You say Bismillah with your tongue between your teeth and pretend you didn't hear that your cousin Yusuff was stoned to death for being a flower. You followed Charles Baudelaire's advice, you chose to be drunk. You chose to be drunk on poetry, love, and wine. Poetry drained the deep waters that filled your grieving soul when your mother passed. She became a bird with broken wings because she wouldn't leave your father who named her body a drum to be struck for his pleasure. Love intoxicated your soul with lies — unrequited passion from hypocrites who pleasured in setting boys who loved other boys on fire. Wine comforted your soul, playing scripted moments of bliss in your frail mind. Unlike your father’s beer, wine made you a momentary rich man whilst you basked in misery.
Now when you hear "Ahmad" called out in the street, you hiss. You want to scream and scratch the faces that speak this name, but these hypocrites do not deserve your breath. You think of your father's name, a label so abundant you share with faceless strangers — Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, African-Americans, and an abundance of Arabs. You know these Ahmads are not like you, they cannot comprehend the pain the name has brought you. You know your name is not the problem, yet you wish to delete your father from your being and exit this place that wants to consume you.
You drink through the pain and uncertainties, scribble grieving nonsense and christen it poetry. You wish they would see you are a unicorn swimming in the rainbow — a submarine mirroring the ocean. You don't want to die like your cousin Yusuff. You want to be free to kiss in the street, but your dreams settle in the sky refusing to take flight. Your clipped wings would start an inferno water cannot douse if you take flight. Your mother's war is not yours to fight, yet you salaam with your fingers painted in orange, red, and all the bright colors your father hates.
Yesterday, you pleaded with your father, you begged him to accept you. You cannot keep lying to yourself, you do not want to be a hypocrite like the people in the streets. You are greatness wrapped in a small body. You refuse to be erased and rewritten for loving boys like you.
From the author: "An Abundance of Ahmad" explores what it means to identify as a member of the LGBT+ community in Nigeria, where it is punishable by law with a jail term of up to 14 years. Bodies are burnt, boys are harrassed for being effeminate, wearing skinny jeans or painting their fingernails.
Semilore Kilaso is a Nigerian poet and student Quantity Surveyor who loves to collect photographs of humans, architecture, wildlife, and landscapes. When she is not playing Scrabble or reading books, she is reading lines from architectural drawings. Her works appear in Rigorous Mag, Culturalweekly, Entropy, Disquiet Art, and elsewhere. You can reach her on Twitter.