Revealing the man in Afghanistan

Posted

How teaching cello in war-torn Kabul led Eddie Ayres to finally accept he was transgender.

On paper it reads like a remarkable movie plot.

A childhood in regional England. A move to Hong Kong. Then Australia. Then to Afghanistan to teach music to orphans. And, finally, transitioning from a woman to a man.

Eddie Ayres's life has often been punctuated by moments of great upheaval and change. Yet meeting him on an early Spring morning in Melbourne he is relaxed and happy.

"I couldn't imagine being happier," he tells News Breakfast.

It wasn't always so.

A conservative start

To begin with, Eddie Ayres was born Emma Ayres in the '60s to staunchly conservative parents in little-known Shropshire — "the largest county in England with the smallest population".

After stints studying in London and Berlin, he spent eight years playing the viola with the Hong Kong Philharmonic before moving to Australia.

It was here, as Emma, he won over a legion of fans presenting the popular ABC Classic FM breakfast program.

"For me, music has been this wonderful thread throughout my life," Eddie said this week.

"It provides a sort of great haven and security, I think, in difficult times and that's certainly been the case for me."

But in 2014, after seven years behind the microphone, things started to take a darker turn.

He found it harder to ignore the nagging questions about his own identity that lay below the surface for more than a decade. And the more he fought, the deeper he spiralled into depression.

The on-air persona — amiable and entertaining — was increasingly at odds with the reality.

"I had thought that I was transgender many years ago and had suppressed it," he said.

"I think that any time we suppress something and we don't look to our true selves and try and find out who we truly are, I think then you start to get ill."

As his internal wrestle continued, thoughts and images of Afghanistan kept coming to mind.

He had previously done short teaching stints at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul and knew they were looking for a permanent cello teacher.

Eddie was ready for another big move.

You have to dress the part

Getting to Afghanistan is the easy part, you simply pop down to the travel agent and book an Emirates flight to Kabul.

And since Eddie already had a teaching position lined up with ANIM, the visa process was relatively straightforward.

The clothes, however? That required a rethink.

"My clothes at that time, as any good butch lesbian will attest, were mainly jeans, shorts, men's shirts, t-shirts and leather jackets," Eddie writes of the experience in his new book, Danger Music.

"These were not going to cut it in Afghanistan. I was going to have to femme it up big-time."

This meant ditching the short haircut; buying scarves and hijabs; and finding tops that covered the chest, arms and stomach.

With these changes made, and the prospect of meeting his students in mind, he felt joy.

In fact, walking out of the Kabul airport after arriving was the first time he had felt optimistic about his future in a long time.

What followed was a rewarding but turbulent year. His students progressed well and seeing the young Afghans was a constant source of joy.

"The babies were a delight, a daily reminder of my purpose in Kabul," Eddie says.

But as time went on, the security situation appeared to be worsening, and even foreigners who had lived in the city for years felt the danger.

Suicide attacks and bombings were hitting too close to home, and so one weekend Eddie decided to escape to Istanbul for a few days.

But with space and clarity comes time to think, and those old, repressed feelings began to resurface.

"A huge, crushing wave of depression fell on me, taking every atom and dragging me down, down, further than I had ever been before," Eddie recounts.

"I knew what was happening and I was terrified."

Eddie cried "an ocean" of tears in his hotel room and couldn't escape the inevitable conclusion: it was time to transition to a man.

'You must have been in such terrible pain'

When considering how to tell your mum you're about to transition, it's not often you have to consider the internet connection in Afghanistan.

But these things mattered a lot for Eddie. He couldn't afford to share his biggest decision with his family and then have the FaceTime call drop out.

"To give you an idea of where my parents come from, my mother and my father met at the Young Conservatives in Kent in the 1950s," Eddie said this week.

"So that's the sort of woman my mum is. She's a staunch conservative. She was 82 at the time."

After confiding in his older sister, Liz, it was decided she would visit their mum and explain everything.

After all, what did their mum even know about transgender people?

"It's an extraordinary thing, I think, for a sister to do," Eddie said.

A short while later, Eddie later made a FaceTime connection and his mum's face appeared on the screen.

"She was crying, and my family nickname is Binx and she said, 'Oh, Binx, why didn't you say something earlier? You must have been in such terrible pain'."

With family support and close friends to lean on, it was time to take a trip back to Brisbane to meet with a surgeon and finally begin the transition to Eddie.

"She looked up and down at my androgynous figure and said, 'Let's face it, Emma. You won't need much tweaking."

Sorry, this video has expired Video: Eddie Ayres talks about his transition and how music has been a source of strength (ABC News)

Put back together again

"When I finally accepted that I was transgender — because it's not a decision, it's definitely an acceptance, well, that's what I believe — I have to say it was finally a great relief," Eddie said.

He returned to Afghanistan for a while after a double mastectomy and increasingly began living as a man. He ditched the hijabs he never liked, and the jeans and t-shirt were back.

But he could also feel his time there was running out.

He was comfortable with his new body but there was more to come, with testosterone injections the next step.

"Afghanistan overwhelmed me to my core. It fundamentally changed my view of the world," Eddie writes.

"I came from a temperate land and I needed something less manic, but this country had taught me to love intensely and to not be afraid of living at the extreme.

"I was like a Picasso painting, taken apart and put back together in a new, strange form."

In the year Eddie was in Kabul, there were dozens of attacks and hundreds died, but he recounts with pride the successes made at ANIM: four children became cellists; another four became viola players; five learnt the double-bass; and four string quartets and a chamber orchestra were born.

For someone who finds great solace and strength in music, these achievements provided enormous comfort in the dark times.

"I was female-bodied for nearly 50 years and Emma is absolutely inside Eddie, and Eddie was inside Emma and, look, I'm the same person," he said this week.

"Afghanistan is a mirror. It shows you who you truly are. I miss it every day, but I know now that it is all right to love somewhere and leave it."

Topics: books-literature, music, sexuality