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So picture this:
You, being the sort of unconvential individualist that you are, discover that you’re the wrong gender. And in the process of changing your gender, you find yourself reconsidering your outlook on life, mostly in the form of your religion. So you change your gender and you change your religion and you get married and start a life. It might take a while for your parents to come to terms with it, but eventually they’ll accept you for you. Right?
Not so for Issa Fazli, a Muslim woman turned Christian man.
Issa, whose name means “Jesus” in Arabic, found happiness with a woman in New York, but each set of their influential Muslim Pakistani parents had a major problem with it. So you’d think the couple would have been suspicious when their parents offered to throw them a party back in Pakistan.
But they weren’t. And then their lives started to suck.
Because when Issa and his wife Saadia went back to Pakistan for their Big Fat Pakistani Wedding, they were greeted instead with a maelstrom of hurt.
But their parents weren’t just upset. They were vengeful. Each set of parents used its influence with the government to make life completely miserable for the Issa and Saadia. When the couple tried to leave the country to return to New York, they found that the airports insisted that they needed their parents’ permission to buy plane tickets!
Of course, the couple then made the mistake of registering as Christian federally, completely screwing themselves even further. They then claimed their families were paying off people (including Issa’s own bodyguard) to try to kill them.
Issa and Saadia are now safe back in New York, but this whole thing has probably really fucked them up.
Personally, I am a Jewyjew dating a non-religionized Asian man. Our parents would prefer we date within (in my case) our relgion and (in his case) our race, but it’s been four years and they’re kind of over it.
Of course, neither of us has changed genders.
I don’t know. It seems pretty nuts to me. What do you think? Why isn’t it possible for us all to just shut up and love each other already?
3 Comments
i think situations like this (albeit unique) are really sad… i would hope that my parents support me no matter what, and in this case, it is really upsetting that neither set of parents approves. Not only that, they tried their hardest to be spiteful and mean. I hope that this couple is happy wherever they are… and i hope that soon everyone can just “shut up and love each other…” and be a more open minded society/culture.
You have to remember these are not American families, where dating between race and gender is sometimes a social faux pa, but usually accepted. These are evidently strongly religious Pakistani Muslim families, and the social acceptance of not only gender change, but religion change, is very different from here.
Looking through American eyes, it seems extreme, but on the whole it doesn’t seem entirely implausible. I don’t mean to say that all Pakistani Muslim families are this vengeful, but you have realize the difference in social norms in order to fully understand the situation.
First, you win for using male pronouns when referring to him. I have read so many articles on blogs and news sources that insist on referring to transpeople with the pronouns of their birth. I know that, as a trans woman I hate it anytime anyone insists on using male pronouns on me. I’m moved from male to female, and Christian to agnostic. My parents are none too happy either. Though not angry enough to try and kill me.
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