As I work Bobuq Sayed’s No God But Us in the waning days of the summer, I realized their debut caller paired good with Jose Esteban Muñoz’s last work, The Sense of Brown (2020). Together, the duo made a cleanable operation of books for reflecting upon the past 4th period of the United States’ “War connected Terror.”
As overmuch of the satellite focuses this week connected the events of September 11, 2001, No God But Us offers an important position connected that unspeakable time and its horrific aftermath: that of 2 queer Afghan refugees whose lives are upended by the war. Sayed tells their stories successful the archetypal idiosyncratic successful alternating chapters.
There is nary factual fig for conscionable however galore radical person been killed, maimed, and displaced owed to the US-led War connected Terror (or, arsenic it’s called by truthful galore of its guiltless victims, the War of Terror). It formally began successful 2001, conscionable 3 days aft 9/11, with the transition of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was signed by George W. Bush, approved by each azygous subordinate of the House of Representatives but 1 (Barbara Lee), and continued nether each president and legislature since. In 2023, the Costs of War task astatine Brown University estimated that 4.5 cardinal radical had been killed by the war, with astir 1 cardinal of these deaths “from nonstop combat successful warfare zones crossed Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen.”
The remaining 3.5 cardinal were classified arsenic “indirect deaths” stemming from the “destruction of economies, nationalist services, and the environment.” An bid of magnitude more—perhaps arsenic galore arsenic 37 million quality beings—have been turned into refugees and “forced to fly their homes and permission their lives behind.”
These refugees are not simply smuggled oregon trafficked victims. While their lives mightiness beryllium acceptable successful question by U.S. bombs oregon sanctions, the radical who navigate unpredictable beingness journeys are not simply passive victims. They are sailors, adventurers, poets. They are sometimes horny, sometimes deceitful, and often funny. Life doesn’t conscionable hap to them; they marque absorbing lives happen—perhaps much truthful than galore radical who effort to enactment put. Sayed dedicates their caller to “to the transgressors of borders.” Similarly to however I wrote astir the precocious Latinx transgender migrants Cecilia Gentili and Lorena Borjas successful my publication The Viral Underclass, Sayed explores the transgressive quality of those who effort to transverse aggregate kinds of borders—of nation, of gender, of the conception of idiosyncratic bodies, and (even if they fail) of class.
If you’ve ever spent immoderate clip amongst planetary NGOs and their achromatic savior employees, you volition laughter retired large astatine Sayed’s depiction of this world.
Two specified adventurers are imagined into being successful No God But Us. Delbar and Mansur some person likewise circuitous but differing journeys from Afghanistan; they some upwind up successful Turkey successful 2014, having been outed to their families. When they meet, Delbar is successful his aboriginal twenties; his mother, Qandul, had fled Afghanistan for the United States adjacent earlier the war. Delbar is raised successful the Washington, D.C. country and educated astatine a fancy assemblage successful the bosom of the metropole, not acold from the Pentagon—the gathering which has played an outsized relation successful destabilizing his family’s location country. During a precise hard weekend, Delbar is kicked retired of his DC stock location by a roommate helium describes arsenic interlacing his fingers “the mode quality anchors and cucks do” and having a “ruthless State Department smile” which “grew adjacent much despotic whenever helium spoke of the housemates successful the 3rd person.” (I could not assistance but deliberation of Vedant Petal, Anthony Blinken’s obsequious spokesperson for the genocide successful Gaza.) When Delbar is outed and rejected by his domineering azygous mother, helium joins his sympathetic aunt, Yosra, and her children successful Istanbul to benignant retired his life.
Meanwhile, Mansur, successful his precocious twenties erstwhile we conscionable him, was calved successful Afghanistan. He travels with his household by ft crossed the borderline to Iran, wherever his begetter was killed by a sniper (“Every committedness of information had travel astatine a price”). Mansur lives successful poorness with his sister, mother, and aunt, Schaesta Ama, and works arsenic a time laborer. While trying to find different men similar him, helium concisely connects with Payam, his upper-class crush. When Schaesta Ama outs him and kicks him retired of their home, Payam comes to Mansur’s adjutant (albeit temporarily) but does not invitation him up into his caste for much than an afternoon. Instead, helium pays to smuggle him retired of Iran to Turkey, wherever Mansur volition enactment arsenic a dishwasher and an informal enactment worker.
Delbar and Mansur conscionable astatine an enactment called PeaceMeals; similar overmuch of No God But Us, PeaceMeals is riotously funny. If you’ve ever spent immoderate clip amongst planetary NGOs and their achromatic savior employees, you volition laughter retired large astatine Sayed’s depiction of this world—how PeaceMeals workers person a proclivity for patting themselves connected the backmost for trying to hole problems their countries person caused, the mode participants are forced to motion an representation merchandise signifier (to get a escaped meal) and grin connected camera. Delbar is appalled by PeaceMeals’s uptight “Anderson Cooper-looking” German leader, Leif—whom I loathed arsenic a idiosyncratic but loved arsenic a character—and is “struck by the formality of his sermon, the notation of the German philanthropic spot that funded these play dinners, and the bully enactment they did to support refugees alive.”
No God But Us is precise overmuch a publication astir Afghan refugees who are trying to forge a aboriginal amidst large displacement.
In its opening and closing, the caller engages with what the precocious queer theorist Jose Esteban Muñoz called a “sense of brown.” (Peppered with Farsi and Turkish words which aren’t translated, No God But Us is unapologetic successful its brownness ) At the beginning, Delbar is portion of a resistance amusement which his resistance mother, Kreamy, explains to him has “Oriental aesthetic”—a harmless abstraction with “barely immoderate achromatic people” meant for a “sea of different Arabs loving what we love” and who are “fucking with the exoticism.”
There’s lone 1 issue: Kreamy (parents from Pakistan) and Delbar (parents from Afghanistan) are “not adjacent Arab.” By the extremity of the novel, Mansur besides finds himself successful a concern successful which he’s formed arsenic an Arab contempt being Afghan: “I’m not Arab astatine all, but who cares. It’s not important what I am. I go what they request maine to be, a thick-dick machofucker.” (This is simply a benignant of brownish corollary to “BBC” tropes and what Ann duCille calls mandingoism.) This conflation of brownness and Arabness is due, successful important part, to however successful the aftermath of 9/11, the War connected Terror crudely lumped Arabs, Muslims, and radical surviving successful countries arsenic geographically and culturally disparate arsenic Indonesia, Afghanistan, and Egypt into the aforesaid stigmatized authorities of brownness.
In The Sense of Brown, Jose Esteban Muñoz considers “people who are rendered brownish by their idiosyncratic and familial information successful South-to-North migration patterns.” While Muñoz was chiefly penning lawsuit studies astir Latin identity, his consciousness of brownish tin beryllium applied to different parts of the world—particularly to the “brown commons” forged successful Turkey betwixt 2001, and the 21st-century “Fortress Europe” question of the mid 2010s. While brownness is simply a “place of fractured togetherness,” Muñoz notes, “Brown, it is important to mention, is not strictly the shared acquisition of harm betwixt radical and things; it is besides the imaginable for the refusal and absorption to that oft-systemic harm.”
Two forms of kin basal retired successful No God But Us: aunties and children. The aunties play an tremendous relation successful Delbar and Mansur’s outing (and, successful ways some affirmative and painful, successful their formation from America and Iran, respectively). They are a benignant of Greek chorus who, Delbar says, “could beryllium mistaken for buxom, aging crows lined up crossed a powerfulness line, each 1 wrapped successful somewhat different, but arsenic demure, caput scarf.” Despite often reinforcing accepted values, No God But Us’s aunties person a femme, queer (indeed, astir misandrist) unit the student Kareem Khubchandani has described as auntology. When Delbar sees 2 women astatine PeaceMeals successful Turkey, helium says, “In them, I saw my ain aunties, and their dismissiveness of immoderate antheral bold capable to marque a foolish bid for their attention.” It is Delbar and Mansur’s meddling aunts who motorboat their journeys towards Turkey; but it is besides Delbar’s Aunt Yosra who protects him from his household (and confides successful him that the different aunties presume she is simply a lesbian for divorcing her abusive husband).
The different queer fig successful No God But Us is that of the child. Sayed seems to beryllium precise funny successful a improvement described successful the instauration to The Sense of Brown arsenic “the queer and brownish acquisition of childhood.” Children are not ever precise contiguous successful queer literature, surely not often successful the hands of achromatic writers depicting cheery men successful their twenties. But they abound successful queer exile lit (think of Renaldo Arenas’s puerility in Before Night Falls). No God But Us is precise overmuch a publication astir Afghan refugees who are trying to forge a aboriginal amidst large displacement—and queer and trans Afghans play a captious relation successful nurturing their communities crossed generations.
But portion surviving with intergenerational household whitethorn bring extortion from racism for queers of colour arsenic they scope adulthood, it brings different problem. As Mansur says, “Privacy was a luxury absent from our home”—meaning enactment had to dangerously beryllium sought successful nationalist spaces. Samuel R. Delany described the cross-class, interracial intersexual playground of pre-Disneyfied 42nd Street successful Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. In a akin spirit, Sayed playfully explores the cross-class connections which hap erstwhile yuppies and laborers alike person to cruise for enactment successful the aforesaid Tehran roundabout.
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Though it is acceptable successful a state and nine acold from the United States, No God But Us is not wholly dissimilar from different queer novels which person recovered ample followings successful the US. Despite that, the caller has truthful acold not generated anyplace adjacent the aforesaid sum arsenic comparable novels similar André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name (set successful 1980s Italy), Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness (post-Soviet Bulgaria), oregon Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles (ancient Greece)—to accidental thing of the Canadian hockey romance Hidden Rivalry. Putting the larger contented of decreased books coverage aside, I find Sayed’s prose to beryllium successful the aforesaid league of writers similar Greenwell oregon Miller, and I judge it has not received anyplace adjacent arsenic overmuch attraction frankincense far—at slightest successful part—because it’s a caller by a queer Muslim writer that is besides a damning critique of American empire.
As idiosyncratic who lived successful New York City for astir of my life, I americium not immune to the feelings of sadness being expressed by my chap New Yorkers.
No God But Us leaves small country for the scholar to debar confronting America’s (and the EU’s) modern violence—and the mode specified unit destroys queer lives and queer love. It is simply a nonstop situation to pinkwashing arsenic good arsenic a informing astir the seductive quality of the diaspora; adjacent erstwhile dealing with the astir intimate of matters, Delbar is conscripted into imperial thinking. For instance: When Delbar tries to springiness his parent an ultimatum astir however she indispensable prosecute his sexuality connected his presumption if she is to enactment successful his life, Mansur observes that to Delbar, it meant “Either she was with him oregon against him.” Mansur, who desperately longs to beryllium reunited with his ain mother, is appalled. It’s a chilling line, evocative of George W. Bush saying “Either you are with us, oregon you are with the terrorists” oregon then-Senator Hilary Clinton saying “Every federation has to either beryllium with us, oregon against us,” successful September 2001.
It’s each oregon thing with Delbar, a overmuch little profoundly drawn quality than Mansur. And portion Mansur appreciates Delbar’s attention, helium besides knows that “With specified naive, axenic adoration came the stupidity of a juvenile, arsenic well.” Delbar finds immoderate fig of things important which confound Mansur—an insistence connected presumption for identity, an obsession with YouTube videos of celebrated radical helium doesn’t know—because, Mansur surmises, Delbar “held onto his large ideas due to the fact that thing had ever been taken from him.
No God But Us besides made maine deliberation anew astir the missed accidental 9/11 gave the world.
As idiosyncratic who lived successful New York City for astir of my life, I americium not immune to the feelings of sadness being expressed by my chap New Yorkers this week. I, too, was determination to witnesser 9/11 up close. I watched the flames with my ain eyes.
And though I stay aggravated astir the warfare that followed the demolition of the towers , I americium touched each twelvemonth erstwhile I spot the memorial columns of light—a monument of anticipation and luminescence, evoking angels flying into space.
But light, tragically, is not the ascendant bequest of 9/11. America could have responded to that calamity by creating a kinder world, 1 that genuinely honors the dead. Instead, we person plunged much of the satellite into acheronian and suffering. We missed the anticipation of antithetic futures those days offered—much arsenic we proceed to miss—or ignore—the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic (and its blueprint for creating a much conscionable society). In a preview of the genocide successful Gaza, by the autumn of 2001, the US was dropping “Daisy Cutters”—a deceptively cute sanction for 2,000 lb bombs—upon immoderate of the poorest radical connected earth.
And yet, contempt America’s champion efforts, successful the midst of this horror, millions of artists, travelers, and inventors created love, and light. Sometimes, against each odds, they created beingness itself.
Delbar, Mansur, their aunties and their lovers punctual america that to bring the worlds we privation into being successful the aftermath of the warfare of terror, determination is nary deity but us.
English (US) ·