‘...She told me that I had keerai (worms) in my stomach and that this auntie will get rid of them.’

Name: Rayhan Muqadam Khan

Age: 25 years old

Place of residence: Karachi

Occupation: Freelance photographer

“My partner suggested me a name; ‘Ray’ and I kept that for a while, but it felt like a western name. Back then, I was very scared of being online because I was afraid my family will track me. So this teacher of mine, Haya Fatima, was hosting an online Q/A session on YouTube after a documentary screening and I had a question to ask too. But I wanted to remain low-key and didn't want to tell my name. Haya just passingly said she'll say the question is asked by ‘Rayhan’. She just made up a name for anonymity... but I really liked it and so I kept it.”

‘What does it mean?’ I ask.

‘A scent of paradise or something like that?’

Teachers have always been an important part of Rayhaan’s life, specially the teacher who named him. He tells me that she is not just a teacher but also a friend now. This adds much more weight to the wonderful relationship he shares with her. Having grown up in a conservative family of the Dawoodi Bohra community, his teachers were the windows to the world he wanted to live in. Through them he could see a society where women worked, earned and had the autonomy to be decision makers, even if it was just within the boundaries of a school. What he saw outside these boundaries was a society that never resonated with him. ‘My teachers were the first people who inspired me in real life, I knew then that I could also stand on my feet like them, be independent, own a house and have azaadi (freedom)’ Rayhan tells me.

Dawoodi Bohra’s are a sub-sect of the Shiites, with about 40,000 of them residing in Karachi. The community is ‘closely-knit’ as described by most people residing within and outside of it. But from Rayhan’s experience one can assume that while the community itself is closely knitted, the threads of his family barely ever came together. He grew up in a joint-family, with his parents, paternal grandparents and two older siblings in a small two bedroom apartment. A commercial male-dominated area. Just like any other area in Karachi. He has an older sister and an older brother but has always been closer to his brother. “He would play cricket with me, but my sister on the contrary has always been very ‘preachy’. I could never ‘vibe’ with her. Growing up I saw my brother become conservative and inclining towards the right wing while I started becoming more self-aware. That is when we started drifting apart”. While the bond he shared with his siblings started to waver in his teens – with his parents he didn’t even share a bond to begin with. He tells me how he never confided in them; that the mahol (environment) of his house never allowed him to.

‘I always stood first in my class’ Rayhan recalls, beaming. ‘But now that I think of it, it wasn’t as ordinary a thing as my parents portrayed it to be, I was never appreciated’. His smile disappears abruptly.

The lack of appreciation and attention was not just a result of general disinterest that parents may display towards their third born. Instead it rooted from gender hierarchies that were very well-established within the house. These hierarchies were passed on through generations and carried in the hands of men and women alike. Rayhan’s house was a testament to it. These hierarchies existed not as a norm but as a living being within his house, watching and dictating everyone – especially those around him. And people seemed to obey without asking any questions. The same was expected of Rayhan.

The encounters with this living being started early on in Rayhan’s life. Some came in the form decisions that were brushed off under the carpet, others through remarks that made little sense.

‘Girls should know how to take care of the house by the time they turn thirteen’.

‘I was always asked to help out in the house chores but my elder brother wasn’t. I always found it strange and frustrating. Even back then I knew that it was because of my gender’. He states in a voice that is careful yet affirmative. I see and accept the courage he radiated as he spoke. Rayhan grew up and lived as a girl for the first seventeen years of his life. Having attended an all-girls school and then high-school, he began to question if how he felt towards his friends was entirely just a platonic emotion. After this realization, self-awareness came easily. He had already embarked on a journey that would allow him to eventually transition into a man at the age of twenty-two. Albeit with small steps. Like changing his name from ‘Rashida’ to ‘Ray’ and then eventually ‘Rayhan’ on the suggestion of a teacher during a class on zoom. Like cutting his hair short. ‘I was elated the first time I cut my hair short, I just couldn’t stop smiling’. You do have beautiful short hair I comment, looking at his neatly combed hair with streaks of purple hair that laid out on his forehead. Just the thought of this memory makes him smile. And he smiles fully, openly.

There is also not much astonishment at the fact that while Rayhan attended a school that was run by the Bohri community, his brother was made to study in a much more expensive institution. No one ever said this explicitly within the house but it need not to be said, he could see how his brother’s education and career mattered more. A son’s accomplishment is a matter of great pride, so is a daughter’s character and how high others put her up on the social scale. And this social scale allows people to go to any ends no matter what psychological or physical repercussions it may entail.

Rayhan recalls one incident in a plane monotonous tone. Like a memorized verse. He speaks without pausing and without thinking. He refrains from making any eye-contact. I carefully follow his words. ‘I was about eight when my mom told me that we need to go see an auntie in the neighborhood. She told me that I had keerai (worms) in my stomach and that this auntie will get rid of them.’ Rayhaan was taken to an un-familiar place. Un-familiar to him but not to anyone in the community, I later figure out. He was then made to lie down on a bed while the auntie took out a sharp blade. After this, Rayhaan fails to present any vivid recollection of the incident. All that remains is his body’s memory of being violated. He would not think about what had happened back at the auntie’s place until years later. The whole process was made to seem natural. And so, no one ever talked about it again, even though everyone knew. Not just in his family, but in the entire Bohri community.

Almost a decade later while studying at a liberal arts school, he was posed with a question from a friend who was working on an assignment surrounding the practice of female genital mutilation. He told me how he almost lost his balance, back when he heard her. It took some time for Rayhaan to accept the fact that a small part of his clitoris had been removed by the auntie that day. He also figured out that how the practice of female genital mutilation was being carried out widely in the Dawoodi Bohra community and that it was not only him but several other women of the community that were subjected to what is called the ‘Female khatna’. Clitoridectomy is a religious ritual that is upheld by certain sects of Islam, specifically within the Bohri community of Pakistan. The practice of female circumcision in this region is not only encouraged by scholars as a means of curbing the sexual desires of women, but also as an act of worship. Even in places around the world where this practice may be banned, people ensure that they either get their daughters circumcised illegally or they travel to places where it is legal. What was even more unsettling for Rayhan was the fact that no one ever talked about it. And even if he ever found the courage to start a conversation at his home, there were women who justified the practice. With his sister being one of them. It is staggering how it's women who strongly sustain this ritual in a family, a women performs the ritual and in the end it’s a women whose body ends up being violated because of this ritual.

In a country where the length of women’s clothes are often correlated with the increasing sex crimes by men in power; it is not surprising to know that FGM is not even recognized, let alone have policies and laws in place condemning this inhumane practice. Many FGM survivors lead lives that appear normal to those who justify the practice, but internally many of them struggle alone. The psychological trauma faced by them also manifests later in their sex lives, with some facing performance anxiety while the others claiming that the meaning of ‘pleasure’ got lost for them. What is it about a woman’s body that threatens not one man, but entire societies and nations? What causes them to alter human body in such a way that the damage becomes irreversible?

After more than twenty-three years of his life, Rayhan decided to leave behind the living being at his house. He knew that it had to be done and I could hear his determination. It was loud. Unlike how he usually spoke and how he was as a child. He ensured that his involvement within his house was always minimum to avoid any conflict, and these conflicts were not a rarity. After starting university, Rayhan started getting clarity on his life along with the right kind of support; which allowed him to do as he pleased, and doing as you please as a woman will be followed by a conflict in most situations. Going out to places and gatherings that his family won’t approve of meant that he had to do it secretly. ‘I used to live diplomatically’ he reasons, for the sake of avoiding arguments that bear no fruit. He kept most of his ideologies of the ‘free world’ to himself, and his thoughts on the conservatism the people around him basked in. It’s almost as if he lived in secret with only his physical self inhabiting the house.

After his graduation, he worked at his brother’s law school while looking for more stable job opportunities and managed to save up. As 2020 began and the all different kinds of worlds around us started collapsing, the idea of a life with azaadi began to take its course for Rayhan. A place where he could live as a man and be accepted in his own identity. This would not be possible under the roof that he lived in and as long as he depended on others for survival, I assumed. In October of 2020, he wrote down a letter for his family. He wrote whatever it was that he always wanted to say. Confronting them, explaining why he was doing what he was about to do. And then he ran away at night.

I tell him that he is very brave but in the very next instant I realize that no one should have to be this brave. Being brave has stopped feeling like the state’s Tamgha (medal), it is more a remnant of all the injustice that the minorities are bestowed with. Being brave and having sabr (patience) as suggested by ‘fleeing-the-accountability’ leaders will not suffice anymore. He tells me that it wasn’t easy and there were days when he missed his family. Specially his sister’s children with whom he was really close. I see how after mentioning them he was looking up at the ceiling, holding back his tears with his lips tightly pursued together. His tears flow out nonetheless, one by one, trailing together. We then sit in silence for a while.

It has been one and a half years since he left his parent’s house, and although it is both financially and emotionally difficult at times – he is grateful and content with how his life is now. These years have not passed without the constant surveillance and intrusions from his family, specifically his sister who he mentions has visited him once in attempt to take him back which has been emotionally distressing for him. But it’s not the reconnection with his family, it is the unacceptance and the disregard for his identity and his choices that he fears. Feeling safe is also a privilege that not everyone here enjoys, and while Rayhan seeks that in a world with barbed wires, for him this is just the beginning.