Male friends can often be seen in twos or threes, holding hands or with an arm affectionately around the other’s waist or neck.
This is because Pakistan is a homosocial society, as Sinaan puts it, meaning that men can only go out in public or socialize with men, women with women. Ironically, it’s that culture that enables same-sex relationships to flourish, as long as the participants are discreet. Pakistan is an extremely patriarchal, macho culture, with a strict understanding of gender expression and behaviour. These two extremes are nowhere as evident as in the LGBT experience.
Yet it’s also a land where secular, liberal, young adults socialize by drinking whisky and smoking weed, where you can find used lesbian erotica or buy a dildo on the black market. Pakistan is a world of contrasts: a land of fundamentalist Islam, Osama bin Laden’s hideout, and terrorist attacks, where children are gunned down going to school or accused of blasphemy and sentenced to death. “But homosexuality is mostly done by straight guys.” “Homosexuality is very common in Pakistan,” Sinaan tells me as the Muslim call to prayer rings out along the streets of Islamabad.
