By the time Hamid learns they’ll have a guest, it’s a done deal. Kathy has this habit of inviting people over for beer on a whim, but having someone—a man, no less—stay for a whole week without consulting him?…
Growing up in a hermetically sealed Iran—before the enlightenment brought by the internet and satellite TV—I was exposed to an unabashedly homophobic environment: at school, on the streets, even on state television. Thankfully, I was raised in a tolerant family, which helped counteract many of the harmful stereotypes rooted in ignorance.
Immigrating to Canada was eye-opening for me, and for many others like me. It allowed us to challenge and unlearn deeply ingrained assumptions. It was a journey—often difficult—but transformative. Still, even after years of living here, I sometimes recognize lingering traces of otherness, both in myself and in friends, when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community.
This story was, in many ways, a kind of exorcism. Hamid’s character is intentionally exaggerated to better reflect the doubt, insecurity, and fear that some people carry. I can attest that people like him exist within the Iranian diaspora—and likely in many other communities as well. Duncan’s character serves an important function: to embody an idealized form of masculinity, providing a kind of emotional and psychological ballast that accentuate the contrast Hamid perceives between him and Abtin.
Structurally, I’ve always been drawn to stories in which the intrusion of a foreign element—a former lover, an unknown child, a random stranger—creates friction in an already strained relationship, only to help mend it in the end, often at the intruder’s expense. A beloved example is Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon, in which a British couple (played by Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas) becomes entangled with a bizarre American couple and, through that lethal encounter, finds a path toward the redemption and healing of their relationship.
“The Confidante” went through several rewrites. In the earliest draft, Hamid was the narrator, but I eventually felt the story needed a layer of distance and detachment. I had also included more flashbacks into Hamid’s past, as if trying too hard to justify his internalized homophobia. Over time, I realized those scenes disrupted the story’s momentum, and I chose to trust the reader’s intuition to fill in the gaps. Hamid’s affair originally occupied more space on the page as well, but I pared it down in favor of further developing the dynamic between Hamid, Kathy, and Abtin.
MEHDI M. KASHANI lives and writes in Toronto, Canada. His fiction has recently appeared in EVENT, Southern Humanities Review, and Post Road, among others. His work has been a finalist for Canada’s National Magazine Awards and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
