Being Civil in Redbridge
An Oral History Project from Redbridge Rainbow Community
Faazal
Progess for the LGBT community
Being LGBT in Pakistan
On the 1975 Gay March
On his Civil Partnership
"I still remember when I went to Bradford Library, uh… I wanted a book on homosexuality, because that was what it was called then, I didn’t know any better. And I wanted to look for a book to understand it better, and what I got was the book - I can’t remember the book - but it was in a glass case, just by the librarian, and I had to ask her to get it out for me to look at. And she said “why do you need this? This is only for bum bandits”, and those were the words you used in those days. And I thought I needed to escape from Bradford to a more cosmopolitan place."
Fazaal was born in Pakistan in 1960 and moved to England with his family in 1967. After discovering his sexuality at the age of twelve, Fazal left home to live on the streets - seeking escape from the close knit Muslim community where being gay was not widely accepted. He later moved in with an Aunt and Uncle and says he has tried to slowly educate his family about LGBT; he has since had one arranged marriage and two civil partnerships. Fazal set up an LGBT youth group as well as a group for South Asian LGBT people called Shakti, and he now works for the charity Positive East. Click to listen to his story.
"I think it was difficult for me, at that time, at fifteen, to say to my family “listen, I am gay”. Because in-in the… Urdu, and in the Indian language of south Asian languages, there’s no such thing as being gay, and so there is no, sort of, word, for being gay. There is a word called Gandu, but it’s a derogatory word."
"If you ask me “would I take it back”, I would say no. I’d live that life again, because I did really enjoy it."