It is past midnight when the convoy of buses and cars finally turns off the highway onto an unpaved road in the Pakistani nowhere and comes to a halt at the sturdy walls of a farmhouse. Slowly, a gate opens. Cars are being searched. The security guards look for weapons, alcohol, anything that might create trouble, Kami explains later.
She smiles reassuringly at the armed guards. They wave us through. In the yard, a dance floor is set up. Make-up is being retouched, and some of the boys disappear, returning as stunning women in evening dresses and lush wigs.
Whether they identify as trans women or cross-dressing gays on the label-littered spectrum of sexuality, it is their night, the unofficial finale of the Danish-Pakistani festival AKS. The queer film and arts festival, which was founded by filmmaker Saadat Munir in in Copenhagen, took place successfully for the second time in Pakistan and the spirits are high.
Clandestine alcohol is poured from soda bottles and someone cranks up the music. Kami, a co-organizer of the festival, has donned an elegant black dress. The dance floor fills up. In the back, drivers and guards stand and stare.
Transgender people, especially trans women, have long occupied a mythological and socio-biological grey zone in South Asia. In , Pakistan became one of only eleven countries to offer a third-gender option on Pakistani identity cards. Traditionally, this third gender was known as the khwaja sera , biological men who dress and identify as women. More commonly known as hijra in India, Hindu mythology says that the god Rama granted them the ability to bestow blessings in return for their loyalty.
