Rukhsana Ali Shows What it's Like to Live in Her Closet |Book review|
|...there are so many out there living in a society where they can't be themselves, embrace who they are and identify the way they want to be known.|
Gay Pride in 2019 was in full swing on Instagram. Books that shaped LGBTQ+ were colourfully decorated and displayed at various local bookstores in quaint locations. The pictures were amazing. The shots were perfect. I was scrolling down, smiling for the people parading gleefully. Then a picture fell. A display, outside a bookstore, filled with novels laid out in rainbow assorted colour scheme on a vintage wooden cart. It was so amusing to look at as if I was physically present there, browsing books and cheering others. But something from the pile made me shift toward one book. I think I was mesmerized because of its cover jacket. Especially the emerald green colour and the character design. I had already ordered few novels the other night. I was reluctant to buy another because I was on a tight budget. But, I couldn’t scroll that picture down. My mind enchanted, “Buy. You know you want it,” Of course, I want it! On Goodreads — a popular social site for book lovers, the book’s synopsis stared at me. Like calling me, “I don’t cost that much. Please, I want to be with you.” That was it. I closed Instagram. I opened Amazon’s shopping page and ordered before I threw myself in overthinking.
P.S. I couldn’t find the exact picture I saw on Instagram but this setup is little bit similar to what I had seen during Pride Month in 2019.
Sabina Khan’s The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali is a young adult (YA) fiction, which portrays about a brilliant physicist aspirant, seventeen-year-old, Rukhsana Ali, who wants to get enrolled in her dream college, Caltech, in California and start her adventures with her beautiful girlfriend, Ariana. Rukhsana’s endeavour is great and the life she wants to spend with her love is cute. But there is a roadblock standing between her dream and turning it into reality — is convincing her conservative Muslim Bengali parents.
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Title: The Love & Lies of Rukhsana Ali Genre: Young adult (YA), General, Fiction Author: Sabina Khan Publisher: Scholastic Publication date: February 7, 2019 Where you can buy? Click here |
Rukhsana’s parents are not ‘love who you want’ kind of people. They believe in stereotypical conventional standards that makes the society follow with no questions asked. In Seattle, Rukhsana is deliberately expected to be dressed properly, learn cooking for her future husband and prep being a good housewife instead of becoming more ambitious. Thank God, her cheeky, younger brother, Aamir, with whom she can be herself, knows how to make her smile in a home where both, unequally, are believed to do things differently. That’s why Rukhsana rebels in doing things her way without confronting them. But, she is tired of moving stealthily. Moreover, it is impacting on her relationship with Ariana when Rukhsana imputes she cannot at all come out to her parents. If they know their daughter is a lesbian, she would be caged in a room where insolubility will shrink her dreams. And the fear springs in surprise when Rukhsana is caught making out with Ariana. Her remaining choices doesn’t stay long in her hands when her parents whisk her away to their homeland, Bangladesh.
I started reading as soon as the delivery arrived. I couldn’t stop after learning how Rukhsana was tricked into flying to Bangladesh. Thereon, anticipation hyped up the climax. Narration is crafted suspensefully. The flow is precise and kept me curious. The dialogues aren’t overly made dramatic. They are perfectly quoted as if I was sitting with Rukhsana, listening how her day went like two friends sipping sodas and snacking on tangy potato chips. You may love the characters, at the same time hate them. I could relate the character, Rukhsana’s aunty, Meena, who prattles inquisitively and judge others around her. I know people like aunty Meena who doesn’t stop gossiping and smearing typical moral judgements of their own in thick layers. I personally loved Rukhsana’s nani (grandmother) and her fiancée, Sohail. They are supportive and understanding toward Rukhsana. They instinctively picked her inner troubling thoughts which may make you wish you had people like them for real. Obviously, I ship Rukhsana and Ariana. Their relationship bounced up and down. But, when they are together, stealing kisses, consoling and supporting each other, you have no other option but only love the pair.
Rukhsana’s story highlights that there are so many out there living in a society where they can’t be themselves, embrace who they are and identify the way they want to be known. Like her, they overthink how they should come out to their family and love their partner openely. There are some who don’t support their children coming out enthusiastically. It makes it worse which makes them question their sanity. Rukhsana tolerates the gravity of denial from those she expects to understand her. Each time the things she wants to enjoy, she does discreetly that makes her constantly live in fear. What if anybody see her being intimate with Ariana, how is she going to face her parents? Here’s a quote from the book, a scene, where Rukhsana is talking with Ariana over phone,
“I hate that I have to hide this part of me from everybody. I love you so much. I wish I could shout it from the rooftops. But my reality is that I can’t do any of that. And try as I might, there’s not much I can do to change it.”
This YA fiction is an important message for everyone to read and understand the people who want to be understood and accepted who they are. The author, Sabina Khan, has done a tremendous job bringing out the situation gender nonconforming feel prejudiced and sneered on everyday. You should also know that Sabina wrote this book honouring Xulhaz Manan, co-founder of Roopbaan, Bangladesh’s first and only LGBT magazine and K. Mahabub Rabbi, both community leaders and LGBTQ+ activists, who were murdered gruesomely in 2016. She has mentioned that this horrific news raises the dangers that the Muslim LGBTQ+ face. Society can be harsh and misunderstand gender nonconforming when traditionalism sits on top. Nowadays, LGBTQ+ community is booming, breaking barriers and altering the conventional perspective. Change is progressing for better as far as media is reporting. Yet, there are some who stand quietly, staring mum at the community. Sabina’s book is a powerful example which should be gifted to all, read by all and percolate kindness towards those who needs to be seen.
Priyanka Patra is a self-published writer of Upon Me. She lives in Odisha, India with her family in a small town. She has done her MBA in Marketing & HR from Birla Global University in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She is aiming to write more books especially in fiction genre.
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