A State Unknown: LGBTQ+ Advocate Talap Mamyrkanov Faces Deportation

Image by Jia Li.

At an Uzbek restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, we ate plov, manti, and shashlik, and talked for a couple of hours. It was summer. The chicken wings he’d insisted on ordering grew cold; I leaned back in my chair, my belly distended from the food and several bottles of pear soda. My eyes landed on the TV screen playing Russian new-wave music videos behind him.

I handed him the letter that was folded up in my pocket– which I had translated into Russian. It began, “I don’t know if you know this...