The Unnamed… - Part I

I'll tell you my name later.

We kissed every night. We went to class every morning. As if nothing had happened.

One day I was sitting in class and looking around. My classmate kept pestering me about our classmate Emil until the end of class. The excitement from the kiss that night evaporated because of that cuckold Emil. I didn't know what to do or what to say.

I've been carrying this story with me for a while. Now it's time to talk.

I was born in one of the religious and traditional regions of Azerbaijan. My childhood seemed "regular" on the outside, but inside there were completely different things. Domestic violence, lack of existence, and injustice. No one talked about these things. Everyone played their role.

As I grew up, conversations like “you’re going to marry so-and-so,” “so-and-so will be a good husband to you,” “you’ll do this to your children in the future” began to increase around me. This was said not only to me, but to all my peers. My same-sex friends often greeted these conversations with flirtation, and sometimes they themselves would talk about these topics with enthusiasm. But along with this, other things happened between us that no one openly talked about.

All the girls talked about boys. And I was in love with one of the girls who talked to me about these conversations.

We were still in the 8th grade. I didn’t really know what I was feeling. I dreamed: I wish I were a boy, if I could appear in front of her as a boy, maybe then she would love me.

In fact, there was a feeling, a closeness between us that was similar to a love relationship, without a name. Sometimes we stayed together at night, spent our days together. There was physical intimacy between us — sometimes we kissed, sometimes we slept together. But we never stopped and asked each other: “What are we living?” We never gave this relationship a name.

Behind all this, there was a more complex and contradictory reality. In public, everyone talked about concepts like “husband,” “honor,” “virginity.” But in a closed environment, the same people were getting closer to each other, making contact. It was as if it were a truth that was not accepted by anyone, but that everyone silently knew.

Sometimes I would see the girls who talked about those strict rules crossing boundaries among themselves. But this was neither named nor discussed. It just happened, and then everyone would return to their previous roles. It was as if they lived a different life during the day, and a completely different life at night.

I was caught between these two worlds. In my dreams, I was a boy, and when I woke up, I was a girl. On one side was the “girl’s life” that was expected of me, and on the other, the feelings that were happening inside me that did not fit into any category. I didn’t look like the boys they were talking about, nor did I fit the image of the “girl” they wanted me to be.

“She’s just a boy, that’s why she doesn’t like anyone,” they joked. On the one hand, being so close to them was advantageous. Our mothers would leave us alone in a room, let us stay at each other’s houses. No one would see anything suspicious here.

The hard part was that what I felt was completely real. The desire to be close to someone, the sensations of touch, the desire to belong — none of this was false. But these feelings were not “allowed” for me. They had no place in the world I was taught. Everything seemed to happen within a hypocritical system. Everyone talked about certain rules, but at the same time secretly violated those rules.

We kissed at night; we had to get up in the morning and go to class as friends.

Looking back now, I realize that the problem wasn’t just that I was different. The main problem was that in the environment I lived in, there was no room at all for being different. You either had to hide or change.

I hid. For a long time.

I'll talk about how long I hid and what happened next time.

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