#rahmed

dating + riz ahmed 

he calls your father ‘uncle’, you call his mother ‘auntie’. he’s always embarrassed by how often his mum calls you but the truth is, you love it. family dinners are definitely never boring considering neither of you knows how to bite your tongue and smile when the racism starts flying. you never really set out to find a good, south asian boy, but damn your parents sure are proud that you did. both families are never going to stop asking about grandchildren. both of you insist they’re getting grandpuppies (but the truth is, you wouldn’t mind making little brown babies with him). 

both of you know all too well what it feels like to be the sidekick. the token asian friend. but you look at him there’s this sort of chosen glow that never fades. he’s your prince. he’s your prophecy. he’s your protagonist. and you’re not just the funny, brown girl with the glasses anymore. you’re his beautiful princess. and both of you rescue each other every single day. 

you’re both such music nerds, it’s almost all you talk about. and sure, you both graduated with degrees in political science. sure, you’re both over obsessed with socioeconomic theory. sure, you’re both carrying around more than a little anger at how conflicted growing up first generation desi but western has fucked with you. but it’s not that you’re trying to ignore all of that with each other. it’s that he’s your temple. your cathedral. your holy ground. when the plates shift underneath you, he listens. when the world claws into him, you hold him together. but you’re his choir, he doesn’t need to exhaust himself preaching to you. you know intrinsically every historical undertone of each institutional gutteral punch in the thousand micro-aggressions he suffers a day. he reads your mind when you’re shaking with rage over your aunt’s Islamophobic bullshit. but then you turn the stereo on and all of it just melts away, like a hit of some unbelievable drug you’re both addicted to.  

stateside, people walk up to both of you and start speaking Spanish. it makes you feel so much better to know, that shit doesn’t just happen to you. and that conversation you’ve had to have a hundred thousand times  (‘I’m so sorry, but I’m not latina.’ ‘well, what are you?’ ‘I mean I’m a person, I think.’) with every single kind of person, is no longer a conversation you have to have alone. and god, that makes it so much easier. makes it less a stab in the heart than an inside joke the two of you can roll away with laughter together. 

no one’s ever really been able to keep up with you. you start pulling out the big words in a debate and they just laugh and roll their eyes. you stopped really trying to put their ignorance on your shoulders a long time ago. it’s not worth it. you don’t owe them an education they can google for themselves if they really give a fuck. but he’s so strong, and so brave and keeps you right there with him. he understands and he can keep up and you learn from each other. for once, you’re the one taking notes. you’re the one aspiring to be like the person beside you.