Death of an Icon

By Itto and Mekiya Outini

Bakhtiyor was pronounced dead on Monday morning. The kids at the nonprofit where he used to volunteer must’ve worked on his eulogy all weekend because it took up their entire newsletter, his full-color image splashed beneath a gaudy headline: “Mourning the Fallen: Remembering the Life and Legacy of a Queer Central Asian Icon.”

The sight of Bakhtiyor beneath that florid banner, weary and dignified, put a cold knife through me.

That evening, I received a WhatsApp message from him.

“On the one hand,” he mused, “it seems that I am unexpectedly…deceased. This is unfortunate. On the other…I am an icon. A queer icon. This is quite…astonishing.”

The message’s run-time was twenty-nine minutes, on the long side even for Bakhtiyor. Two minutes in, out of patience, I called him.

“What happened?” I demanded. “Are you dead or what?”

It was 8:43 in the evening in New York, early morning in Tajikistan. I could hear him sipping something, tea or coffee.

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding,” he said pensively. “They reached out to me…two weeks ago, I think it was…with questions…about…my deportation.”

Fourteen years earlier, when I’d been hired at the pharmacy, I’d found the Obama-esque care he put into his sentences charming. The hmms and haws and sighs and meditative silences between his words had only underscored his faltering eloquence, which, given that English was his fourth language, had filled me with admiration. Now, I found it less endearing.

“They were of a mind to share my story,” he went on, oblivious to my growing agitation. “To raise…awareness. To…motivate people. When I failed to respond in a timely manner…the thing is, Miles, lately, I’ve been feeling a bit…down…a bit…blue.”

“It’s fundraising, isn’t it,” I said. “It’s all about fundraising.”

“It is necessary, sometimes, to raise funds,” he said. “But I know them well. They are…careful people. Dedicated people. It can only have been a…misunderstanding.”

He’d forgotten that I also knew those careful, dedicated people: that, several years earlier, he’d talked me into volunteering with them. I used to volunteer a lot in those days, usually with organizations focused on expanding access to life-saving medicines and groundbreaking therapies. The main point of this NGO, by contrast, had been to tell stories: heartwarming, heartbreaking, spine-chilling, gut-wrenching stories about queer people from all walks of life, open and closeted, thriving and murdered, each curated for a different audience, a different occasion. They’d told those stories in order to raise money, and they’d raised the money in order to keep telling stories. Around and around. For a while, Bakhtiyor had basked in the glow of that revolving spotlight.

“You were their cash cow,” I said. “They got a taste of you. Now they want more.” I had a drink in hand, and I was pacing, as much as the dimensions of my studio permitted pacing, weaving around the potted Ficus in the corner, stepping repeatedly over the corner of my futon. I was angry, I realized. I thought I’d boxed that anger up and shipped it off a long time ago, with a fake return address, but here it was, back on my doorstep.

“If my story,” he mumbled, “…if the deployment of my story…even if certain details have been…miscommunicated…if it serves to…reduce…harm— ”

“I bet they really burned the midnight oil on this one,” I said. “Especially the ending.” Adopting a simpering, valley-girl voice, I echoed their call to action: “And that’s why, people, that’s why we all have to come together, come together as Americans, come together and donate, donate, donate, like and donate, smash that donate button, smash it now, so that nothing like this ever happens again.”

“Oh, Miles,” said Bakhtiyor, “this is…this is…I…oh.” His voice trembled like a dollop of mucus swinging from a nostril. His head was definitely in his hands. Well. Hand. “It was never my desire to distress you,” he said. “You have always been a friend.”

Deflated by his deflation, I slumped onto a stool.

“But when I read the story,” he went on, “what I mean to say is that…what I desire to convey…it did not strike me as…entirely…a fabrication.”

“You’re not dead,” I said, “and you’re not gay, and you’re not an icon. There is no logical connection between anything they wrote and you, Bakh. There is no connection. Even if you had killed yourself, there’s no connection between that and donating. They are sick people. They’ll use whatever drama they can drum up, whatever sob story, whatever overwrought emotion. You know what I would do if I were them? Pitch that story to Broadway. That’s where the big bucks are. But I guess then it’s not tax deductible.”

“If you read Carl Jung,” said Bakhtiyor, “you’ll see that there are certain…archetypes, certain…archetypal…what I mean to say…although I did not take my own life…although I contemplated…but I didn’t do it…but, you see, in a metaphorical sense…metaphorically speaking— ”

“You wanted to kill yourself.”

“It was more than desire.”

“An impulse?”

“More.”

“You had a plan?”

“I’ve done it,” Bakhtiyor said. “I have.”

My pupils dilated, sucking up all the light in the room, greedy for all the light in the city. I reached for the whiskey bottle, goosebumps prickling on my arms.

“For all intents and purposes,” he said, “the line between…the line that separates this life from…is a border. Just like any other border. Perhaps…although it is frightening to contemplate. Frightening. Not the reality of nonexistence, but the thought, the notion…but when I arrived in Dushanbe…you might think it was a homecoming, me coming home…but when I had to speak, when the time came, when I opened my mouth to address the customs agent, when I began speaking…the words…my words…the sounds I made…”

“What are you saying?”

“That’s the question. The very question. What was I saying? Of course, I’m grateful. This country has…accepted me. Has…forgiven me. Has shown mercy. I am authorized to work…without restriction. But my wife, Miles…my wife has not accepted me…has not forgiven. In fact, she has taken a new husband.”

“So?” I said. “She’s not Penelope. But you’re the one who left, aren’t you? You’re the one who went away for twenty years.”

“My children…do not recognize me. Do not…remember. They are grown. When I left for America, there was a great deal of…jealousy. Now my colleagues have gotten promotions. My friends have…moved on. Even the language is changing. Every day, I must write down new words. In New York, I was a foreigner, but at least I spoke…fluently.”

“It’ll come back to you,” I said. “Just like riding a bicycle.” Really, I had no idea. I’d picked up some Latin in pharmacy school, but I’d never learned a living language, much less forgotten one. I knew that my advice was pat and useless, but dispensing it gave me a strange pleasure anyway.

“If any organization is able to leverage my story,” he went on, “for the benefit of others…for the general well-being…what I mean to say is, they may use it as they wish. It seems to me that I shall be more…useful…this way.”

“This is pathetic,” I said. “This is heartbreaking.”

“I don’t belong. Not on this side of the border. And yet, the thing is, there, in New York, it was just the same. The same delusion. I felt that in my country…if I just returned— ”

“It’s a hell of a position you’re putting me in,” I said. “I mean, who am I even supposed to call? Hang on. Let me Google suicide hotline in Tajikistan.” 

“Next week, I have an interview with them.”

“A what?”

“An interview.”

“With who?”

“A new project. A nonprofit that they’re launching. For the at-risk youth…the queer.”

“You’re kidding. Tell me you’re kidding.”  

“My credentials are sufficient,” he said matter-of-factly. “An American publication has declared me an icon.”

“You’re suicidal,” I said, “and you’re going to work for a suicide hotline?” It was all I could do not to fling my glass through the dark window. I wanted to kick something, punch something, strangle something. The veins in my head, my neck, my forearms bulged.

“Do not misunderstand,” he said. “What I mean to say is that…through my experience, I have acquired certain…insights…certain…and it seems to me that in this way, I can be useful.”

“But you’re not even gay!” I must’ve made an emphatic gesture because when I looked down, my glass was empty, and there were whiskey-tinted ice cubes on the floor.

“As it is,” he said, “I’ve already crossed one too many borders. Rest assured, I have no intention of crossing this one.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s really great. The thing is, you lived a lie for twenty years, and now you can’t stop lying. You can’t get enough. You lie and lie and lie. The more someone lies to you, the more you like them. Is that your problem with me, Bakh? Have I not lied to you enough? How am I supposed to know how worried I ought to be? I’m not just talking about for you here. How worried am I supposed to be for those poor little twinks you’re going to be counseling?”

“Imagine that you choose to prematurely cross that…final…border,” he said, his voice a hypnogogic drone, “seeking…you might say…asylum…in that state of…nonexistence…only, instead of asylum, imagine that you find…what if, for instance, even there, you are not welcome?”

“I don’t know, Bakh.” The phone was hot against my ear. I retrieved a spatula and went around the studio, scooping up half-melted ice cubes and dropping them one by one into the glass. I was grateful that my outburst hadn’t been more destructive. I’ve always had good self-control. “I guess you know what you want to hear,” I said. “I just don’t know what to say.”

“It’s a thought experiment,” he said. “Simply a thought experiment…but one that will, I hope, save lives. I’ll keep you in the loop. I’ll let you know how the interview goes.”

“You do that.”

In my silverware drawer, behind the knives, I had a bottle of Ativan. You’re not supposed to mix benzos with alcohol, but you’re also not supposed to take benzos without a prescription. I popped two in my mouth and washed them down with whiskey. Then I went out to stand on the balcony—in the doorway, really—gazing out across the jagged skyline.

Ten stories up, the spring was still quite cold. I felt weak. I felt licked by blue flames. I felt a fever’s vertiginous bow wave approaching, rippling through the ether. I was the ice in a glass of shame and righteous indignation, clinking. I wanted him to have to look me in the eye while vomiting his mealymouthed doublespeak at me. I wanted him there.

I’ve always taken pride in being a judicious person: level-headed, even-handed, eminently fair. In one workplace after another, I’ve earned a reputation as someone anyone can talk to, seek advice from, vent at, or confide in. My interest in the Greeks, isolating as it’s always been, has its roots in a desire to become wise in order to offer the best counsel possible, even on matters where I lack experience. This way, I’ll always be useful.

From an early age, I’ve valued self-control. The first time I heard about the Marshmallow Test, for instance, I decided to subject myself to the experiment, not just to assess my current level of self-control, but also with hopes of increasing it. I was nine years old. For three months, I spent one hour every afternoon at my parents’ kitchen table with a bag of marshmallows in front of me, resisting temptation. Eventually, I even started throwing away my school lunches so that I would be hungrier, making the exercise more meaningful. I kept this up until Christmas, when my mother passed me a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows in it, and I startled both myself and her by projectile-vomiting.

Around that time, my most persistent fantasy had been of becoming a judge. To prepare myself for this vocation, I cultivated what I’d believed to be a judge’s habit: whenever I found that I could not avoid an argument, I would take whichever side went most against my own interests, then argue for it vehemently. Ironically, this eventually led me to talk myself out of going to law school, but the impulse for justice has never left me. As an adult, I’ve come to enjoy dispensing pills as if they were pellets of wisdom, carefully formulated to restore equilibrium to an unbalanced world. In measuring out the quantities correctly, I find intense satisfaction.

All this is to say that I never realized that I had it in my heart to hate a man simply for fleeing misfortune, especially not the extreme misfortune of having been born into one of those dismal, post-Soviet shitholes. On the contrary, I’d always cut Bakhtiyor all the slack there was to cut and then some. I’d covered his shifts when he was ill. I’d let him crash at my place for a few weeks when his lease was unexpectedly terminated and he had to scramble for new housing. I’d spent countless hours volunteering for his beloved NGOs. I’d nodded along with his interminable stories, no matter how many times he repeated them. I’d kept his secrets, even when they’d made my skin crawl.

When disaster had struck him in 2019, I’d been there at his side. I’d lied on his behalf, spent hours nursing him, and paid his bills out of my own pocket. I’d even stolen for him. The only thanks I’d received was knowing that I’d risked everything to keep someone in America, and alive, who wasn’t really content on this side of either border.

That saga had started in February. Bakhtiyor had just signed up for yoga classes at a studio a few blocks from the pharmacy. One night, after work, he’d invited me to go with him. There was probably a financial incentive attached, fifty percent off for a month if he got me to sign up or something, but I figured I could use the exercise, and the first class was free.

By the time we left the pharmacy, most of the light had dwindled from the sky. What remained was the color of frozen salmon, pinkish orange with a frosty, periwinkle fringe. It was rush hour, lots of traffic, lots of horns, and a bitter wind was blowing, seizing the tasseled ends of Bakhtiyor’s blue scarf and whipping him in the face until he stuffed them down into his collar. There were patches of ice on the sidewalk, and banks of dirty snow against the curbs, and something about the tenor of the evening struck me as reminiscent of his country, which I’d imagined often, though of course I’d never been.

Presumably struck by the same impression, he started telling a darkly comical story about the pharmacy where he used to work in a city called Khorog: how they were always running out of medications, not just because of issues with suppliers, but also because his colleagues had been in the habit of stealing them, hoarding them for themselves and their families, or selling them on the black market. Sometimes, to avoid getting caught, they’d even put pills in the wrong bottles. He’d often had to tell patients that they were out of certain medications, even when there’d seemed to be plenty in stock, because he couldn’t be sure that they weren’t really other medications that would exacerbate the patients’ conditions.

One minute, he was telling this story. The next, he was several paces behind me on the sidewalk, howling in pain.

I nearly slipped on the ice myself, hastening back to him. He knelt by the curb, gazing starkly up at me, his face contorted. Blood flowed from a gash on his temple, and his glasses were missing. At first, I thought that was the extent of the damage. Then headlights slashed across his midriff, and I saw his hand.

He must’ve flung it out to catch himself. In that same instant, a car had been grinding by. The fender had opened his temple, and the tire had gone over his hand. He cradled his arm to his chest, moaning. White flecks glimmered through the mess of red and purple, fragments of crushed bone.

The traffic wasn’t moving all that quickly. If I’d hurried, I could’ve avenged his mangled fingers, catching up with the bloody fender, hammering on the window, dragging the driver out onto the curb. But then who would call the ambulance? He needed medical attention. Passersby were giving us a wide berth, eyes on the sidewalk, headphones in. I reached for my phone.

“Please.” With his good hand, he stayed mine. “Not 911.”

That was the night I learned that Bakhtiyor was not a legal resident of the United States. He’d first come to New York on a tourist visa in 2000, not even ten years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It had been like stepping out of a black-and-white film into technicolor. Right away, he’d known he would do anything to stay.

By 2000, homosexuality had been legal in Tajikistan for two years, but gays and lesbians still faced widespread discrimination. Bakhtiyor had never had a relationship with a man, but, he’d reasoned, there was no way for anyone to know that, including the US government. Publicly, he had become a gay man and sought asylum on the grounds of persecution.

To support himself while his case was pending, he’d applied for work authorization. His credentials had impressed the hiring manager at the pharmacy, and his humble competence and gentle cordiality had impressed his colleagues. By 2015, when the government had finally gotten back to him regarding his asylum claim—denied on grounds of insufficient evidence—he had a sterling reputation, not only among his colleagues, but also with HR, whom he’d never once asked for a raise. They’d turned a blind eye to his status and agreed to keep him on.

He couldn’t have one story for the government, another for his colleagues, and a third for his friends. I understood this. Still, it pained me to discover that even after working by his side for nine years, I had failed to earn his trust.

There was no time for such pain on that blood-spattered sidewalk. I’d get him to the hospital first, I resolved, and feel things later. But he resisted. He wouldn’t let me call 911, afraid that the hospital staff would turn him over to the authorities, who would deport him. I didn’t know enough about the immigration system to be sure that he was wrong.

He insisted that we traverse the final block to the yoga studio and seek help there. To me, this seemed like an insane plan, but it was impossible to dissuade him.

Our entrance shattered the meditative atmosphere: me staggering under his weight, him grunting and moaning as he clung to my shoulder, both of us hyperventilating. The early birds were on their mats already, stretching their cold muscles. Now, thrown into disarray, they came rushing out into the lobby. In moments, we were surrounded. In ragged English, Bakhtiyor begged for any form of help that didn’t involve 911, decrying the ambulance and the keepers of ambulances, and reciting his social security number for some reason.

“No health insurance,” I put in, “no health insurance,” a chant, a mantra, so that my countrymen would understand.

By some dropped stitch of fate, one of the yogis turned out to be an ex-army surgeon. He was an enormous man, taller than Bakhtiyor, with an imposing torso, burning eyes, and a wild mane. He looked like Tarzan. He reminded me of my father, somehow, in much the same way that the time-locked safes at the pharmacy had always reminded me of my mother. His voice was eerily melodic, like Chopin wafting from the speakers at a heavy metal concert. He’d been to Iraq and Afghanistan, and he’d come to detest America and everything it stood for. For some reason, he had a bone saw.

The rest of us huddled around the bathroom door in astonished silence as Bakhtiyor let loose inhuman screams, one after another, each cut short by its successor. Those screams burned themselves onto my eardrums the way atom bombs burn shadows onto walls. I felt certain that I was in a fever dream. Thirty minutes earlier, this had been a normal evening. There was no accounting for the turn that things had taken, no making sense of this tear in reality. Each of those screams was a toothy knife biting my bone.

In a surprisingly short time, the door swung open, revealing the blood-streaked sink and walls. Bakhtiyor sat on the lid of the closed toilet, slumped forward, barely conscious, moaning. An impromptu tourniquet hugged his arm, the end of which was swaddled in bloody cloths.

By that time, we’d all begun to come to our senses. The only rational thing to do would be for one of us to drive him to the hospital. Weak with blood loss, stunned by pain, he wouldn’t be able to put up a resistance.

The problem was the surgeon. Standing before us, addressing us in that jarringly musical voice of his, he made us understand that we were not, under any circumstances, to deliver this poor man into the clutches of the kleptomaniacal and xenophobic System. If any of us dared break ranks, we’d all get what was coming to us—certainly from God, and possibly also from him.

From a great psychic distance, I found myself wondering whether, after this memorable evening, the surgeon would maintain an active membership at the yoga studio.

Without his hand, Bakhtiyor was unable to perform his duties at the pharmacy. For a few weeks, he fell back on his PTO. When it was all gone, he went radio-silent. From nine to five, I made a show of being as flummoxed as my colleagues, but of course I knew exactly where he was. I was his de facto caretaker. I slept in his apartment. For several months, I barely saw my own. I didn’t mind. His was larger, with a full bath and a more reliable hot water heater.

To save him from sepsis, I pilfered antibiotics and gave them to him along with his meals. To blunt the fear of discovery, I also took to stealing antianxiety medications. Once or twice a week, I would treat us to a healthy, homemade smorgasbord. The rest of the time, I ordered takeout. I also did his grocery shopping.

None of this raised his spirits.

“I am now…useless…to America, it seems,” he murmured one evening. We were lying on opposite ends of his sofa, takeout containers before us, a black and white film on the television. He looked a decade older than he should have, maybe more. His hair was thinning, nearly gone. His face appeared so desolate and pale, they could’ve used it to fake the moon landings.

“Come on.” I nudged him with a toe. “You’re not useless. You’re going to bounce back. You’re tough as nails.”

“I have no business being here. I make no contributions.”

“You worked for twenty years,” I said. “You paid into Medicare. Social security. You’re not getting any of that back, you know. Isn’t that enough of a contribution?”

This turned out to be the wrong tack. Softly, he began to shudder. In the pallor, it seemed that drops of milk were leaking from his eyes.

That was October. By November, he’d made up his mind: it was better to leave than to wear out his welcome. The next election was twelve months away. With it loomed the specter of an even more unfettered White House, an even more xenophobic America.

His logic was sound, but I couldn’t believe it. For almost a year, I’d put my career and even freedom on the line so that he wouldn’t have to go to the hospital and risk deportation. I was officially hooked on benzos, for which I had no prescription. I was also out twenty-eight thousand dollars, having taken over most of his expenses.

When he asked if I would drive him to the airport, I agreed.

In his shoes, I told myself, I would’ve done the same. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true. Even if I’d dared to go abroad—unlikely—I’d have played by the rules. I wouldn’t have overstayed. I wouldn’t have tried to milk a foreign nation’s savior complex. I wouldn’t have borrowed a persecution.

I knew all this in my bones, and yet I took the other side, as I had trained myself to do. Just because you’re too much of a coward to try and get your hooks into a better life, I told myself, that doesn’t mean that everyone should be.

I forgave him. At least I thought I did. Until the day his eulogy was published, I believed that I’d forgiven him for everything. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been born where he’d been born. It wasn’t his fault that he’d played the hand that had been dealt him. Life had punished him enough for his transgressions. My job was to be there for him. I had always been a friend.

But then my anger boiled over.

I stood in the open doorway, swaying. I was nowhere near the rail. I was not afraid of heights, precisely. I was afraid of falling: afraid that when I hit the concrete, I would feel it somehow. I’d seen that 9/11 footage, red mist wafting from the sidewalks, but I’d never really managed to convince myself that mist cannot feel pain. I was afraid of pain.

It seemed to me, suddenly, that he must’ve done it on purpose, all of it, all on purpose, just to give the knife a good, hard twist before he wrenched it from me. The humble competence. The gentle cordiality. The quiet charm. The care he put into his sentences. The clever way he’d quoted Jung. The sage-like aura that he’d worn about him like a flowing robe. The way our coats had crackled starchily whenever we’d brushed against each other, ass to elbows for all those years, and sleeve to sterile sleeve. The way his lips had always seemed a-flicker with a smile, not quite kindled. Just for me.

It was ridiculous, I knew. New York was a city where people like me were supposed to belong: where there were so many stories, and so many nonprofits to tell them, and so many reasons that people like me were no longer supposed to exist, that he couldn’t have suspected, couldn’t possibly have known. Was my poker face not flawless? Even my conversion therapist had been deceived.

Unless he had known.

Unless, when seeking asylum, he’d chosen his cover story, out of all the possible cover stories, for a reason.

Unless he’d dragged me to that particular nonprofit, out of all the nonprofits that he could’ve volunteered for, for a reason.

Unless. Unless.
​
But what did any of those stories have to do with me?

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​Itto and Mekiya Outini write about America, Morocco, and all those caught in between. Their fiction and nonfiction can be read in The North American Review, Modern Literature, Fourth Genre, The Good River Review, MQR, Southland Alibi, Chautauqua, The Stonecoast Review, Mount Hope, Hidden Peak Review, Jewish Life, The Brussels Review, DarkWinter, Eunoia Review, Lotus-Eater, The Thieving Magpie, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. Their work has received support from the MacDowell Foundation, the Steinbeck Fellowship Program, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. They’re collaborating on several books and running The DateKeepers, an author support platform. They hold an MA and an MFA, respectively, from the University of Arkansas.