PESHAWAR: At the age of 15, Mussarat a transgender from Bajaur, ran away from his home to seek refuge in Peshawar and in search of the transgender community.
“I left my home because my parents did not accept me the way I was,” Mussarat tells News Lens as he applies make-up for a performance at a wedding.
“I don’t miss my parents but I loved my aunt who would try and protect me every time my father beat me up.”
Mussarat sends his aunt money every now and then but still hides the truth about his whereabouts from her: “I told her that I am working as a waiter at a hotel in Rawalpindi.”
As a child, Mussarat says he was molested time and again by boys and men in the village and had to leave because of the “social embarrassment and hurdles” his presence created for his parents.
His father would beat him for anything that went wrong in the house. “My father considered me a curse for the entire family,” he says, “Whenever something went wrong, my father held me responsible for it.”
Now he lives with his community members in Gul Bahar in Peshawar where, Mussarat says, they are treated like strangers by people.
Ostracised by society and alienated because of their physical and psychological attributes, the transgender community tends to live in closely-knit groups where their interaction with society is limited to begging, prostitution and performing at weddings.
Social scientists say that transgender community lives in extreme poverty owing to society's perception of them as 'freaks' who lack skills for regular employment.
They are shunned by their families and schools, humiliated by teachers and students, and have no place in the market as they are deemed unfit for regular jobs.
“These transgender souls are misfits; they are women trapped in a man’s body — born with male reproductive organs but behave like women — and this is the main reason why society treats them aspariahs,” says Professor Jamil Ahmad Chitrali, who teaches anthropology at the University of Peshawar.
“When it is hard for women to cope in our patriarchal society, how can they [transgender] survive?” Chitrali told News Lens Pakistan.
I sat with Mussarat in her tiny room as Farooq alias Madhuri – named after the popular Bollywood star – added final touches to her hair. The door of the room was ajar, and as people passed by, I saw them stop and stare at us.
