Original subtitles

-My name is Mawaan. I'm 24 years old.

I was born in Pakistan and I grew up in Essex,

and earlier this year, I told my parents that I'm gay.

And they weren't too happy about it.

[ Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" plays ]

I mean, I don't know why they were shocked.

I've spent the last five years mincing around on YouTube.

Leave a comment in the section below

or leave a video response if you think you're a bad man.

All the signs were there, but to a Pakistani parent,

it was the worst news ever.

I want to know what, in our culture,

has led them to be like that

and why they don't agree with being gay.

So, what I really want to do is go back to Pakistan

and see what life is like there, being gay.

I want to know if there's a gay scene.

Do they party?

Do they all hang out together?

Is it top secret, or can people be open?

I want to know if there's cruising grounds.

I want to know how dangerous it is.

I'm really curious to see what my life would have been like

had I stayed in Pakistan when I was a kid.

It's an exciting but scary prospect

because I'm trying to, I guess, lift the lid on something

that my parents would never talk to me about

and I've been told to totally suppress and hide.

♪♪

♪♪

This is Karachi, one of the world's most dangerous cities.

It's notorious for terror attacks,

kidnapping, and organised crime.

♪♪

The last time I was here was about eight years ago.

For me, it's two worlds

that have never collided before, you know.

Being Pakistani and being gay are not two things

that go together in my head, so I'm a bit nervous.

First, I'm going downtown

to remind me of the sights and smells of the country

I was born in and to get a new look.

I need to take off my skinny jeans, basically,

cos I look really out of place.

Not very connected to the everyday Pakistani man.

Like this man.

-Can you see yourself wearing those?

-Yeah!

Yeah, yeah, this is definitely my colour.

Are you meant to bargain here?

Thank you.

They're 200 rupees.

It's a bit out of my budget.

£1.60 -- that's a lot.

Karachi is Pakistan's largest city.

23 million people live here.

It's a place where, whatever you want, you can get a bargain.

[ Chickens squawk ]

It's 200 rupees for a chicken.

That's the same as the slippers.

-[ Chanting ]

-I don't want to see my food being killed.

[ Darthreider's "Komeigi Beat" plays ]

Oh, I need to get some spices.

Look at that!

Looking around, I'm getting the feeling

Pakistan may just be a little gay.

Whoa, look at them!

Rainbow chicks!

Look at that!

That would go down really well at a gay bar, wouldn't it?

It's just like Soho.

Rainbow chicks?

Men in pink hats?

Holding hands in public?

It all seems pretty gay to me.

But really, just how gay is Pakistan?

When Pakistanis were asked in 2013

whether homosexuality was acceptable,

only 2% said yes.

♪♪

♪♪

I've only just arrived, and already I've been invited

to my first ever gay party in Pakistan.

It's been organised by gay activists Kami and Sid.

I'm a bit nervous now.

I'm going to...

I might feel really out of place, you know.

I just wonder if it'll be anything like Soho.

-Let's go. -Alright, let's go.

[ Kavita Krishnamurthy's "Dola Re Dola" plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

I'm Mawaan.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

They don't -- They haven't been drinking.

This is just their first hour of the party.

It's very Bollywood. It's very, like...

Big, big shapes.

The bigger, the better is the motto on the dance floor.

♪♪

Hi.

It's nice to -- Oh, Sid, it's nice to meet you.

I'm Mawaan.

You're the Sid. -Yes.

-Oh, brilliant. Nice to meet you, man.

I wore a shirt. I never wear a shirt.

I thought I'd be smart to be relaxed.

-I have...

-[ Laughs ] I just realised what that is!

Brilliant!

That is a buttocks on your... Yeah, brilliant.

How many people know about something like this?

I guess it's not very public.

So, that's Kami? -That's Kami.

Kami!

-Sid and Kami have been together for seven years.

Kami is a transgender woman.

Their parties are well-known on the local gay scene.

Despite the risk, people were willing to talk to me.

Do your family know you're gay?

So, when you go to a party like this,

what do you tell them?

Do you ever feel in danger?

Talking to the people at the party,

it was clear there was a real sense of fear.

But still, they were determined to have their voices heard

and to show me the way they live their lives.

♪♪

♪♪

It's the day after the party, and Sid and Kami

have invited me over to their place.

Hey!

How are you doing, man? -I'm good.

-Good to see you.

-Hello, Kami, how are you? -Hello, how are you?

-Good to see you again.

It was a great party, guys, really good, really fun.

Even though last night's party passed off without a hitch,

that's not always how they turn out.

When you realised they had guns, were you scared?

-No, why should I? -Because guns are scary!

Kami and Sid are openly campaigning for gay rights.

That's pretty rare in Pakistan.

Now, they are preparing

to go even further to show how they feel.

Right.

And he's going to marry you? -Yeah.

-So you're going to have a big, gay Muslim wedding?

-Yeah.

Sid and Kami are determined to return to Pakistan

to live as an openly gay married couple.

So, you want to get married,

but you want to stay in Pakistan?

So, you could, potentially,

be the first gay couple to get married in Pakistan.

-Yeah.

♪♪

-Right, bye, guys. -Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.

♪♪

They're lovely, loving, creative people.

But at the same time, there's a sense of, you know,

"We're not going to take any shit from anyone."

And if they have to get aggressive, they will,

and they will do what they need to do to survive.

I never imagined a Muslim imam anywhere in the world

would be willing to carry out a gay wedding.

So, what about the local imams?

How do they feel about us gays?

I'm on my way to go and meet an imam,

and so I thought I'd go and buy

a traditional Pakistani kurta cos I want to pay my respects.

I'm a bit anxious, to be honest,

cos I've never really spoken to a religious leader

about what it means to be gay.

I've never really had the urge to.

But I'm really looking forward to hearing his point of view.

-What do you think he might say?

-Um, I get the feeling that he's not going to be

a massive fan of the gays.

♪♪

Maulana Hakeem Akbar Dars

is one of Pakistan's leading Islamic scholars.

He's even got his own TV show.

I'm really nervous now.

Salaam alaikum. -Salaam alaikum.

This guy is well-respected in the community,

and people come to him from across the country for advice.

But I don't think I'm a patient.

It's not an illness.

I'm a perfectly healthy man,

and you and the rest of society

keep referring to me as a patient.

That's quite degrading for me.

Or leave the country of origin. Okay.

So, which out of those three options

do you think I should do?

Which is the best option for me?

Allah hafiz. -Allah hafiz.

-I don't really know what to say.

I feel -- I feel quite sad, in a way,

because it makes me think, if I was living in this country

and I was handed over to someone like him,

I would have no say in how I live my life whatsoever.

I can't wait to un-gay myself at the clinic.

That should be interesting.

[ Talvin Singh's "Sutrix" plays ]

♪♪

Having the imam tell me that my life is in danger

was a reality check.

But I feel lucky knowing that I can hop on a plane

and run back to London.

But for most of Pakistan's gay community,

leaving isn't an option.

Back at Sid and Kami's house,

I'm about to meet their flatmate, Shahzadi,

who's a transgender woman like Kami

and has agreed to talk to me.

After she was kicked out of home,

Kami and Sid offered her a place to stay.

-Hello. -Hello.

How are you, Sid?

Good to see you, man.

-Good to see you again. -Is Shahzadi in?

-Yes, she is in.

-Shahzadi sometimes works as a prostitute

to get enough cash to live.

Good to see you.

Thank you very much.

Since being beaten up,

Shahzadi finds it difficult to leave the house on her own.

Today, she's got a doctor's appointment,

so she's asked her boyfriend, Amir, to take her.

Amir met Shahzadi on Facebook.

They've been together for six months.

Almost every transgender woman in Pakistan

takes female hormones.

They reduce your body hair, increase breast size,

and shrink your testicles.

But Shahzadi thinks that the hormones

she's been taking aren't working.

They've left her depressed, and her hair is falling out.

For transgender women in Pakistan,

the removal of the male sexual organs

is the final stage of becoming a woman.

It's commonly referred to here as castration.

Shahzadi's life here is very tough.

She's got to deal with the problems

of transitioning to a woman,

and, at the same time, she faces the daily threat

of physical violence and sexual assault.

Despite being illegal,

convictions for homosexuality in Pakistan are rare.

The government and police seem to turn a blind eye,

as long as it's all kept behind closed doors.

But Kami and Sid seem determined

to bring gay rights out into the open.

Kami and her friends have invited me

to go shopping for a wedding dress in downtown Karachi.

I thought we were going to meet in a shopping mall,

but it looks like we're going to go shopping

out and about in the market, which will be interesting.

I'm not too sure

how people are going to react to Kami in public,

and I feel slightly on edge about it.

Hello. -Hey.

-How are you? Good to see you.

Hello, Kami. -How are you?

-How are you?

Good to see you again.

-And are we going to be in public, outdoors?

-Yes, yes, yes. -Okay.

[ Ananda Shankar's "Dancing Drums" plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

Which one -- what colour do you want?

Red?

And you want to be traditional?

-Yes. It should be traditional.

-[ Laughing ] I know.

I feel really watched right now.

-Yes. [ Laughs ]

But they've just stopped.

They're not even subtle.

[ Asha Bhosle's "Ina Mina Dika" plays ]

♪♪

[ Laughter ]

-Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you. -You're welcome.

-[ Laughs ]

And outside the shop, Kami and her friends

are beginning to attract even more attention.

-Thank you so much.

[ Speaking native language ]

-Look at the people.

They're all still standing there, watching.

♪♪

I was feeling anxious.

I wanted to stop him, but Kami was like,

"Bring it on. I know how to deal with this."

And I was like, "Yeah, can we go?"

I just wanted to get out of there.

That was really uncomfortable.

It could have kicked off, I reckon, if it had carried on.

I want to go back to Zone 2, London,

and curl up in a little ball.

I'm done with Pakistan.

Despite what I've just seen,

the sight of a transgender woman on the streets here

is more common that you might think.

They are known as hijras,

and they've been part of the culture for centuries.

Some people think there as many as a million living in Pakistan.

Later that night, across the other side of town,

Shahzadi's taken me

inside the hidden world of transgender women.

She's come to visit her friends.

In Pakistan and India,

hijras are often rejected by their families

and live on the margins of society.

The hijra community is run by gurus.

Shahzadi's guru is Zeni.

A guru is basically a mentor,

someone who can help newer members of the hijra community

with any problems they may face --

everything from housing to boyfriends.

♪♪

Like many transgender women,

Shahzadi has been taking female hormones

to transition to a woman.

Now, she's thinking about taking it to the next stage

and having the operation.

[ Speaking native language ]

-It's interesting.

-Yeah, really interesting.

It feels like, behind that closed door,

there's a real sense of community and identity

and an abundance of talent and ambition.

It's just when they go into the outside world,

I feel like that's when they feel threatened.

♪♪

♪♪

As my first week in Pakistan comes to an end,

I've seen a society which, at its worst,

rapes and threatens violence to gays

and, at its best, either turns a blind eye or offers up cures.

♪♪

Before leaving Karachi,

I want to take up the mullah on his offer to cure my gayness.

I'm very curious about what, exactly, the cure is.

Salaam alaikum.

Okay, thank you for your time. -Thank you.

Thank you. So kind of you.

-So, we've just got to collect the medicine from the pharmacy.

Salaam alaikum.

It smells like...

cumin and Coco Pops.

[ Telephone rings ]

♪♪

What is this stuff?

He never said.

He didn't really tell me what I'm taking.

12 quid!

12 quid for a bit of seasoning!

-And the humiliation. -Oh, yeah.

The humiliation is priceless.

♪♪

If you're having problems with your sexuality

and you're trying to deal with that psychology

and that process,

this is who you go to for help.

That's...

That's scary.

If you're in that situation,

and you're made to believe that you've done something wrong

and there's something fundamentally...

...dirty and ill about you,

that can actually have

long-lasting psychological effects on someone.

After making sure it's safe to take,

I'm ready to be cured.

Okay, here goes.

♪♪

Oh, it tastes really bad!

It just makes me sad to think of some of the people

who might go to him and...

and then the stuff, you know,

the feelings they have to live with

of feeling like they're on the mend

from something that's completely natural.

The next tablet's in a few hours.

Here's to being straight.

♪♪

♪♪

Lahore, the capital of the Punjab

and Pakistan's second-largest city.

It's also where I was born.

Lahore is the place my parents always described

as full of life and character.

I do feel a special connection to Lahore,

even though I don't know it at all.

I've not been back here for almost 10 years.

[ Usha Khanna's "Tera Jasia Pyara Koi Nahin" plays ]

I've come to visit Naz Male Health Alliance,

one of the only organisations working openly

with the LGBT community in Pakistan.

They run a drop-in centre in the middle of town.

People come here to be tested

for sexually-transmitted infections.

-Oh, wow.

So, these are hot spots where sex workers are.

-Yes.

-Is there a lot of positive results?

-Yes, of course. -Exactly.

-They also come here to socialise,

escape the streets, and forget their worries.

Qasim Iqbal is the boss here.

-What we're doing, what our staff does every day,

is risk their lives...

...when they come to the office.

We can be killed.

Anybody could drive by

and throw a bomb at our office.

And nobody would miss us.

It might not even make it in the news.

-Qasim grew up in the US.

But then, at the age of 35, his US citizenship was revoked

because he contracted AIDS.

How was it going from the US to then coming to Pakistan

and having to hide a lot of your identity?

You know, to be honest,

right after coming to Pakistan...

...I was having a lot of gay sex --

[ Laughter ]

...and with the type of men

that I would not have been able to access in the US,

because these were, like, straight men.

And straight men in Pakistan --

a lot of them, not all of them --

do have sex with other men.

They're not attracted to them, but they have sex with them

because women, females, are not accessible easily.

-Right.

MSM stands for Men Sleeping with Men.

Straight men sleeping with each other

is not something I ever thought happened in Pakistan.

At sunset, we head out to one of the city's sex hot spots

to hand out condoms specifically to MSMs.

[ Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" plays ]

♪♪

It's not long before we're surrounded by dozens of men

eager to get their hands on the freebies.

Most of them are uneducated labourers from the rural areas

who don't know anything about STIs

and the dangers of unprotected sex.

The outreach team knows most of these guys.

Anyone they don't know

is taken away for a chat to a nearby cafe.

Many of the labourers live in the nearby hotels.

They can't afford female prostitutes,

so they sleep with each other.

I'm not prepared at all for what I'm about to see and hear --

the reality of the MSM world.

♪♪

Oh, wow.

20p a night to stay here.

♪♪

Cos everyone's freezing in the winter!

[ The Cinematic Orchestra's "All Things to All Men" plays ]

I find it really interesting how, just one wall away,

there's a religious shrine and people are praying,

and then here, it's basically a sex den.

[ Death In Vegas's "Dirge" plays ]

It's so strange.

I've never seen this side to Pakistan before.

All of a sudden, there's sex everywhere.

It's just all around us.

What these guys are doing is frontline work, you know.

It feels like the state and the general nation

is ignoring that sex even exists, especially gay sex.

And these guys are talking to these people, one on one,

you know, like three guys.

This is the Pakistan that was never...

exposed to me, you know?

Most Pakistanis wouldn't think of MSM sex as gay sex.

To me, it definitely is.

It feels like this entire country

is in denial about the whole issue.

I'm even beginning to think

that gay sex is actually quite tolerated here.

But then I get a call from Qasim.

He wants to show me a video he's been sent

from a rural part of Pakistan.

It shows a 15-year-old boy who's been caught with his gay lover.

-So...

this video was sent to our drop-in centre,

and then it was sent to me from there.

This is the video.

[ Portishead's "Over" plays ]

♪♪

The video is too gruesome to show.

The boy is being sodomised with sticks by an angry mob.

He screams in pain.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

I don't think I can watch any more.

-No.

-The video ends with the group trying to throw him off a cliff.

-And there's little children watching.

-It's only the intervention of a bystander that saves his life.

-So, you know, I mean, what do we do with this?

-That's disgusting.

-There's nothing we can do with this.

There is no way we can find out if this guy --

if this boy --

it looks like a young 15-year-old boy --

if he is still alive.

And I bet you the only option he would have had,

if he survived,

was to run away from home.

And once you run away from home, at the age of 15,

you're living out on the streets,

you're even more vulnerable.

-You are living in this country where this stuff is happening,

and you're still working in the field that you're working in.

-Yeah, because there is nobody else who will.

-What Qasim has shown me is truly shocking.

Thankfully, attacks like this are quite rare,

even in remote, rural communities.

♪♪

Before I head home, I'm meeting up with Shahzadi.

Hello, Shahzadi.

How are you? Good to see you.

She's flown 1,000 miles from Karachi

to see a doctor here at the drop-in centre.

She's worried that the hormones she's been taking

to help her sex change are having side effects.

Even here, the doctor is worried

about being seen treating LGBT patients,

so he has asked not to be identified.

-Thank you so much.

-I wish you the best.

♪♪

Okay, have a safe journey. -I hope they love this.

Led Zeppelin's "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" plays ]

♪♪

-♪ Babe ♪

♪ Baby, baby I'm gonna leave you... ♪

-After two weeks here, I feel like I've got

a much better idea how gay Pakistan really is.

-♪ I said baby... ♪

-Pakistan isn't this, you know, super rigid heterosexual place,

like my family and friends make out to be.

There's actually a lot going on,

and, despite what my expectations were,

I've actually found that there is

a really exciting underground LGBT movement.

There are a lot of people taking big, brave steps

to fight for equality.

I think I really value that I'm really lucky

that I can live openly and freely

and not have to be scared for my life every day,

which, sadly, isn't the case

for a lot of the people that I've met.

[ Nirvana's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" plays ]

♪♪

♪♪

-♪ My girl, my girl ♪

[ Line rings ]

-Hello?

-[ Laughs ]

-♪ My girl, my girl ♪

♪ Don't lie to me ♪

♪ Tell me where did you sleep last night ♪

♪ In the pines, in the pines ♪

♪ Where the sun don't ever shine ♪

♪ I would shiver the whole night through ♪

♪ My girl, my girl... ♪