too sexy to be a enemy
Never got to kiss a Pakistani hehe (sic) ”---
“Aap apna tashreef lekar dafa ho jaye yaha se
Hafiz saeed ki jihadi aulad
Salaam walikhum
(You pick up your ass and get out of here, you jihadi son of Hafiz Saeed. Peace be upon you). ”On a weekday afternoon, Aziz Sohail shared a PDF with me, with several extracts including the two above. These are from what he calls his “Grindr Diary”, which he created last summer when he visited New Delhi. The content, as one can see (and as he warns) is “sensitive”—clandestine messages exchanged between Sohail, a cis-male gay artist, and other men on the famous LGBTQ dating app, Grindr. Except Sohail is from Pakistan, and the messages above, which read like couplets in a poem, form a very jarring view of what it’s like to be marginalised even within a marginalised world.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr also goes by the drag personality called Faluda Islam. Photo: Nabil Vega
‘So many think queerness and being Muslim cannot co-exist’
A detail from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr's 'Flora Bazooka'. Image via Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr

‘I first thought of being a Pakistani when I was in London’
Artist Aziz Sohail. Photo via Naiza Khan
Aziz Sohail's 'At Midnight There Was No Border' from an exhibition in Lahore curated by Abdullah Qureshi and Natasha Malik. Photo via Aziz Sohail
‘We are a part of a larger collective moment’
Abdullah Qureshi. Photo: Hammas Wali
Works by Abdullah Qureshi from his portrait series from 2016 to 2018, in which the subjects comprised of queer friends, allies, and encounters mainly in Pakistan. To the left is 'Insta Love', and the one next to it is titled 'I always confused love'. Image courtesy Abdullah Qureshi
