatever simile worked, it was a tragic necessity throughout his life that he had to hide his true self away from those around him.
'True self'. Well, what was his true self? He juggled a bewildering set of conflicting identities up and down, from one hand to the other, praying that they would not fall, and with them, his very essence. Pakistani growing up in England, Muslim amongst Christians, religious participant amongst atheists and apathetes, 'apathetes, is that even a word,', these were among his earliest oppositions. Then, it became man-attracted-to-men amongst a world of straights and straight-down-the-line expectations, as well as Islam against homosexuality, and, far far too often, Allan against his consuming human needs. There was a list of them; hierarchical that time he told of them to Christian – Muslim, son, brother, and then, wife, and now, child. He had dissembled even then, when he omitted Christian from that list, even though he belonged on it, too. He left him off, because he hadn't known where to place him, and, by Allah, Christian demanded the first slot, even when Syed could not offer it to him.
All Syed knew was that he had been tired and so overwhelmed, and the one choice that had seemed to offer him the easiest way to maintain a chain of interlocking identities was to marry Amira, have children, be successful, live near the families, and remain active in the life of the mosque.
But then, dragging that manacle of expectation around exhausted him even more, because the sole important person he had excised from that list, Christian, stole his heart and made him recognize that he himself did not even appear anywhere, not in and for himself. And after suffering for all those years, he had made the first tentative steps towards a kind of freedom of being – he left his parents and choose Christian.
'Love is never easy, Syed,' he remembered his mum telling him one day in the café. Well, it sure bloody wasn't, was it? Glorious days, followed by days of mutual evisceration, leading to Christian leaving, again, 'for good' Jane said, and to him getting on with his life.
"Do you miss him, Syed, because you seem so, well, together?" Tamwar has asked.
Syed had few friends. A man in hiding cannot say too much to anyone, lest he be found out, and the habit stuck. Tanya was a friend, but she was older, a mother, and anyway, she seemed to have disappeared lately. Jane was his sister, so she was unavailable. Amira? Those first few awful days, yes, he had leaned on her, the one who professed friendship for him, but he knew that this was a dangerous pair of ears into which to pour out ones anguish. And Tam, well, he cared about Syed but life was very fraught right now, what with Mum's wedding, and the various impending visits, moves, to Pakistan. He couldn't burden him at this moment. And what was he feeling, anyway?
"I did at first. But now, Tambo, I'm so busy, I just don't have the time to miss him. He left me and he is not returning, and I have a child now. So, thank you, but I really am fine."
As the days passed by, that became more and more the case, that he was, in some way or another, fine. But why? How could he be 'fine' when the man whom he had once told that it ached to see him and not need to touch his skin, hold on to him, had left, the only one he would ever love.
Syed thought of that word Munir had once taught him, the liminal, the threshold, the space of doubt and anxiety between two aspects, that of the known, of where one was coming from, and the unknown, where one was going to. As Syed entered the flat, he knew that there was danger inside, and that he needed all of his energy to continue to be 'fine'.
'Hi Syed,' chirped Jane…