Young men wander hand in hand, giggle together, sit on each other's laps. At weddings and parties they dance together sensuously, usually without any woman around. In many places, such overt displays of physical bonding between the same sex would be immediately designated homosexual. Whether viewed with liberal acceptance or castigated with opprobrium, such behaviour would first be categorised. Yet in the scene sketched here, most of the young men are intensely interested in girls, not boys.
In today's Kabul, whether due to the unforgiving taboos on overt displays of heterosexual behaviour, or having grown up under a Taliban regime which managed to make women disappear from sight, intense displays of physical affection between men are the norm, even more so than in other Southasian cities and towns. Despite the extreme sexual repression that continues to exist in Afghanistan, this 'permission' to exhibit physical tenderness towards the same sex simultaneously challenges the stereotypes of homosexual, heterosexual and even bisexual identities, which often form the core of gender politics elsewhere.
Though there has been considerable documentation of the denial of women's rights in Afghanistan, as well as some cursory examination of issues of gay identity, the behavioural norm that blurs the distinction between sexual and platonic relationships remains almost completely unexplored. This continues despite there being a long history of such relationships in the official records and cultural traditions of the region. Take, for example, two widely known works of literature, the Baburnama (Book of Babur) and the works of the 13th-century poet Rumi. The former was written by an emperor who came from Uzbekistan to make Hindustan his home, but all his life longed for Kabul because of its resemblance to his childhood home. The latter, though born in Balkh in northern Afghanistan, ultimately left the region for Turkey.
Zahiruddin Muhammed Babur, who lived between 1483 and 1530, was the founder of the Mughal dynasty in the Subcontinent. In his astonishingly frank autobiography, the Baburnama, he provides an extensive record of his longing for a young boy. Unfortunately, this infatuation also coincided with his marriage. Though wed at the age of 17, to one Ayisheh Sultan Begum, he soon loses both his interest in and fondness for his wife. "Once every month or forty days," the emperor recalls, "my mother, the khanim, drove me to [Ayisheh] with all the severity of a quartermaster."