For Alfa
Al Farooq Said Khatar Said Alsaiti
(1995—2025)
You outrageous soul.
How dare you leave
before we could raise hell just one more time?
Before our future kids—who were never going to exist—
could not play together in the sandpit of our disbelief.
Before we could sit with coffee—
me bitching about my boyfriend,
and you grumbling about your girlfriend
who asked you to do the dishes
in this “feminist” world were living in
and keep forcing you to produce those little motherfuckers, you called children—
when both of us swore that we never believed in marriage
but still showing up to each others lives
Isn’t that what we’ve promised?
And now youre gone before we could laugh about it.
You called yourself gay just to piss off your family—
I nearly choked laughing.
Even your family didnt believe it. Nobody did.
You said it with that smug grin,
as if every taboo was your chew toy.
You knew exactly where to press
and still do, now—this grief,
this wide, open wound of your absence.
Alfa,
you never needed to come out of any closet
because you blew the fucking house up.
You were the only straight, “homophobic” brother I had
who truly understood
my filthiest jokes
without flinching.
You wore honesty like it was your last skin
and the world?
It never deserved you.
We both rejected the gods
of state, and nation, and idols – we have none.
We spat on the altars of false white saviours.
We asked,
where were these ideologies
when childrens bodies were pulled from rubble?
When women were shredded?
When queers like me
ran for our lives?
But you—
you, with your impossible Omani charm,
your Deans List brilliance at just 21
at University of Nebraska-Lincoln USA—
you were the proof
that goodness could live
outside the slogans.
That loyalty could exist
without allegiance.
That love
could be utterly lawless
and still tender.
You even named your Instagram Alfacism.
A self-aware riot,
an intellectual middle finger
to every box you refused to fit into.
And who else would get so excited
for a Sunday roast?
The joy in your face
when I handed you that half chicken—
like it was fine art. And Malaysian pulled tea, teh tarik
You devoured it, along with roti canai, like you devoured life:
with humour, passion, and no apologies.
You would have been
the cyber security expert
this country—or any country—could only dream of.
A mind like wildfire
and offers for master’s programmes already kept pouring in.
from different corners of this country that doesn’t want either you or me,
proof that even these colonial institutions saw your fire.
But they still didnt deserve you.
For years, I had to break my back to apply
and for you?
You got them as easy as you breathe the air.
Because brilliance ran through your bones
even when the NHS numbed you
with more and more pills you never needed,
as if silence could substitute care.
as if silence could substitute care.
They left you, Alfa.
In an emergency accommodation
you should never have been in—
alone, ill, and unheard.
And I will never forgive them.
The last time I saw you, in February,
you were masking it,
still pushing buttons, still full of fire.
You messaged about Pride in May.
You wanted to see it. Maybe join it.
I didnt go. I was still seeking refuge and sofa surfing,
being passed around like a ghost.
But now youre the one
who sounds like a ghost in my ears—
your voice messages haunting me
with your laughter,
your bro, listen to this,
your outrageous joy.
Theres a colossal emptiness now.
Not in the world—
the world is already broken beyond counting—
but in me.
And yet I know,
youd probably just roll your eyes
and say,
Zarith, dont get sentimental on me,
or Ill come back just to haunt you.
So here I am—
trying not to.
Failing.
Ill carry you around,
in the obscene jokes Ill whisper at funerals,
in the way I trust no system,
and love without apology.
Alfa,
you are beyond a brother.
You are my proof
that some souls
burn too brightly and far too quickly
for this dim, obedient, shitty world.
Rest in wicked peace.
