Pink Characters I Carry

Agil Abdullayev

I knew I was an unwanted member of my society before I realized anything else about myself. Thoughts about my gender, sexuality, class, culture, and nation all came later. I had been taught to think that to be accepted by Azerbaijani society I had to be a “good man”: someone who has a strong muscular body, lacks a sense of sympathy, loses his virginity to a sex worker during puberty, aspires to marry a virgin woman and to have a baby by their first anniversary. As I never had any of these qualities or any ambition to be a “good man,” I grew up receiving unsolicited advice about my body. From a young age, I learned my body was different from others and I would respond by contorting myself to please any person who commented on me or my behavior. If someone said I sounded like a girl, acted feminine, or looked fat, I would try to be quiet, walk masculine, and tuck in my tummy. These unwritten rules of manliness made me shy and evoked a keen sense of regret for having a body like mine. Very often, I wanted to disappear and be recreated differently or somehow less “wrong.”

My role in society quickly became associated with my body and its femininity. My non-traditional gender identity became my curse. I was continuously filled with anxiety, living in a society where I couldn’t adhere to social norms. It was an anxious feeling to live in a place where I struggled to obey the cultural codes. Expressing my true identity was not safe and would put my family’s honor at risk. Simply admitting that I liked pink would be a disgrace to my family. It would put their parental authority under scrutiny by showing that they didn’t manage to teach their son to be masculine and violent enough. Society didn’t seem to be caring and trustworthy, so my imagination played a key role in copying with a heteronormative society that felt uncaring and untrustworthy.”  In this essay, I examine myself and my place in Azerbaijani society, taking my body, society, and imagination as key elements of my identity.

I was born in the capital of Azerbaijan in 1992, during the late stages of the first Karabakh war. This ethnic and territorial war between Armenia and Azerbaijan took place from the late 1980s to May 1994 in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan. Being a “good man” at the time meant being a veteran of, wanting to kill enemies in, this war. The war has filled the hearts and souls of many Azerbaijanis and emphasized the importance of vivid masculinity, glorifying violent behavior, hatred towards the enemy, and physical strength. I felt alienated in my refusal to support the military conflict, which promoted hatred and violence towards others. I have witnessed what this hatred does: how it changes us physically and damages us mentally in irreversible ways.

While on the outside I adhered to the societal rules and tried to blend in as a regular person, I found a safe space in my mind to hide from the internal and external struggles around me. This safe space was filled with the hopeful songs of Iranian musician Googoosh, who was born in Iran to Iranian and Azerbaijani parents. The many languages of her music, including Persian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, Armenian, Arabic, and English, as well as her mixed ethnicity, played a major role in Googoosh becoming a cultural icon not only in Iran but in Azerbaijan and other neighboring countries. Even though her music was considered too feminine for a “good man,” I loved to listen to it as much as my mother and her girlfriends did. The fact Googoosh was a cultural icon in the South Caucasus region gave me hope that I was not alone. She sings about love and people resonate with her songs. Her music helped me cope with my challenges and problems at school. Her most famous song, “Marham,” became the anthem of my struggle with bullying and violence. Its deeply personal lyrics allowed me to reimagine my oppressors as kind and compassionate. The song helped me believe that one day, one of them would feel sympathy towards me and stop others from beating me.

Since I was ten years old, my father kept telling me that my classmates were going to be my best friends for life. Later, when I was thirteen years old, I wondered: How were people who were always mocking me and my body ever going to be my best friends? How were people who kicked me out of their circles for being loud and extra ever going to become a part of my support system? Often, I would feel like Arthur in the 2019 film Joker. The film has a scene where Arthur is at his most vulnerable, after he has been beaten up by a bunch of teenagers who stole his promo sign. He lies on the floor with closed eyes, accepting society’s cruelty. The camera moves away from him, highlighting his helplessness. Rather than zoom in to help us sympathize with Arthur, director Todd Phillips pulls away, making it harder for us to place ourselves in Arthur’s body. And yet, this scene makes us feel abandonment strongly. I often had a similar experience on my way home from school. While I was supposed to bond with my classmates, it was as if the camera pulled away—felt more vulnerable and alone. At home, I wanted to accept my helplessness and entertain dark thoughts. This is when I would close my eyes to dive deeper into a flawless place with my pink characters—characters who were my best friends.

Most of the boys at school found BFFs long before I did and were very successful at maintaining these friendships. It wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t get my father's words out of my head. It was the culture that taught me to listen to my parents and obey their rules. While I was trying to follow my parents’ guidance, I created a bunch of pink characters: imaginary friends and alter egos. Each friend related to different stages of adulting in my desired future. I formed them for different situations; they appeared one by one in my life, never all at once. The pink characters were soft like me and as masculine as society wanted. As a mixture of what I am and what society wanted from me, they were my biggest hope and support system. All of them—Lady Adele, Rashida, Yves, Tural, and Michael—were my hope. A hope of never being alone in a world that rejected me. 

Michael had short black hair and a friendly smile, bristly eyebrows, and a concrete jaw. He was tall with broad shoulders. His derring-do personality and bass voice were a big part of his ambitious character. Michael always wore nifty clothes and his spicy aroma was appealing. With him by my side, I always felt like I was being accompanied by the coolest boy in school. 

Born to a French father and Azerbaijani mother, Yves wasn’t a model but he should have been one. The lush, mother-lode-gold hair he groomed so carefully had a rippling quality, a sign of his robust health. Beetle-browed, he knew he didn’t fit in but was trying to adapt. I learned from him how to adjust to challenging situations. Yves Michele also encouraged me to reject my own society’s expectations.

Lady Adele, who could be very shy at first, was very hot. She was also funny. As someone who seen as occupying a “female role” in a patriarchal society like Azerbaijan, I used to identify with Lady Adele. She was my persona, letting me express femininity in my early sexual experiences. I loved the way her voice quickened when a discreet guy sparkled with the idea of trying new things in sex. All these pink characters helped me stay true to myself, maintain my equanimity, and prepare for later stages in life. 

My imaginary friends always appeared next to me with a pink background. They came from a delicate place full of sweetness and tenderness, where males could be feminine and charming, holding flowers and cotton candy in their hands. I didn’t understand why my imagination was so pink, soft, and romantic. These were all the things I wasn’t allowed to like, but which made me smile and feel so happy. Even though I was enjoying these bits of happiness, I knew very well that I shouldn’t share these thoughts with anyone else. The more I hid my imaginary friends, the more confident I was of their existence in my life. 

An imaginary friend like Tural, who had the characteristics of a best friend and the qualities of confident yet non-toxic masculinity. He was the first boy I liked. Just like in true friendship, where you influence each other and make each other better, Tural was a person I valued above others. He was someone I had fun with, someone I trusted, and someone in whom I could confide. Tural was the first person who came to mind when I got good news or wanted to go out. He was everything I imagined an open-minded best friend to be, a friend who was adored by society but didn’t judge me for being feminine. He supported me from childhood until my mid-20s.

I remember talking to my parents about Tural. I told them about his bravery and our incredibly supportive friendship. I still remember my father’s happy eyes when I told him about a fight Tural had at the schoolyard and how I went to help him. The details of our fight, which included how we fought everyone bravely and how some guys ran away from us, made my father extremely proud. At the same time, I tried to hide the bites and slap marks on my neck, the bruised stomach, and bleeding arms left by classmates who had bullied me earlier that day. At the end of each story, my father would hug me. His hug always brought me a feeling of being accepted, as if I was becoming a part of something bigger than my small problems. I felt like I was a “good man,” part of my family and society, proudly representing my culture with my body. The more I told stories about Tural, the more I believed in his existence. Tural was my hope. With his support, I started to become stronger and to stand up against my society’s and family’s wishes. Tural improved my self-confidence and assured me that my ambitions mattered. Eventually, I dropped out of studying computer engineering, a field my parents pushed me into, and started exploring what interested me.

Seeing imagination as an antonym to obedience, respect, and discipline, my first teacher at school, Mrs. Flora, said that we would have to obey rules to succeed in the world. She insisted that wishing and hoping to find our voices would lead us to nothing. These words often led me to blame myself for dropping out of a computer engineering course at the university to pursue my passion for the arts. But the blame was no match for my hope of having an artist’s studio and exhibiting in white cube galleries, a dream bolstered by the thought of having Tural come to each exhibition opening. In 2011, I entered the local art scene, which meant making neo-expressionist paintings on our home balcony, going to exhibitions, and speaking to local artists, or at least trying to. Julian Schnabel’s 1996 feature film Basquiat depicted how I thought I was going to make it in the art world. The film suggests that to become an artist, one has to hang out with the right people, exhibit, network, exhibit more, and be picked by a cool curator. As a teenager, I believed in this beautiful fantasy as if it were a message from God. I started making friends from the local art scene, and the concepts of body, society, and imagination started changing for me. The more I painted, the more I believed in myself. I believed that I am real, part of this society, and that I am making my contribution by telling my story. Nevertheless, during the next six years of working as a young artist in Azerbaijan, I came across many different faces that slowly made me recall an important lesson I learned—these people are the products of this society. It was my mistake to equate the art community with a cool notion that I have seen in American movies.

I remembered Mrs. Flora’s words again when I left my hometown to go to the UK to study the fine arts. It wasn’t easy at the start. As with most international students, I had major culture shock and bouts of homesickness. But I’d worked hard to come to the UK and felt I couldn’t complain; Tural would visit me often in those moments. However, in my second year abroad his presence began to decrease when I met my housemate Emily Simpson, who was studying for her Master of Fine Arts degree. That’s when the concept of friendship started to change for me. I found that safe space I created in my head throughout childhood—but in the world around me. As small parts of hope started lighting up, I became more rational. A physically real person who wasn’t part of my imagination—Emily—became my closest friend, melting my heart by making me feel real. I didn’t have to close my eyes anymore to escape my existence. Emily gave me the strength to accept myself, explore true friendship, set boundaries with unpleasant experiences, and to understand and enjoy the comforts of life. Emily was a hope I had been wanting for a very long time. My other friends, including Tural, Yves, and Rashida, taught me to appreciate my body and they brought me to good places, and I still take pride in their beautifully pink appearances in my life. What I learned about my society and culture still affects how I perceive myself and my body, but a culture of pink for girls and  blue for boys no longer entraps me. Googoosh’s “Ayrılıq” (meaning “separation” in English), plays like an anthem in my head: “what can I do that I can’t reach you anymore, so here we separate… I am from here but I don’t belong to you.”

Learning about my society’s obsessive views on heteronormative gender and sexuality, it has become easier to heal my social anxieties and shyness, avoid sadness and loneliness, not settle for less, and even reject suicidal thoughts. I used to believe that my relationship with gender and sexuality didn’t define me and it shouldn’t define me. But after understanding my queer body, the most important part of loving my gender and sexuality has been my journey to self-care. As the imagination played a principal role in helping me to love my body and my queerness with its all glitter, pink alter megos, imaginary friends, strengths and flaws, I am not looking for society to accept me, and I am not easily intimidated anymore. My queer body is still unwanted in my society. It has seen and experienced a lot, mentally and physically. This makes me a valuable contributor to society, standing up for what is right. Today, through my practice as an artist, I carry and examine those pink characters and I have hope. But I don’t think of hope as being imaginary support, optimistic quotes, smiling faces, positive thinking, or being aspirational. Today, my hope is power. The power that enables me to think and act, to move forward while taking care to stand up for myself. My hope is a protest. It is fighting for my body, my rights, and my responsibilities. My hope is a state of well-being. Maintaining my mental health and taking care of my body, educating and inspiring other marginalized voices next to me. I know that I have come far, and I have the strength to fight for my body and my hope.

Published Summer, 2021