In Bobuq Sayed’s No God But Us (Harper, May), two gay men from the Afghani diaspora cross paths in Istanbul in 2015. Delbar, a college-educated American in Washington, D.C., skipped town to avoid the fallout of his mother’s discovery that he was working the door at a Middle Eastern drag night. Mansur, a destitute refugee, fled Afghanistan for Tehran before landing in Istanbul. There, the brash, opinionated American Afghan is drawn to the slightly older, reserved, and more precariously situated Mansur, whose European partner runs an NGO for queer and trans refugees. The two warily circle each other until domestic events in Turkey threaten to destabilize their lives anew.

Sayed, who grew up in an immigrant Afghan enclave of Perth Australia before settling in New York City, says “there are plenty of diaspora novels” about a first-generation immigrant like Delbar, who is thoroughly assimilated in, if loudly critical of, Western culture. Sayed wanted to shift the perspective and depict a broader, more complicated picture of the migrant experience. “How can I tease out the distinctions between Delbar and Mansur and simultaneously build a sense of their relationship?” they ask.

Sayed first began thinking through the diversity of migrant communities when they founded BridgeMeals, a Melbourne nonprofit supporting newly arrived queer and trans refugees and asylum seekers. “This work brought into stark relief the often papered-over range of refugee, queer, Afghan experiences,” Sayed says.

No God But Us also depicts a broad range of love, queer and otherwise, from the carnal to the poetic and spiritual. “In Farsi, we have many more words for love than there are in English,” Sayed explains. The novel celebrates these diverse expressions while pushing back on the notion that love conquers all, even in politically perilous times. “The love can be pure and the loyalty can endure, but circumstances beyond your control and your need for security also inform your capacity to love.”

“The novel is deeply political, and it’s very personal and unapologetic,” says Harper associate editor Ezra Kupor of Sayed’s tale of migration, imperialism, and communities of care. “This is what I got into publishing to do.”

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