Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [56]
There was one place where I pushed back against the restrictions: TV and film. I wanted to see every attractive onscreen girl I could. I wanted to see every instance of lascivious behavior. I wanted to see every inch of naked flesh. My reasoning was simple: since I’d consented to abiding by the rules imposed on my body, I should at least be able to see the things I was missing.
Unfortunately, Ammi and Pops had imposed a strict regime of media censorship almost as soon as we moved to America, which, like all such regulations, was only applied selectively, leading to resentment on my part. Two weeks after we landed at JFK, Pops had introduced all of us to the New York Public Library system, and we went regularly to the Park Slope branch as a family. It was there I discovered that you could get a copy of any film you wanted. On an early visit I picked out a film called My Beautiful Laundrette, based on a screenplay by British-Pakistani author Hanif Kureishi. It was about Omar, an idealistic young man of Pakistani origin, who was trying to get ahead in life by taking ownership of a laundrette in a working-class neighborhood in South London. As Ammi and I watched, there came a scene involving Tania, played by the vivacious Rita Wolf, in which she lifted up her sweater and flashed Omar and his uncles in the company of her oblivious father.
“What a wahiyat film!” Ammi said, condemning the nudity as she shut it off. “This isn’t us!”
As the screen went dark, I didn’t move. Tania’s dark areolas were burned in my head. To see a Muslim girl—like that!—set every fiber of my burgeoning youth on fire. I wanted Tania. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Day after day I passed by the film sitting on the VCR and wished I could just pop it in and look at those tits. But the strength of Ammi’s reaction had evoked enough deference that I abstained. The night before the film was to be returned, however, the desire to see Tania was too strong: while everyone else was sleeping I turned on the TV, muted it, and popped in the video. I expected the film to resume at the part with the breasts; I told myself that I’d watch just those few seconds and then go back to my room. But when the screen came in focus, the final credits were rolling. At first I thought that perhaps the tape had malfunctioned, but then I realized that Ammi must have watched the film when Flim and I were at school.
Her hypocrisy angered me. If the film was wahiyat, she shouldn’t have watched it either. Now I resolved to watch too, not just the part with Tania’s breasts, but every other scene involving intimacy. In fact, when I got to the part with Tania’s breasts, I rewound the scene many times over.
Over the years numerous TV shows were banned at home—somehow each containing an actress that I liked. The reason given was always Islamic: “Watching kissing on TV creates a desire to kiss in real life, which creates a desire to date, which leads to fornication, which is zina, which the Prophet would have punished by flogging or stoning and which is going to lead you to hell.”
It was a stifling syllogism and my imagination became my escape.
I had always been a writer, weaving stories about heroic ants and edible jinns. By the time I was in high school I set my craft in the service of sex and began writing erotica.
One of my recurring characters was Nadia Sumienyova, a gymnast, astronaut, and nymphomaniac. Her entire existence was sensual. One time she found herself on a mystical spaceship populated by a race of men who had one collective phallus—it was six feet tall and looked like the primordial me—that she promised to lick one hour per day in exchange for gaining the power of immortality.
One day I let myself engage in a bit of auto-writing. When