Prevent Homophobia

On a chilly Saturday afternoon in March 2000, Hamed Nastoh finished a five-page note and laid it on his desk beside his homework, using his teddy bear as a paperweight. A slender, neatly dressed boy, Hamed was a straight-A student (the day before, he’d gotten 100 percent in English) who liked horror flicks, reading, and dance music. In the note, he wrote that he could no longer endure the bullying and taunts from his Grade 9 classmates at Enver Creek Secondary, who called him big-nose, four-eyes, geek, fag. Even his friends laughed at him, he said. “I hate myself for doing this to you,” he wrote to his parents. “I really, really hate myself, but there is no other way out.”
The Nastohs lived on 143rd Street in Surrey, about 10 kilometres from the Pattullo Bridge, which spans the Fraser River and links Surrey and New Westminster. Around 5 o’clock, Hamed’s mother, father, and younger brother, David, left to spend the evening with a neighbour. Hamed and his older brother, Abby, were home for the night.
At about 6 o’clock, Abby got in the shower. Hamed put on his new Tommy Hilfiger jacket, slipped out, and made his way, perhaps by bus, to the Pattullo. Rain had started to fall and the breeze was brisk, gusting to 22 kilometres per hour as he walked out along the bridge’s only sidewalk. Saturday-night traffic rushed by on his right; on his left, the SkyTrain lit the horizon, carrying teenagers to Metrotown or on into Vancouver. Directly below Hamed, 48 metres (or roughly 16 storeys) down, the churning waters of the Fraser sent two-metre-high standing waves against the bridge’s concrete abutments. The railing that stood between him and the frigid, fast-moving water was four feet high; it would have reached his chest.
Soon after Abby got out of the shower, he realized Hamed was gone. He called his parents, and their father, Karim, hurried home to investigate. On finding the note, he phoned the RCMP. Hamed had given no hint about how he planned to kill himself, and the RCMP focused their search on the area immediately around the Nastohs’ home.
In the early-morning hours of March 12, Hamed’s mother got the call she was dreading. Hamed’s body had been found washed up on the south shore of the Fraser, just downstream from the Pattullo. He was wearing his blue Nike backpack, which he’d filled with rocks—he was a good swimmer, and the rocks were grim insurance. As it turned out, they were unnecessary: according to the coroner’s report, Hamed Nastoh died from blunt force trauma after hitting the water at roughly 110 kilometres per hour. The only visible mark on his 14-year-old body was a small scratch on his nose.  Hamed was perceived gay.
The family is not anti-gay, his mother insists. If Hamed was actually gay she wouldn’t have had a problem with it, she says.
Her husband was a different matter. Father Karim told The National Post that being gay “is against our religion — against everything we believe in.”
We don’t know what Hamed was for sure, but we do know that as a society, we need to prevent such tragic losses of life and we need to be understanding and open to our youth.