Story Involvement

As POV

As per usual for a story, we get to see everything through Jiyad's perspective, as he is our center-most character. Jiyad is curious and likes to reflect within the moment. He thinks a lot about the world around him, both because he enjoys it and because it is a good distraction from actually feeling any of the things he's experiencing. While he is curious, he isn't especially knowledgeable on anything. He makes comments or observations that aren't always accurate, despite his best efforts. He is also not always aware of himself, most notably during the beginning of his friendship with Sherwin. He struggles to identify how he feels about others, about himself, and about the situations he finds himself in. He's not very emotionally mature and doesn't let himself reflect on what actually matters, and instead on the things he doesn't need to give much thought to.

Connections

When arriving at Bakersfield, he first connects with Kamiński, who was his former pen pal. Jiyad has always felt a strange feeling of protectiveness over Kamiński. Kamiński was a boy who was deeply hurting, and to Jiyad, it seemed like he was the only one who knew. After all, for a while, it was assumed that the two would never meet. So, Kamiński poured out as much of his heart out that he would allow another to see, not expecting he'd ever really have to look Jiyad in the eye. Look how that turned out. The two of them understand each other in an unspoken way because of all the various details from their lives that they've shared with one another, but they don't really hang out just one on one or have conversations outside of group events. Jiyad continues to befriend all of Kamiński's friends, but especially Aymi and Jonah.

Aymi becomes akin to a second sister to Jiyad and she helps him realise a lot about himself, and the same can be said about him to her. Jonah is Jiyad's outlet to greater socialisation at Bakersfield. They're on the rugby team together and Jonah is very well liked, which allowed for Jiyad to meet more people as well. August is also on the rugby team with Jiyad, but treats him with such distantness and passive aggression it makes Jiyad feel as if he had killed him in a past life. He has no idea why that is their dynamic.

Moving to Sherwin's "friend circle," a majority of them don't really like him at first. That's not because he was mean or abrasive, but instead because he seemed too "normal" for their tastes. Baccay and Kasey were the type to care about that, and Porky was just generally very wary around new people. However, Victor and Apple immediately took to Jiyad and welcomed him with open arms. Venise is also a friend of Sherwin's (though not in the friend group itself) and Jiyad comes to befriend them as well.

In Kamiński's friend group, Jiyad finds the little trio that is Ajax, Sellen, and Crash to be a little annoying. He doesn't find their abrasive behaviour towards each other (and occasionally towards other people) to be very funny. He feels rather neutral about Regan, but is happy that Kamiński has found such a close friend in him. Jiyad enjoys spending time with Ndeye.

There's some more descriptions of his relationships in his links tab.

Descriptions

Physical

Jiyad stands at five foot nine, or approximately one-hundred and seventy-five centimetres. Due to his body type, however, he sometimes appears to be shorter. His body type is meant to be akin to a "strongman" esque body type. His father has been managing Jiyad's workout routines and diet since he was eleven, which has heavily contributed to his body now. Jiyad is considerably hairy all over his body and doesn't care to shave, apart from occasionally trimming the hair on his chin and jaw. Otherwise, he lets his sideburns and moustache stay. His freckles are seen only on the left side of his body. His skin is consistently a darker shade of orange-red and only gets slightly darker in the summer. He has a couple scars and marks throughout his body from being rough with himself as a child and during early adolescence.

His hair is black (or dark brown). In the past, he had phases of dying it as a way to act out, since his hair used to be kept exclusively in a buzzcut. He began dying and growing out his hair when he gained the urge to rebel against his father's control over him. His hair is wavy-curly and it tends to crowd his face, resting just above his shoulders. His eyes are brown and his nose is broad. He has a wide mouth and crooked teeth.

His voice is a little higher and has a calming and "soothing" cadence to it. His accent is a mix of Pashto, Scottish, and Estuary accents. Yet another thing his father instilled insecurity in him about was his voice. He taught him how to replicate an Estuary accent, as his natural Pashto one was just "not right," but his father's own Scottish way of speaking still shines through in Jiyad (since his teacher of the Estuary accent did not have an Estuary accent, after all).

He wears his school uniform most of the time, as is expected, and doesn't have that much of an established style outside of it. Due to always wearing second-hand and worn/old clothes, he never had the chance to choose or develop a style that he liked. Recently, he has been attempting to do so, but most of the time he will be found wearing very casual, "bland" clothes on break days.

Mental

His father's constant interference with his life has caused Jiyad to have a very negative relationship with himself. This includes his identity, body, how he processes things, and his relationships.

Due to feeling as if he has had little control over his life since he was young, Jiyad struggles to see himself as an individual. He puts others' needs before himself when he can, since it distracts himself from addressing his own emotional needs. This doesn't mean he's completely selfless, but he does try to appeal to others when he can. He has some semblance of self-preservation, which includes the wise words of advice from his father: "only make friends if they can do something for you" (he doesn't take it out of spite). His father has tried to build up everything about his son for all his life, and Jiyad has been trying to resist every step of the way.

As for his body, his negative relationship and view of it doesn't necessarily come from an internalised fatphobia lens (though that probably contributes somewhat), but instead one that stems from a deeply ingrained thought process that surrounds constant management of his body. No matter what others may say about his body, it still makes him uncomfortable. He doesn't like that he has a body at all, and would rather not talk about it.

As already described, his father has ruined Jiyad's ability to understand his own feelings and process them in a healthy way. This bleeds into his relationships, since he is only so aware of what exactly is "healthy." He has a rather optimistic view on interpersonal problems, due to never really dealing with them himself, which is part of the reason why he's able to get so close to Sherwin in the first place. He inspires Sherwin to confide in him because he radiates a type of emotional naivety that Sherwin wishes he still had, one that he himself used to have.

Personal Biography

Pictured: Jiyad and Haadiyah, aged 12 and 17.

Childhood

Jiyad was born in Peshawar, Pakistan on July 7th. His sister Haadiyah was five years old when he was born and his father was absent for a while, as he was travelling in the military without his family during Jiyad's early years (and only having stayed long enough to help bring his two children into the world, of course). Jiyad's sister loved living in the smaller town outside of the city that they had spent this time at. His mother did as well. He enjoyed listening to the Pashto songs his mom and Haadiyah would sing together to him and eventually played with the other kids as he grew.

The only contact Jiyad had with his father was through phone calls and letters passed between the two. In these few instances of communication, Jiyad's father made sure to plant the seeds of control that he would continue to harvest later. Naturally, Jiyad tried to keep up with all the things his father requested of him, wanting to please him, hoping that maybe he would come home if he succeeded. These "things" included subtle changes to what he ate and how he spent his free time: more running about and playing outside, and if he did sit down for a while, he should make sure to read up on actually important subjects, like child-friendly books describing Britain's involvement in the World Wars.

Despite this, he was still able to develop his deepest interest: bird watching. He was infinitely fascinated with the different birds and their migrations and other quirks. His mother would invest in encyclopaedic books about birds (and bird watching-specific books as well) for him to use to help with his observations, albeit secretly, to avoid her husband's possible complaints regarding such an interest. Overall, these years were more or less happy for Jiyad.

Adolescence

When Jiyad was around eleven, the family (or more like the man himself) decided to join their father on his travels. This was also when he decided to suddenly start caring about what happened in Jiyad's life. He didn't really become any more emotionally available to either one of his children, but he did insist upon taking more control over their life. By the time Haadiyah was sixteen (so when Jiyad was eleven), she was already fed up with her father and was insisting on going no contact with him, despite needing to still live within the vicinity of him. Haadiyah was trans, and her father wasn't explicitly transphobic, but he was definitely not very good at handling it. Since their father had lost one of his "sons," this increased his dedication to moulding Jiyad into the "man" he wanted him to be.

More diets and physical routines were instilled into Jiyad until he hit his "rebellious teen phase," which was when he started to break away from it all. Or at least tried to. The effects of his father's "parenting style" will of course continue to have its place in Jiyad's life until he gains the emotional awareness to address it properly.

Jiyad's mother hasn't been mentioned much because she has never done much to elicit mention. She was timid and a victim to her husband's desire for control as much as her children. Neither of her children resented her for her inaction, because they were, in some ways, begrudgingly aware of how she was in a similar position as them. She was also just a hard woman to hate, with her gentle and understanding nature. She cared for her children, but during Jiyad's adolescence, it was especially evident that she did not hold a lot of power in the household.

Speaking of a lack of power, Jiyad's "rebellious teen phase" manifested in him growing his hair out (which his father didn't even argue, which was rather frustrating), ceasing to care about his grades (which his father also didn't care about...), and skipping school and other responsibilities to smoke weed with other kids he didn't actually like (which his father probably never even knew about). It was eye opening; Jiyad really could do whatever he wanted! He kept smoking and skipping because it seemed nobody really cared about that. He had sex and would find some girl to be his girlfriend every time he moved around. He figured out that if you move around so much, nothing really mattered at all!

Unfortunately for him, though, this wasn't actually the case. Jiyad sucked at "rebelling." He didn't really even rebel. He kept up with his diet, his work outs, his family responsibilities. He just let go of everything else. Sure, his parents were not happy with his gradually falling grades, but they had known by that point that their son had some sort of mental disability that "just made him like that." His "rebellion" turned into him being ripped of more autonomy; of the trust the people around him had in his intelligence.

He learned how to disassociate well with the coming years of various tutors trying to help him out. It wasn't entirely wrong for him to receive more help, because he did need it, but he couldn't accept the way it had all happened. What did it matter if he stopped trying? None of it mattered! In a couple of months he'll just be someplace else again. He'll just be migrating with the birds he tries not to look at. His poor behaviour continued and he became more jaded, despite his inner self wanting to roam free, be happy, and look up at the sky. He missed the birds. What was stopping him from just looking up?

At some point (when Jiyad was eighteen, at least), Jiyad's father got injured during his service. It was decided he'd be discharged after his long service (along with the complications that came with his injuries). Despite being Scottish himself, he had an obsession with being a proper "London" man. So, they moved to a small flat somewhere near London. His father took up drinking and it gave Jiyad another thing to hate about his father. Well, what does it matter? Jiyad was enrolled in the same boarding school that his long-time pen-pal attended, so there was no need to care about his father's homely habits anymore.

The only good thing about this decision was that at least this time around, Jiyad would know someone. Kamiński and Jiyad had quietly bonded over the past couple of years, since both of them had been struggling with some type of depression. It was quiet because Kamiński was not one to be explicit, and Jiyad never took his own problems seriously enough to convey the whole picture.

Apart from that, Jiyad hated this decision. Of course the second everyone (well, everyone except Haadiyah, who had left to be on her own since her eighteenth birthday) was situated in one place "for real this time," his father sends him away. Jiyad saw it as the typical tragic finale seen in some epic hero story he'd find himself obsessing over. Except here, there was no epic hero to be seen. Just a boy who wouldn't let the birds in.

At Bakersfield, Jiyad knew he had to change. He decided he'd actually try at this school. After all, it should matter this time around, shouldn't it? He wouldn't be moving anymore. At least, that's what he's been told. He himself? He doesn't know anything. That's how it's always been. Kamiński welcomes him into his friend group and he learns then how to actually be a socialising human being. He's enjoyed socialisation ever since he was young, and wasn't even poor at it, he just hadn't cared about such a thing in what felt like so long. He also found it hard to focus on academics at all, since everything seemed to just keep getting harder. He tried to persevere, though. He took part in the school's rugby program despite how it caused his chronic pain to flare up more. He just wanted to be a part of something. He hung out with others in more meaningful ways than he had considered doing before. He was really starting to enjoy himself at Bakersfield.

And this time around, there was no but.

There was no "unfortunately" following this trail of highs.

If anything, it got better.

Jiyad was dorming with Sherwin. Sherwin Mortimer. This inevitably changed his life, but all that comes with a something something "story" thing I'm unaware of.

Adulthood

Jiyad pursues nursing (with uncertain results) and eventually buys a flat to live with Sherwin. He gradually gets better.

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