Conservative societies like ours treat sex almost as a necessary evil, it finds no mention in polite conversation, it is to be indulged in purely for procreation, that too under rigidly defined socio-religious rules - sex is taboo, sex is sacrosanct. But sex is also macho, sex is money and sex is power. Can it be any surprise then that there is Sex Everywhere?


I saw sex in everything when I was in Pakistan this winter; different types of sex: good and bad sex, forced and consensual sex, extra and pre marital sex, homosexual and procreative sex, trans-sexual and marital sex, sex between children, sex between older and younger, sexual harassment and violence, sexual prohibition and guidance, sexual slavery and dominance, sexual perversion and ambiguity and sexlessness.
I was confused because in my own stringent notion of sexual morality, people in Pakistan did not have sex, did not enjoy sex, and reproduced in huge numbers through asexual means. Sex was a private thing veiled deep within the home and its boundaries, hidden within the un-lit bedroom and its purpose of procreation and shrouded in decency of religion. Then why was I seeing it everywhere in public and was it just me?

The following is an excerpt in naivete. I could, as others, read it, raise my eyebrows, and say with biting sarcasm, "welcome to the world, honey, so what exactly are you saying that is so new and unique".

At itwar bazaar, small Afghan boys carry items for shoppers in their large straw baskets. As they waited for the shoppers to bargain over prices of vegetables, fruit, cloth, miscellaneous household products, they played with each other. An older boy ran his fingers over the back of a younger boy's neck. The younger boy looked back threateningly, but seeing that it was an older boy, turned his head away. The older kid persisted and got bolder with every condoned touch. He moved his touch to another body part. The little boy said something in Pushto and moved along with the shopper to another stall. The older boy would get him later. Very strongly, screamed his mature 13 year old eyes, I have been thoroughly sodomized by my uncle whose store I used to work in. I have, in the evenings when the shoppers disappear, sold my body to other men who wanted a tight ass to screw, who found in me a ready partner. I enjoy it. I abhor it. I know how to. I will continue to do it.

At the police surgeon's office, a 15 year old girl comes for a vaginal exam. She ran away from home with her boyfriend and the query is, whether this girl is still a virgin. Because, god forbid her hymen is ruptured, the shame factor goes without saying, but she and the little boy will be subject to zina charges for they have fornicated without legal sanction, without religious license and they must suffer the consequences. The chaprasi at the clinic orders the little girl to take off her dusty slippers, show him the teeth in her mouth, stand upright for her height to be measured, answer questions with clarity and honesty, and then climb onto a makeshift examination table with her legs wide open, for society's condemning forceps to enter between her legs and report on her morality status.

In another room at the police surgeon's office seven sex workers wait for their vaginal exams. A police woman, clad in blue uniform, gives the details to an attending officer. The girls were arrested after a raid on a brothel. They were busted. Pretending as if they were an extended joint family, connivingly enough, they were operating a prostitution den. An older woman who they called their blood relation aunty was their madam. Their so called uncles and brothers were their pimps. All the girls were in their teens and twenties, all of them pretty and very made up. The next day their not-so-flattering photographs were plastered across the front page of an Urdu daily, Evening Special. One of the whores had the audacity to ask for a glass of water, which the chaprasi refused outright to get for her. Hadn't she had her thirst quenched already after screwing all those guys for money, the police woman demanded to know. How dare she ask for water, a purifying and cleansing liquid standing full-figured, in this hall of shame? Wait till she finds herself spread-eagled on the examination table.

A few hundred blocks away, university students have consensual and coerced sex. The venue is a rented apartment. Seven boys, all college friends pitched in to pay for the rent. They all have copies of the key and bring in their lovers, for quick or leisurely, straight forward or kinky sex. Sex in the afternoon, sex in the morning, sex during all odd hours of the day, skipping class, and skipping work. None of the couples are married to each other. They walk in the hallways of their school, with their eyes glued to the floor, looking up to grasp a look in somebody else's eyes. They must operate in the underground, and be as discreet as possible; they must recognize each other, sense each other's presence, intuit the dire need for each other's protection, secrecy and privacy. However, not all of them are discreet; one boy shows off for he has done almost all the participating girls. He isn't one of those who keeps his eyes to the floor, nor can he keep a secret; he calls the girls he screws, sluts, himself a man.

A girl in her early twenties wears a burqa, head to toe. She lives in a high rise building and took a liking to one of the boys in the building. He moved away with his family to the UAE. After several years, he returned and the two ran into each at a tuition center. Clandestinely, they started meeting each other at his home and during these visits made wild, passionate love to each other. He kept condoms with him, but preferred the feel without them. Sooner than probability would have it, she got pregnant. She is in trouble now. Good thing she wears a burqa; it helps hide her growing belly while she desperately searches for an illegal abortionist.

Ruqaiyya is a middle-aged woman. Her face is testimony to the twenty years of rape and physical abuse she has suffered at the hands of her husband. Her face carries with her so many emotions, I can barely hear her words. The lines on her face, the swollen, pudgy cheeks, the carefully applied surma, serve as a road map to her life. I feel sorry for her, yet I could never reach out and touch her, comfort her or embrace her and tell her it will be okay. If I did, she would suck me into her hole of misery and abuse, and deprivation and that tiny square of a toilet where she takes her shit every morning, hoping perhaps, to shit him out of her life, but never succeeds. I can only comfort her from a distance. She documents the abuse and tells about the years he raped her and left her hurting so badly, she couldn't walk for hours. She tells with clarity, the dates of all the incidents that has left her face and body marked forever.

In the back alleys of defense, hijras parade in their glamour. Often times they beg for money, but when the evening sets in, they become sex workers. They are dressed in bright colors, wear cheap perfumes and talcum powder and are willing to go home with you. A taxi-driver stops for one of them. He gets in and gives the cabby a long blow job. The cabbies runs his fingers through the drag queen's long hair or wig; as far as he is concerned, it is a woman going down on him. He hands the hijra 10 rupees after he's done with the job. The hijra complains and protests; it is simply not enough. It won't even buy him his fare back home, let alone a loaf of bread. More, he wants more. The cabby contemplates. He can't have another orgasm any time soon and reluctantly pulls out a wad of bills. The hijra grabs a fifty and darts out of the taxi in a fit of giggles. The cabby screams after him, fails to catch him and then lets him go in a burst of affectionate mockery for this silly creature who looks more like a carnival than a woman, but close enough to womanhood to arouse his erection. Later that evening, the hijra gets picked up from Zamzama Boulevard in Defence, and is taken home by a rich kid from one of those big, white houses with many storeys and rooms, and space enough for garages and front and back lawns.

A fifteen year old servant girl gives in as her master rapes her. He later hands her a hundred rupee note. He tells his friend they both enjoyed it and before the little girl arrived from the village, he had done the same with her mother. The servant girl's mother sweeps and mops floors in the boy's house. Later at night, she tells her daughter, she knows what she did and if she thought she was going to get away with keeping the money, she should think again. Her little brother needs shoes.

A woman lies in bed reading her magazine. She doesn't want to have intercourse and her husband gets furious with her and beats her head in with a hammer. He is enraged at her refusal, enraged even more because he has a displeasing suspicion that her refusal is based in the fact that he can't get an erection, and when he does get it to work, it isn't for long. And then his wife loses interest and starts to ask him about household expenses, neglecting that he is still engaged in manly discourse, and she is completely trivializing his manhood. She has just come out of the hospital and a white bandage adorns her head. She tells me in a hushed voice, she is ready to go back to him. Deep down inside, he is just a gentle and frightened guy.

Another husband's wife is tired of him. All he knows how to do is make her life miserable, beat her, and he never gives her money. She throws him out of the house, climbs onto another man's motor cycle and drives away. Her family is shocked at her behavior and neighbors testify to his nightly visit to her home.