My name is Danesh Khan. I am 28 years old and a chef and part restaurant owner from Glasgow, although I now live in London. And yes, I am a Muslim. And yes, I am gay. And yes, I'm sure a fair few of you stopped reading the moment you saw the 'M' word. The gay community unfortunately tends to be quite fickle when it comes to appearances and therefore unintentionally offhand and racist. I find it a little ironic. A lot of gay (white) men seek equality from straight society and yet at the same time they do not realise how insulting they can be towards gay people of other backgrounds. Not all gay men though. Perhaps not even most. But enough that if you look slightly 'exotic', you know about it. I don't think I look that exotic though. I'm about 6'0, I have green/light brown eyes, light brown skin and dark brown hair. I work out a fair bit and to be honest, I'm pretty proud of my body. My boyfriend's name is Luiz and he is a creative designer from Brazil. This story is supposed to be about me and him, but I want to tell you about my family first.
A lot of people reading will be wondering how I can call myself both gay and a Muslim. With less trouble than you would think perhaps. My father's name is Baryal Khan (Mr. Khan to you!). Baryal means brave in his parents' language. I think it is Pashto. I'm not entirely sure. I am sure it means brave and successful, of that my father left us in no doubt at all! He was born in Delhi in British India in 1939 to a family of Afghan origins. They were a successful middle class Muslim family I am told, but in the 1940s there was a lot of trouble between Muslims and Hindus in India. Dad says although he was young, he remembers it well. Being a prominent and well known Muslim family, their home was burnt to the ground by Hindu gangs. They were forced to flee to safety in the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan. Dad says life was difficult there as newly arrived immigrants from India. But he got a decent government job as a clerk when he was older and he married my mother, who was of a mixed middle class background. Part Persian, part Indian, part British. Don't ask me in what proportions! In Pakistan wealth and class meant a lot. It means a lot to you because the conservative Islam which most Westerners are familiar with comes from the lower class, poorer immigrants from places like Pakistan and Bangladesh. But the middle and upper classes had always been more liberal in their interpretations of Islam, and looked down upon ultra-conservative Islam with disdain. My father had been born into wealth, but had lost it during the partition of India. When he married my mother, he again became part of a well off family. And that's when they moved to Scotland to start a new life.
I have 2 elder brothers and one younger sister. I am the third of four children. When I was younger, my older brothers would pick on me as older brothers tend to do. One time I remember them locking me in the closet after beating me up one afternoon. Not particularly pleasant for a young child. I was happy therefore, when my mother gave birth to my younger sister Laila. It became us two versus our two older brothers, and of course we were always on the losing end of things because we were younger, but at least now I had a companion growing up in the household. I think because I used to get picked on by my two older brothers, I became my mother's favourite boy. And when my two elder brothers realised this, it gave them even more reason to pick on me. So I guess it was sort of a vicious circle. My two elder brothers were rough and into sports like football, and particularly cricket being proud Pakistani Scots.I never liked football, but I did play cricket with them and their friends every once in a while. I was actually pretty good at it. But this only riled up my brothers' jealousy and of course they would take it out on me pushing me around and calling me names. That explained my love-hate relationship with sports and with cricket in particular. I was a good cricketer, but I didn't play as much as I wanted to because I always associated it with the negative feelings my brothers put on me.
Anyway, my father was a businessman and built up the princely empire of three successful restaurants in Glasgow. He wanted me to become a doctor, but in honesty I wasn't that great at school and when I said that I wanted to be a chef and follow in his footsteps, he couldn't have been happier. None of my older brothers wanted anything to do with the restaurant industry, and so I think my father saw me as the one who was going to carry on his legacy. Now, my sexuality. Like I said, my family is not strict in its interpretation of Islam. My dad had always seen religion in a negative light because of what happened to him as a young boy in India. And my mum had had a Christian father and a Muslim mother. So we were raised as Muslims without much fanfare. Growing up, I visited pubs and drank and smoked and ate pork without much thought about the Qu'ran. Some might say that makes me a bad Muslim, but I disagree. I don't think God wants us to follow blindly rules in a book without thinking about why those rules exist in the first place. But anyway, that is another story for another day.
I first realised my attraction to other guys when I was 13 and at school developed a huge crush on my geography teacher Mr Watts. Mr Watts was only in his late 20s when he taught us and didn't want to be associated with all the old teachers at school. So he told us we should call him by his first name Craig if we wanted to. He was athletic and strong with big shoulders and dark brown hair and beautiful green eyes. He used to wear one of those brown tweed jackets with a yellow and green striped 'old school' tie, and he always had that appearance as if he had just finished huffing and puffing and playing some sport, even if he hadn't been. He was attentive to us in class, and he would come around to each of us individually as we were working and lean over us closely to correct our work as we sat at our desks. So close we could smell his aftershave. Whenever he got to me, my heart started beating a little faster and I got all nervous and flustered. But I loved it. And I loved him. He was kind but wasn't a pushover. If you were a good student he was kind to you. If you tried it on, he could get nasty. I was always so overawed by him, that he always treated me with kindness. He said that I was a good student who tried hard in class, and he always encouraged me to keep on trying my best. He also took rugby and cricket being a sports master too. Maybe he liked me because I was good at cricket. I don't know. But I felt he liked me more than some of the other kids. I remember once, we went on a geography field trip, and he chose to sit next to me of all people on the coach. Or maybe it was because I was so lame and everyone else had someone sitting next to them, and mine was the only seat left and he felt sorry for me... I prefer to think it was the former!
Anyway, nothing ever happened between us obviously. Nothing happened between me and any other boy or girl until I actually visited Pakistan for the first time when I was 17. My father took me and my younger sister to visit his family in Lahore. Pakistan was nothing like what I expected it to be. I expected poverty, conservatism and anti-Westernism. Instead I found myself staying in a very large house of my cousins, listening to Western music and watching Western films. Like I said, class meant a lot in Pakistan. The conservatism and poverty was there, but it wasn't part of my world when I was in Pakistan. I would hang around with my cousins as my father and his brother went about doing their business or whatever it was they did. One of my cousins was called Moshin. He was a year younger than me, and one of his favourite passtimes was hanging out at his friend Fuad's house. Now Fuad had an elder brother called Zayed. Zayed was about 20 years old or so. He was in university and aspired to be an actor. He said he wanted to be a big time Bollywood star some day. I thought yeah, right... but he was a nice guy and he took a liking to me because he would ask me to come out with him to his parties with his university friends. When Moshin and Fuad said they wanted to come along too, he told them to forget it, they were too young.
One night, he took me to this party with lots of guys and girls. They seemed a very arty and open minded crowd. Zayed was right at home. He was very outgoing and quite quirky in his way. He seemed to know everyone, kissing girls and boys alike as he met and talked with them, and introduced me. I was like his little pet. I didn't speak Urdu or Punjabi so I didn't understand a lot of what he said, but I got the feeling that he loved showing off his sophisticated Western friend from Britain. It showed how cosmopolitan he was. Not that I minded. It was a nice night and I had a good time. There was no drinking of course, but people were friendly and asked me lots of questions about the UK and what I thought of Pakistan. When it was time to go home, Zayed took me by the hand and led me away. When we got close to where we lived, he held my hand and held me tight as we walked, telling me that we had to be careful walking at this time of night because of bandits in such a nice area. When we got to our place, he asked if I had enjoyed the night and I truthfully said yes, I had. He said he was so happy that I had enjoyed myself, and he kissed me on the cheek, like he had been doing to boys and girls all night. Then he told me "You know, I have a little alcohol in my room if you want to stay up a little longer and chat." He had such a way about him, such an infectious and easy, goofy smile that you found it hard to turn him down over anything. So of course I said I would join him.
When we got to his place, he fetched two glasses from his kitchen and we went upstairs to his room. When we got there, he opened a locked bedside cupboard, and from the back he pulled out a hidden half empty bottle of whisky. He told me a French friend of his had bought it for him a little while ago, and that alcohol was no problem to get if you knew the right people. We drank and chatted, and we ended up watching some Indian film at a low level as he was lucky enough to have a small TV in his room. By this time we had agreed that it was probably best if I stayed the night there as he didn't want me to get in trouble with my uncle by arriving home too late and certainly not smelling of alcohol. Zayed had phoned my father's mobile phone and asked him in his most polite, overly polite English if it would be fine if I stayed the night and I would return to my uncle's in the morning. Of course he agreed, and was very impressed with such a considerate young man looking after his son in a foreign country. After that, Zayed said he wasn't such a heavy drinker and he went and got Pepsi's for both of us. When he came back he said as it was cold we should watch the movie under the covers of his bed. We both got undressed and Zayed looked beautiful in just his underwear. He was a lot stonger than me and had a nice muscular upper body with light tanned skin. I think he enjoyed me watching his body but he didn't say anything. We got into bed together, and again he put his arm around me and held me tight. He was never overtly sexual, but he was ever so friendly and he kissed me again on the cheek as he held me next to him and we watched. I was sleepy and by the end of the film I was falling asleep in his arms. I vaguely remember him calling me Mr Sleepyhead and turning the TV off. Then he kissed me on the lips this time, and we fell asleep together, me in his arms.
That was the first time I spent the night with another guy. Maybe that is not what some people wanted to hear. They maybe wanted to hear that we had wonderful sex, but no. We didn't. We shared a very sweet night together. It was romantic sort of. But I had the feeling Zayed did this kind of thing with a lot of young men. He was so comfortable with it all. In the morning he was his usual charming self, and we had a nice breakfast together. He kissed me again on the cheek and on the lips when we were alone. And he would sit next to me and put his arm around me as we watched television. When he walked me home, he held my hand and hugged me goodbye and went off to his classes at university. Like I said, it was romantic and sweet. But not overly sexual.
I was 19 when I got my first proper boyfriend. By that time I was working for my father in Glasgow, but I used to hang around still with some of the people from my old school. We would go to the pubs and such, and also used to hang out with some of the studenty types from the university. One of the guys I met was called Dan. He was blonde and handsome but a little shy. We had gone to school together but he had been a year older than me. He said that he remembered me though, and we started to spend more time together. One day he told me that he was gay and asked what I thought about that. I said I didn't mind. He didn't ask me if I was gay, and he didn't tell me that he liked me, but he asked if I wanted to go to the cinema just the two of us, implying a date. I actually didn't hesitate and said yes immediately. I never told him that I was gay, but I guess he took my acceptance of his invitation as a sign that I was. When we got to the cinema and had bought our tickets, he held my hand and we sat together in the back row. He told me that I looked nice and we spent a lot of the film kissing in the back row like couples do, or so I'm told. So we went out for a while, and did a lot of kissing. Dan was very sweet and one night he introduced me to sex. We had had dinner at his house, and he took me upstairs and well... we had some very sweet sex. He was more worldly than me obviously and he showed me a lot of things I didn't know. I think I was pretty naive actually for someone that age growing up in Glasgow. I knew all about heterosexual sex, and had watched a lot of porn which my brothers hid in their room, but about gay sex I didn't know much, even though I kind of knew I liked men by that age. But Dan showed me all that stuff, and told me I was so innocent. I used to take Dan home with me too, and when I introduced him to my family as my boyfriend, there was mixed reaction. My mother liked him and said she always knew I was "that way". My sister Laila was very supportive naturally. And my two older brothers when they heard about all this were not impressed. Initially they were very mean spirited towards me for it. My father said nothing at all and was very quiet for a few days. It was difficult because I worked for him, and so I saw him every day, although not all the time as he was sometimes at the other restaurants. I didn't know what he was thinking, and I thought he felt I had brought shame upon him and the family. Over time he got back to his normal self around me, but I still didn't know what he felt about it all, because he never spoke about it.
But one day, after a few weeks I did find out how he felt. I had been at home when my brothers, who by then had moved out, had come to visit, and had accosted me and were giving me a lecture in the front room about how I was an embarrassment and what I was doing was against Islam and against Allah. My father came home to this, and for the first time I saw his reaction. My brothers thought that he would come to back them up in their case against me, but instead my father was furious with both of them. He launched into a rage which I rarely saw from him, and he told both my brothers that they should not come into his home and behave as if it were theirs. He told them to leave me alone, and said that at least I had followed in his footsteps and would take care of the businesses he spent his life building up. What had they done for him? He also went on to say that it was his fault that I was gay, because he had sat and watched his two older sons pick on his youngest son and he had done nothing to stop it. Therefore, in his mind I guess, it was his fault that I became gay. He felt guilty. But he said that I had made him proud because I wanted to follow his footsteps, and these other two had thought they were too good to work in a restaurant. He berated them also because he said they come into his house and shout about Islam, and they think that he did not know that they too would go out and drink and used to come home drunk. They used to mess around with girls and he never quoted Quran to them about their behaviour. So how dare they now do so. My dad slammed the door after that and left in a rage.
Now, after that my two brothers left me alone. My older brother, Kouroush became more concilliatory towards me, and said that he didn't understand it but that he must look out for me as my older brother. My other brother Turan was less concilliatory, and still he has a problem with it I think. My mother later told me that my father thought it was all his fault because he had been a bad father in protecting me and that Allah was punishing him for being a bad Muslim and never teaching his children Islam in any seriousness. But he said it was too late for him to change now the person he was, as he was too old. But he says he accepts me because he must accept Allah's judgment upon him. I don't know how I should feel about that. On the one hand, my father treats me better now than ever before. But on the other, he obviously feels guilty that I am gay and blames himself.
But we are a family. The next year, Dan moved away to Newcastle to study. My oldest brother Kouroush moved to London where he married an Indian Hindu girl. He was an accountant and he bought a flat with his wife. Later, Kouroush made a point of inviting me down to London to stay with him and his wife for the weekend. I went and they were very kind to me. When he married, it was as if Kouroush became a different person. Suddenly very responsible and considerate towards others. I guess women can have a good effect on some men. Soon after, he had a baby boy. And when I was 24, I told my father that I also wanted to move down to London. As he was getting old, he said that running what were now three restaurants was too much work for him. He said he was going to sell two of them, and that with the money he would help me in starting my own in partnership with my brother Kouroush in London. He did, and I moved down.
Now, one thing I never mentioned is that although my family accepted me being gay, and accepted me bringing Dan and my other boyfriends home (there were only two others actually, neither of whom lasted for very long I should add), they had always, especially my mother, commented on how I only liked white men (all of them were white). It sounds like something out of a comedy, and any British people who know the sketch show "Goodness Gracious Me" might remember a similar sketch, but my mother used to ask me why it is I couldn't find a nice Muslim or at least Asian boy? She would never say this in front of my dad or my brothers of course, but only when me and Laila were there. Laila would laugh of course at this suggestion of my mother's. I never told them of course about Zayed in Pakistan, so they thought that I was only attracted to white men. They were happy then, when I invited them to London and I introduced them (my parents and Laila) to Luiz.
Now, let me tell you first about Luiz. When I moved to London, I was free for the first time in my life, and I started going to gay bars in Soho in Central London. To be honest I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't much like them, but I thought it was what I was supposed to be doing as a gay man. After another bemusing night, I was about to call it quits on the gay scene when I met Luiz. I was besotted with him from the first moment I saw him. I had seen him at the bar with his friends and thought he was very attractive. He was a little shorter than me, maybe 5'8 or 5'9, and had short, soft mousy brown coloured hair. His eyes were grey and he had the most beautiful nose I had ever seen. And there was something about the way he moved which was very attractive and enchanting. As fate would have it, we were to meet that night, as when I left the bar intent on going home, a figure called out "Hey" to me. He was pretty bold in saying that he hoped I wasn't leaving because he had seen me that night and had hoped maybe to meet me and have a dance together. Although he looked kind of "white"... kind of.... his accent was very foreign. I didn't know where he was from, and he told me he was from Brazil. He asked what was my name and introduced me to all his friends, most of whom were also Brazilians. He bought me a drink and he got to have his dance with me. I enjoyed it very much. He rode home with me on the night bus also, and I found out later that he lied about where he lived just so he could have an excuse to take the same bus home with me. Needless to say, it didn't matter because I invited him back to my place, and we spent the night together. But it was obvious that Luiz was not like so many gay men who are only into a one night stand, because in the morning he was very lazy about getting out of my bed. When I awoke, he was still there, and I thought about waking him, but he looked so perfect laying there that I decided to leave him. When I returned to my room I decided I would be nice and bring him up some breakfast. Even when I nudged him, he merely purred like a cat that had been poked in the middle of its slumber. Eventually, he awoke, and though it sounds like some bad commercial for Special K or something, I honestly did feed him strawberries in bed. It was very romantic and very fun. Luiz has a beautiful smile that can melt my heart, and also a very good sense of humour. He enjoyed it also, and will even joke about it today, that he only stayed with me so long because I fed him strawberries in bed!
I told you Luiz is a creative designer. I think that's what they call them. Graphic deisgner, creative designer, I'm still not entirely sure after three and a half years! He works for a big television company on the Southbank, if anyone knows, but I shan't say their name! I'm very proud of him though. And we moved in together last year. He is also proud of my restaurant, and he brings his Brazilian friends to eat there all the time. When I invited my family to come and see us and see our new home, my sister Laila was very jealous that I was with such a good looking young guy! At first, my mother thought he was just another white boyfriend, but when I explained that Luiz was from Brazil and he spoke to her, she was very excited all of a sudden. As if her son going out with a foreigner was something better. She told me later "He has a very nice accent. I don't know why you couldn't have found a nice Brazilian sooner." To add to her delusions, Luiz likes to pretend that he is 'pardo' or 'moreno' - that is, brown or of mixed ancestry. I remind him that he is lighter in colour than me, but he likes the idea that his ancestors were Africans and Native Americans, so I let him be. Last weekend we all had dinner together at my brother's house. Him, his wife and two young children, me and Luiz, and my parents and Laila. My brother Turan still lives in Scotland and to be honest I don't speak to him much. He has never been interested in my life in London. One time, I know he visited Kouroush but did not bother to call on me, so I assume he still has a problem, but I think he is the one missing out. He has been studying Qu'ran and my father told me he is thinking of becoming an imam. He has even stopped drinking and grown a beard, both my father and Kouroush have said so, but I have never seen it. Actually, if Islam and religion makes his life better, I am happy for him. I only hope that he does not become an imam that will uphold hurtful attitudes.
I hope you have enjoyed my little story about my life. There was not much sex... it doesn't seem right talking about sex in the same paragraph as your mother and father, so forgive me. I assure you that I am not chaste! Luiz is also certainly not chaste, despite his Catholic upbringing! But to be honest, what I enjoy more than anything else is kissing Luiz's beautiful pink lips. He is the sweetest most sensual kisser ever, and I can kiss his lips and nuzzle his neck for hours on end. He also has a very cute butt... but perhaps that is for another story.
Ciao.
If people liked this story and maybe want a version. That is, a version with more sexual detail, I maybe will be prepared to write it. I would also like to know if you liked the story. It was something a little different. Contact me.