Introduction

‘I came here [to Dubai] because I was tired of my sexuality, my body, my “me” being politicised. I came because I wanted to get away from all that, to fall in love, to work, to be, just me’, explained Anoma, a young Pakistani migrant living in Dubai in 2012. At the age of twenty-three, Anoma made the decision to move from her home in Lahore after two of her friends were arrested in 2011 for participating in a campaign to promote awareness of LGBTQQ issues. Anoma was born and raised in Pakistan to working-class parents as defined by their level of education and income. The youngest of four children, Anoma attended university in Karachi where she studied finance. When she graduated, she took up employment with her father at a local bank back in Lahore.

When Anoma was fifteen years old, she started dating women. ‘I guess you could say that I “became” a lesbian then, but I don't see it that way, and I never really liked that label’, she said. A tall woman with cropped black hair that falls in her face when she speaks, Anoma talked about her sexuality with passion, but was emphatic that though this was an important topic to her, she did not want her sexuality to be categorized or politicized. ‘To me, it seems like you should be able to love who you want, to have sex with who you want, and for it not to be so political. But where I went to uni [university] it wasn't like that.