I once had a Pashtun lover, but not from among the famous Babri Banda family

Thank you America, for giving me my personal freedoms, even though there are many who want to snatch it back. I feel sometimes so lost driving in the United States as really I don't have many relatives here. You come to know the streets where you grew up because of memories you have of events that may have taken place on particular spots. Where you had a fight trying to act macho but realized you were no match for you nemesis, or maybe romance with a girlfriend even if it was a deceptive role playing as in the heart of your heart you loved the cute boy next door. Or, pardon my French, perhaps where you got your rear rubbed or got laid. A newcomer to the US does feel lost as he lacks these vital connections. But then at the gay Mecca in Dupont Circle, all my fears and loathing melt away immediately. I feel like a fish in water. Or maybe in Castro in San Francisco that i used to love and visit a lost when I lived in the bay area. In fact, many years ago I ended up living in Castro Valley for some months with a cut gay guy, who is still cute, thinking there can't be two Castros in the Bay Area. There certainly was.

When I arrived at the JFK airport on the eve of my 41st birthday, drunk like a pig as I had consumed half bottle of J&B whiskey on my flight to US freedoms. I had brought whiskey during the lay over, which we call transit, at the Manchester Airport and drank to the hilt during the PIA flight. By the time the plane touched JFK airport, I was flying high like an airplane myself. I also used to drink heavily because of the blues over my sexual orientation since 1990s when I had gone to Dubai to work at the Khaleej Times. I do have some forgetfulness and I am not sure it is due to the heavy drinking in those years when I was unable to accept myself over my sexual orientation. Since the subject is never discussed one has to suffer in silence. The only thing people ever say is that it is haram. Unfortunately, the religious clerics are pedophiles who continue to violate the young boys in 50,000 seminaries in Pakistan while at the same time preparing them for religious wars like Ghaazwa-i-Hind against India and jihad in neighboring Afghanistan. Most of the time, the sexual molestation happens during Koran classes; there are scores of reports the mullah will make the boy hold his member, while telling the child how to exactly pronounce the Arabic words in the Koran. Thankfully I was spared the torture as the person who came to teach me Koran was a woman. Had a mullah came to teach me the "words of Allah", maybe I might have been more gay?

I know its taboo to discuss such things in the culture I was born in, but since now I am a "shameless" American I better share it here so that any other persons, who suffers in silence from same miseries may find some solace or maybe courage to confront his inner demons. That is the power of human sharing. So here I go: I had a Pakhtun lover for 17 years, very handsome. We used to meet even after he got married to a very beautiful wife! Muslims among the Pakhtuns love male-to-male sex. Sodomy for instance is called Fail-i-Afghan. but even after sodomy, the Pashtun will take a shower and say his prayer. It is quite amazing though all too confusing. the worst ever killing of gays in world history in Florida was the work of a Pakhtun gay guy Omar Mateen, who could not reconcile his sexual orientation with his religious beliefs.

Last year, I walked in the gay parade with an Afghan guy who was carrying a placard "Gay, Muslim Unafraid," and though I am a Hindu atheist, he was a Unitarian Universalist like me, so we walked together. However, after I posted the picture of our pride march on Facebook the guy informed he had too many Afghan common friends with me on Facebook and requested me to take the picture out. I was taken aback as he was walking openly on the streets during the gay parade.

Similarly, acceptance of homosexuality is the lowest in Pakistan, according to a Pew report, but the country is top in the world when it comes to gay pornography. In my ancestral France-sized Balochistan, there was a report two and half years ago that a couple was arrested after the first gay wedding in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan. Those arrested and the person who preformed the wedding ceremony said the wedding was a joke, but a news report in the Express Tribune showed that anal penetration had taken place. As I work for the rights of my Baloch people, I am really very much handicapped over my sexual orientation. Many Baloch activists use the "f" epithet for me when we have any disputes. This is tragic because the founder of modern Baloch nationalism Nawab Yusuf Ali Khan Magsi, who died in an earthquake in Balochistan in 1935 was quite well known as a gay guy.

It is a sad fact that even though homosexuality is quite widespread in all countries that end with an "istan"--Afghanistan, Balochistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan etc., the subject is never discussed in public. In fall last year, a young Afghan guy was almost killed after his family in Kabul found out about his passive sexual orientation. Being top or active is not that much of an issue. He now lives in Turkey after Nemat Sadat, my friend and Afghanistan's first openly gay guy, helped him by launching a GoFundMe campaign.

Some family story!

I was not only exposed to the gay aspect of Pashtun culture, but also brought up by a Pashtun woman. Strange but true. The woman who cared for me and loved me as a child was an Afridi woman. She was once a dancing woman in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas-- imagine a dancing woman from the tribal areas 90 years back. From there she was transported to Burma by her lover. We used to call her Aaday.

I have lots of Pashtun relatives too.

I was once telling an Afghan ambassador my sister-in-law is Yusufzai, another sister-in-law is Lodin Gilzai from an old feudal family of Kandahar famed for their apple orchards, an aunt is Afridi from the "illaqa ghair" or FATA, another aunt is distance relative of the Bilour family. The ambassador jokingly asked: "Why Pashtun women? Don't the Baloch have women of their own?" In addition my niece is married to a Durrani from the Peshawar area while an aunt was married to man who was grand uncle of Shahzeb Khan, the young guy who was killed by a Jatoi feudal thug. I had counseled the family to settle the issue out of court.

 In fact one of my grandfather's business mates in Burma was Khan Bahadur Sharbat Khan Afridi CIE, a member of the Balochistan provincial service, where he served as Political Agent in Loralai, Fort Sandeman, Sibi and as Prime Minister of Kalat State, his grandson who later became Pakistan ambassador Tariq Afridi writes. In fact, my father used to tell me Khan Bahadur afridi's son General Yusuf Khan was with an uncle at my uncle's London home, cooking food when Pakistan's high ranking politician Yusuf A. Haroon arrived, impressed like hell that a general was cooking food while my uncle was resting. Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah used to stay at the Haroon's whenever he visited Karachi before partition. At another time, the late general asked by way of being polite give my dad get ahead in the elevator at a Karachi business office that made people's eyes present there roll. These Afridi Pashtuns from Babri Banda are one of the most highly educated in Khyber Pashtunkhwa province. I remember my late father often tell me my grandfather regretting that while Khan Bahadur Sharbat Khan Afriid focused on the education of his children, he had ran after amassing wealth but the success he achieved as one of the richest Baloch men on earth paled in comparison to Khan Bahadur Afridi's success as a dad.

Though Yusuf Haroon was not openly but known widely to be gay. According to my late father, a Baloch teacher from the Zikri sect from Balochistan's coastal town of Pasni was one of Haroon's first lovers.  Likewise his gay younger brother the late Saeed A. Haroon, a close friend of my late dad, and father of Husain Haroon, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United Nations in New York, was gay. Husain A. Haroon brother Hameed Haroon is also widely suspected to be gay.

Khan Bahadur Afridi's other sons were Umar Afridi became the chief secretary of Khyber Pashtunkhwa province and another son Mohammed Ali Khan Afridi became a top notch lawyer in Dubai, handling the Dubai sheikhs' accounts. My late grandfather Haji Zahrikhan Mustikhan, a construction magnate who had got the contract and built the Mauripur airbase in Karachi for the British during World War Two-- the other half of the contract went to the still famous Tatas of India-- had defaulted in some financial commitments he made to Khan Bahadur Afridi and had passed away.

So Afridi approached a common family friend Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, at the time governor of Sindh, to request my dad to honor the commitment my grandfather made with him. Sir Hidyatullah met my dad in Khan Bahadur Afridi's presence and requested him to honor the commitment his dad had made to the Afridi notable. My father, in his twenties then, responded, "Sir when my dad could not honor his commitment, how can I honor the commitment." Sir Hidayatullah had a hearty laugh and agreed. "He is right. When his dad could not honor his commitment, how can he honor his commitment," said Sir Hidayatullah, a Hindu convert to Islam solely because of political reasons. The happy-go-lucky politician who was Sindh's first chief minister and also its first governor after the 1947 Partition Holocaust. The matter was settled and the Afridis remained our family friends.