Nemat Sadat, the first Afghan native to come out as gay, explains why war, politics and gender took time to weave into a 300-page novel
Nemat Sadat's next four book are also about LGBTQIA rights. Pic/Nishad Alam
Forty, they say, is the new 30. For US-based Afghan activist and journalist Nemat Sadat, who launched his debut book in New Delhi on his 40th birthday, the celebration saw him dredging a story, which for long had been buried, only because nobody wanted to take onus for it. That Sadat became the first native from Afghanistan to come out as gay in 2013, was brave in itself. But, to write a novel, The Carpet Weaver (Penguin Random House), which at its heart is a "gay love story," but also offers us the complex and fragile mosaic behind the country's tragic fate, is a reflection of how Sadat's activism is as much literary, as it is political.
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The day we called up Sadat, he was preparing for the big launch party in the capital, to be held later that evening. "Today is my birthday," he shares gleefully, over the phone. "I never imagined at any point in life that I would spend this day with people who I haven't met in person," adds Sadat, who is also a prominent activist, campaigning for LGBTQIA rights in Muslim communities worldwide. Sadat is referring to his literary agent, Kanishka Gupta, and the other Indian editors, who "released his novel to the world", when so many others had "turned him away".
Sadat's The Carpet Weaver also opens with a birthday scene. Only here, we are taken back to 1977, Kabul, Afghanistan, where Kanishka Nurzada's family has thrown a grand party in the honour of him turning 16. It's also where he is reminded that he can't be "kuni" — a sodomiser — because it is "immoral, impure, unpardonable and wretched". "We can't let any one of our boys become a... kuni," his godfather Zaki jaan says, while taking swigs of his whiskey. The irony of his godfather's indulgence — "Allah also forbade the drinking of alcohol" — is not lost to the protagonist. Kanishka's heart, however, is set on his childhood friend, Maihan, with whom he shares his first kiss. The tragedy of this love story is that it unfolds in the Saur Revolution of 1978, which will change everything for him, his family and his lover. His family's failed flight to freedom lands them in a prison camp, somewhere in Pakistan, from where he has to now plan a desperate escape to the USA.
Sadat began writing the book on June 4 2008, when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination. He penned his first words in the hope that he, too, could "become somebody by doing something bigger than myself". "Eleven years is a very long time to invest in a book," says Sadat. "There are writers who take the same amount of time to pen 800 pages. Mine may not be as large [300 pgs], but it's not the length. If you look at the vision, scale, the scope, and the ambition behind it [the book], it is unheard for a debut author to capture this."
His novel, he says, is a Bildungsroman, which covers a vast territory — intellectual, cultural, sexual and political. "There is also the backdrop of the war, and the back-story of their lives. The vision of this book is bigger than what I imagined it to be. All of that has taken a very long time to put together," he says. The question that Sadat has been asked, one time too many, is how much of himself has gone into creating his protagonist. "Yes, we share the same identities. We are both gay and we both come from the same background. The core values are also similar — of being honourable to the family, but also being independent, and not confirming to the dominant culture of Afghanistan."
But the similarities end there. Sadat left Afghanistan, when he was eight months old, and never experienced the tumult his people experienced. Sadat's fight has been more personal — it was to get Americans "to care" about his own coming out story. "For most part, they didn't care. And it is sad," says Sadat, who also has graduate degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Columbia. He hopes that his readers will be invested not just in the protagonist, but also the other characters of his novel, because it will only help them empathise with gender rights. His next four books, which are in the pipeline, are also about LGBTQIA rights. "That is going to be the running theme," he says; his novels will be the bridge to share the message that needs to be heard.
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