Queer writings from South Asia: A woman feels at home in the bathroom, the devil’s abode

All my dreams are made on the bathroom floor.

Here is a rough carpet I’ve dragged there. There in the solace of my company, I sit and let myself get lost in the last four pages of the book I am reading. I press my head back to the cool pink tiled wall, once I am done. I close my eyes, this time. I decide what city I would like to be in and write the story in my head.

I have always found this to be a safe place. I smuggle items under my kurta, sucking in my stomach and tucking them in the front of my jeans or shalwar. A diary, a book, a whole wad of A4 sheets to draw on, pens. Cooly pressed against my hot skin, their awkward corners stick out from the covering cloth.

Outside, I ponder on my mother’s gaze. She who read before me and brought me into this world to love books can read the burning honesty in my cheeks.

There is so much more to be said about how much I loved spending time on this tiled floor.

During my fond visits, I would always wonder if this was me slowly turning evil. This is how the devil, Shaitan, made you wear horns. Ama and Nano both had been very clear, this is the devil’s dominion. A bathroom is unclean and so the devil and the minions live in its dirty glory. I was also warned not to look at my naked body in the mirror. After all, they knew. They were watching, shaitans of all sizes watching me live my life in their living room.

I don’t remember when I decided I was part of their family too.

Don’t get me wrong here! I always thought God was in love with Shaitan. Did no one notice that a whole world was created to prove Shaitan wrong? That God who knows everything that is to happen still lets it happen?

here is a journey i already know the answer to
God says
i bestow it on to you my dear jinn who thinks they know better.

here is a whole journey to answer your question
you will lose either away
you have lost my love, but you will realise why
for you don’t realise what I love

Doesn’t anyone notice how God simply wants to be known and trusted by Shaitan to trust in the judgement of faith of Hazrat Adam? God wants their creation to be loved and seen as they are. God is also their creation. Humans are the manifestation of God’s light.

When Allah holds love in so many ways, I start to feel ridiculous sometimes when I fear it.

I think about Shaitan and their struggle for love. They sit beside me – sometimes I think they are the fear that moves me away from love and my life.

I remember kissing you in the darkness and thought you to be a jinn. It would only make sense then, this overpowering love, this happiness, to be understood and feel divine. Another time to feel powerful, I once wrote myself off as a jinn. There are so many ways we share stories in forms larger than us. God built a whole world for Shaitan instead of vanquishing their existence.

The first time your tongue was inside me, I swear I saw god quivering in my skin. I struggle to turn away from light and form when it is all so obviously a love letter.

I am constantly afraid. I become the meeting of Shaitan and God together. One of us has left the understanding of the other.

I say goodbye to you while I still have the strength to hold your hand. I love you better, I whisper to myself. Here is Shaitan trying to tell God something. Prove me wrong, I know better. I leave. Does everyone learn to wait for the day of judgement to understand love?

Many months ago, I dreamt of your body growing heavier, your hair turning grey. I carried you on my back and you wore a kurta of my favourite colour – red. It is good to see you smile here in my dreams. I know now how to bury hurt here. I know what needs to be let go of, to know the truth of our time spent together.

I wonder if Shaitan thinks of the eternities of worshipping God before Hazrat Adam came. I hope I worshipped you enough.

This is a dream written on the bathroom floor. I practise my shame and desire with my body facing the bathroom door.

One summer, I was bleeding, shrouded in the darkness, growing sick to faint. I remember thinking it was better to die here in my room. A bedroom has always attached responsibilities and identities to it. A bathroom is there for you, here for you to relieve and cleanse yourself. A bedroom can be selfish in asking more of you.

It becomes a habit of comfort, to whisper to myself,

We are all jinns.

So what do jinns do when they can’t sleep? Do they also dream of love? Do they make dreams on the bathroom floor? Do they wish to be fed? Do they practise desire? Shaitan dreams to be right, to know and be known. To be known is to be loved.

I am not very different from Shaitan in love. Ever since I wanted to know I was right, I have been failing in love since then.

Shaitan will only cry in pain when it is stoned. We stone a lover every day. I think it fits perfectly into my narrative of how one can be perceived. How easy is it to blame Shaitan for what the human wants to do?

The grief of Shaitan is not any less than of me and you. Love is grief, and the world is a fleeting moment of it. There is nothing singular about it.

When your father is quiet in the casket and arrives in the neighbourhood, the lions have been roaring for hours. Kept away in different houses, they call out to each other in the dark.

You open your mouth in grief, and I feel the world crumbling into nothing at your roar. It took me time to cry, or even accept the suffering of distance. Anyone on a pedestal is far. Any love dealt with fear has the chance to go missing.

What is time teaching Shaitan?

Where is the lesson in eternity?

To watch humans suffer, err, cry and to give in to their fears?

What is God trying to teach their beloved?

The first time your tongue was inside me, I saw god quiver in my skin. I felt scared enough that you would eat me alive. But you are no lion, only a human. We are still here, souls kept in a zoo. Living in containers larger than the other, we pay the price of being seen in our identities.

All my dreams are made on the bathroom floor, but sometimes they can live outside this door. One night when I was drowsy and hungry, you got me pasta and fed me by hand because I couldn’t bear you to leave the bedroom again. The soft pad of your fingers, the creamy sauce, my mouth, slippery mushrooms. Only God knows how tender you were, to grant my blood timelessness.

These stories are my last and this is where I share my last lesson. This night we slept at yours, next-door to your mother and sister on the top floor. Two bedrooms, and a joint bathroom shared but even under your ceiling, we were not alone. Every time the bathroom light would turn on, we’d turn away from each other.

Time was wounding us up as we lay close. Shaitan was watching us beneath the door as we slowly met and measured the inches between our fingers to let them grow. Can you imagine two figures turning away from each other in the light and back together in the dark?

I saw the aching. Shaitan waiting, unable to sleep.
Hungrily watching me for I was right there, living their dream.

Excerpted with permission from ‘Even Shaitan Showers’ by Begum Taara Shakar in On The Brink Of Belief: Queer Writing From South Asia, edited by Kazim Ali, Penguin Books.