"We have been treated as a virus all our lives"

Based on an informal interview by Ghazal Shahid*

A 27-year-old trans-person, Seema, was sitting under a well-known flyover of Karachi on lockdown day 3. I approached her and handed her a mask as she had her face covered with her dupatta.

Seema took the mask and said “This will not help me buy dinner for myself, baaji, I don’t want it.” Then I gave her some money and asked her if I could talk to her about the lockdown. Seema agreed and without waiting for me to ask a question, started speaking as if she had just been waiting for someone to talk to her.

“Baji look. People used to run away from us and maintained distance from us since forever…way before this…what do you call it? Corona! Yes! before this coronavirus started. We have been treated as a virus all our lives.”

“It is sad but my trans-sisters and I often laugh about this as well. Now you all know how it feels when you cannot even hug your parents or siblings - but this has been the case my whole life. I am sitting here today because I cannot go back home to my family and take care of my parents. Despite all of this, they still haven’t allowed me to enter the house. I went there (home) yesterday but my brother slapped me and asked me to leave. I just wanted to see them and have a meal with them…as a family.

“For you it is so easy, you will take my interview and go back to your comfortable loving home. I will stay here till nighttime, then I will go back to my trans-sister and we will stay up all night as usual and try to find peace in our miseries. This will be over for you in a couple of months. For us, the cycle will continue.”

* Ghazal Shahid, Part-time Social Media Research Assistant, Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture, SIUT, Karachi, Pakistan