Letters to Anonymous

i’m no longer on medication. i took a course online about depression and it helped me putting myself into a plan to quit.  for a week, i was excited that i’m off medication. i felt independent. a week has passed and it’s the second week and i don’t feel so fine. i tell myself, read your previous writing and you’ll know that even when you were on meds, you still didn’t feel ‘so fine’. 

my home is becoming more and more unbearable. i bruised myself today. it was my first time. i usually cut. my arms are distorted; i feel my brain inside my skull distorted, with scars just like the ones on my arms. when i looked at my bruise, i was in tears

i applied for two jobs today. i either get no call, or i go to the interview and get no call back.

how are you? like really. how are you, wherever you are? recently i watched 13 Reasons Why, the 2nd season. for a long time, i thought my life would have been different, if i were to be born somewhere else egypt. the world is harsh, i think. everywhere, not just here. but i think, there’s always something to do, isn’t it?

i feel small and insignificant, most of the time. there’s so much hostile hate around, and it’s ‘i’ who has to change it; it’s ‘i’ who has to work on it, to convince them that there’s another way. as a gay person, the world expect me to end homophobia. probably this exactly why Mr. Martin Luther King was also expected to end racism. and it’s strange. i don’t understand that. i can’t do it alone. i feel lonely; i can’t do it alone. what’s up with the universe? 

seriously, what’s up with the universe? recently, i was talking to my friend that i like the U.S. a lot, but never the foreign policies. he flipped out on me. i was talking to a friend whom i’m not out to about gay rights, he also flipped. i was also talking to an israeli friend about Ahed Altamimi, a child girl who was recently arrested and imprisoned - actually according to Amnesty international more than 350 arab child is detained in israeli prisons. human rights aren’t to be dissected; it never comes in parts or pits. it’s a package, you either respect all people’s right, regardless or their ethnicity, gender identity, race, sexual orientation, or you’re just a bigotry dickhead.

i can’t have a proper conversation with anyone anymore. everyone is touchy and hypersensitive. if i criticized islam, i’m islamophobic. if i critizied israel, i’m antisemitic. as if i’m supposed to be hypocritic. i’m supposed to sit and watch in silence israel prison children for years. i’m supposed to sit and watch in silence muslims throwing gays like me in jail for years.  they always imprison us regardless to our dreams and hopes. whether we have ambition to be doctors, dancers, or scientists, singers.... for a moment, our disagreement will dismiss our human basic rights, even though we’re peaceful and non-violent. 

i’m grateful for this space, anonymous. and just one last thing: you’ll never feel free, even if you’re, while others aren’t. 

dear wholehearted friend:

i only write to you when i feel helpless. i wish i could believe in some sort of god to pray to, but sadly, i have seen so much awfulness that made me refuse to believe in anything like that. Or to be honest, i only feel god when i’m with my loved ones, when i look at my male lover, and look, and i look, but i feel a small, tiny, helpless, beautiful god. a god like me; a god like him; a god like you, my dear anonymous, sending me sweet notes and making me feel that my prayers are heard, that i matter.

please bear with me!

recently, the not-my-president Al-Sisi made a contract with APCO a lobbying company that supports gay rights, to enhance Egypt’s image in the U.S. especially in D.C. this recent contract came after the American Administration cut the military and law enforcement aids to Egypt. APCO makes me - as a gay person who-probably-doesn’t-matter-much to their  billion-dollar-company, feel confused and enraged. why would they shake hands with the homophobic, the cruel, and the unjust. i can’t breath. i know four people were arrested. the fourth is my best friend and he’s bailed out, and the sentence trial will be next january. he’s facing at the least four years in jail. 

and because i’m not allowed to ask my-not-president how could he invest more than a million dollars on lobbying in D.C., i turn to you, my friends, gays and allies. we’re scared, and some of us are killing themselves. i’d be a liar if i said i didn’t think of it. J.K.Rowling said once in a speech at Harvard or Stanford commencement, that as she worked in Amnesty International she learned that there’s always a burden on the democratic countries’ citizen to push their countries to make difference in places that are hostile and cruel. 

my president paid more than a million dollar in order to improve his image in the U.S., and i’m sure he used a pro-gay corporation to bring us down, but NO, we’re not down, not yet, and we’re still super gay and super eager and hopeful to make the slightest difference.

here are a few things you probably didn’t know about Egypt, APCO wants the media that surrounds you to tell/sell you something untrue. 

1. 95% or more of females in Egypt are forced to Genital Mutilation, some girls bleed to death. here’s a link from WHO, and another from a local newspaper that luckily has an English version. Here is a 119 pages profile. 

2. The human rights profile in Egypt by Amnesty International, and to summarize it: arrests, and torture to activist, bloggers, cracking down on NGOs and civic-education organizations. Egypt jail people without charges or trials. 

3. Egypt isn’t safe to peaceful quiet LGBTQ members. So far hundreds of gay trans persons are arrested, left to rot in jail. They’re even passing an anti-gay bill. The Egyptian police uses social media and dating apps to lure homosexuals and arrest them. The arrested were sentenced from 3 to 12 years. Twelve years. 

what is home to you? how do you recognize it? is there any landmarks? do you ever feel lost and scared in there? or is it all about warmth and security? 

this is my home, where i live. this is a tunnel 3 minutes from my home, when i see it, i know i am near my home. i was once beaten up in this same spot; my jeans were torn down the knees and my favorite shirt was torn in two halves. and this is how i know i really am home. this is my home. i often avoid this spot and take a different route, but this doesn’t mean i never pass this awful spot by a lot; this doesn’t mean i never think of it a lot. but still, this is my home. this is where i was born; this is where i cry my eyes out; this is where i cut myself; this is where i lay awake and sleepless for hours, or asleep for days. and when i’m away, when i leave my country, i long for the noisy smelly streets; i long for home, for my bed, my pillow, for my books, or even the tunnel near home. 

i was beaten that time because i was told i was a khawal, which is an Arabic slang for faggot, and i decided to stand up for myself and insult the guy back.  when my mum asked me what happened, i made a mistake of telling her, she laughed and said “well, we failed at raising you as well disciplined man. i hope you learned a lesson.” when i told my friends, they told me i shouldn’t have answered, which made me feel like it was my fault. but i know they only said that because they love me and they don’t want me to get hurt. i was beaten up after that a few times more, there’s a party allover my body, and i was never able to file report for two reasons that were fueled by my anxiety and fear 1) it could lead to be a case against me, when my attacker claims that i’m homosexual, which would lead to anal tests and torture and whole mess of series of humiliation. 2) the charges could easily fall off the attacker because i’m mentally unstable and i have razor scars allover my body. of course there’s a probability things will go perfectly well, like an American gay movie and i will see justice. but part of me knows home and knows there’s no justice for people like me, justice was killing them, but because ‘where is the fun in that?’ they don’t do it. 

this is home. and if you’re wondering how do i live, or rather, how do ‘we’ live? well, it’s not always bad; it’s often bad, but not always. humans are creatures of habits; it’d surprise you the things that you could get use to. but speaking for me, i live in intervals of the intervals of time; i live in between the seconds, the awful seconds; the soft moments my boyfriend and i steal a kiss in an elevator, or when i push him to a wall in an empty dark street and feel him up with my hands, or the moments when he says ‘jeez, i miss you!’, and i’d laugh because he’s not christian, but i also what he means, or the moments when we disagree on some topic or a book we both read, or even the moments when we’re mad at each other but we also miss each other so we meet and sit in silence looking at the sun being swallowed by the sea, or when we make really bad jokes and he say you know what we should do? we should write a book titled by ‘the art of bad jokes’.  i live for these stolen kisses and touches; i live for seeing him laughing loudly, and for a moment, i’d stop, the world would pause and everything would drop dead except for his voice and his whole body and look and look at him unable to believe how beautiful he is, how sweet, how natural, how adorable! that i wonder if he’s real or did i just made him up in my mind. i live for these, and i collect them in a loop, like a prayer beads. interval in physics (excuse my science ass!) is a longer length of time that can be divided into a number of shorter periods of time, all of the same length. the sum of these intervals is what I call time. i choose to live in a different time, precisely, different set of intervals. and this is how i survive. 

they released my friend. i met him yesterday. they shaved all his body hair, his arms and hands and legs, probably to shame him, to make him like a woman, because for them a woman is a shameful thing or an insult. he didn’t want to tell me they did this to him; he said he did it himself. but i know. he said people were baffled by him, including the judge. in fact, the judge told him that his files and school records are beyond great, why such a promising doctor would risk his future and his reputations for such queer filthy animals? why would he be involved in this immorality at all? 

they don’t know. they don’t know the truth. they don’t know a thing about us; they don’t a thing about women; they don’t know a thing. and above all, they don’t want to know, which makes changing a lot more difficult. 

i’m a lot better, but i’m still scared. they released him until the judgment is spoken, they know he has a school to attend and a family to take care of (his father passed away about five months ago). they thought four days of torture is enough. i’m foolishly hopeful they won’t sentence him to imprisonment. 

he told me he is sorry. he had to change his opinion in order to go home. he had to say that homosexuality is a sin and unnatural; he had to agree with them till the end. i told him it was okay to lie; i told him if i were him i’d have said the same. i even told him i have a stock of straight porn on my laptop, just in case, we ended up laughing. yes, it was a simple as this. he told me that during all this awful experience he wanted to laugh, because in the evidence against him, there was books and facebook posts. he said: it was the silliest thing; out there, there’re rapists and sexual offenders, there’re terrorists, there’re thieves who robbed this country to the naked bones, and i’m facing a possibility of jail for three years for a facebook post! 

My best friend got arrested two days ago, probably. He's not even gay. I just knew yesterday. We don't know where they took him; we don't know what charges did they press against him. It's not getting better. I managed to erase my hard drive, my phone, my laptop, and everything. I'm staring at my PC screen, my computer is entirely empty, and I feel I've just lost my identity, and I'm asking myself who I am. It's so strange. I'm feeling so many strange and new feelings.

I'm telling myself that's silly. My identity is in my head and my heart, not in the laptop or my phone. But who am I? I'm a boy from somewhere on earth, somewhere awful, dirty, and unsafe. I study DNA sciences. I wanted to be a great scientist and be the first gay to win a Nobel prize. Alan Turning, Francis Crick, J. Michael Bishop; those are my inspiration. I won first place grand award in my country's national science fair, and I represented my country in the international fair in the U.S., at the age of eighteen. I thought I could make difference. ISEF slogan was to 'inspire to the change the world'. But I should have known better. They didn't mean my world, they probably were talking about their world or some other world I don't know about. But where I come from, it's different.

I'm scared. I can’t sleep. it’s 4:00 am, already, and I have a school tomorrow. I was advised to secure myself, so I changed my SIM phone card, deactivated my facebook, delete any rainbow picture or books or even research related to sexual minorities and sexual orientation, or any indications to my orientation. 

two weeks ago, two people raised the gay flag in a musical concert. before the end of the week, they were arrested and charged with silly accusations like ‘belonging to unlegalized party/sect’, apparently they think LGBTQ+ is a party or religious sect, ‘disrespecting the social traditions’, and of course ‘pormoting sexual deviancy’. so far, 37 people were arrested; I know four of them, not closely, but I’ve seen them and talked to them.

I’ve read 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, but living into one isn’t as cool as thought it would be. When I read these books I thought if I were these characters, I’d be braver and more heroic. I never thought that these novels were closer to reality, and even worse, they were a lot easier than the actual reality. because even if you live in a homophobic country, you always tell yourself no one is being arrested for a book or a flag. But yes, you knew that people get arrested for nude pictures or romantic emails or texts, you knew they were being tortured and electrified in their genitals or anuses, but somehow you tell yourself, it’s not as awful as going through all this for a flag or a book. I know it’s strange but remember in the Handmaid’s Tale, when she said something like: Those were people in news, they are two-dimensional to us, while we live in the real world, they live in newspapers. This gives us more freedom. It does, believe it or not, it does give us a little sense of freedom. That somehow those aren’t us, nor our friends, because we won’t be able to live if we thought they were real like us; we won’t be able to live if we thought that we’re next.

Now I see. I’m so scared I feel my body stiff and numb. I’m so scared my chest hurts when I inhale. I’m hiding a fucking rainbow! A fucking rainbow flag! In a country where men brag about casually raping women or sexually assault them. 

I wonder when my time comes, will anyone anywhere think of us? Will anyone know we were here? that we were so human, unlike what is said? that we loved, we hated, we screwed up things? that we were fucked up and confused, and trying to have it all, just like everyone else? will anyone know how we lived in fear and shame? that we made love with windows closed and curtains down? that we couldn’t hug or kiss or hold hands passionately in public? will someone ever know we were even persecuted and finished for a flag or tee shirt or a book? 

i talked today with mother about homosexuality. she still thinks it’s abnormal, disgusting and queer. i’m confused. there’s nothing can make me feel like throwing up as much as seeing what happens between men and women. i’m not trying to reverse the discrimination, i swear. when i look around, i see husbands and wives loathing each other in all hidden and visible ways, yet stil they live together, in pain, in distress, and in many cases, in utter violence. how could heterosexual claim to be natural and normal when men degrade women as if they are subhumans or objects or women treating men as if they’re walls with no sentiment and feelings? what is natural or normal about a man raping his wife or beating her up? what is natrual about a woman reflecting her husband’s doings to her on her kids? i’m not saying that because i’m a feminist or something, i’m just saying that because i’m a human being with eyes and ears. if homosexual families can over a love and warmth to the world, why not give them a chance? 

i really need an answer. 

every now and then, I feel disconnected from others. I would sense that everyone resent me; everyone doesn’t love anymore. I would feel rejected, lonely, unimportant, unloved, so I shut down in response, I turn my phone off, isolate myself with my books, watch movies, and live for a week in solitude. But it doesn’t feel good. I feel sad and sleepy all the time. 

I don’t know why it’s happening. I don’t know what this condition is called in psychology. I know this isn’t normal. Because, after the week passes, my friends will rush me with calls and messages where the hell I have been, and how much I worried them, or how much they miss me. 

something isn’t right, but I don’t know what it is. I slightly feel crazy and paranoid, and at the same time, I slightly feel sane. I can tell exactly what happens every time because it’s not the first, but now, right now, I feel if I died, no one will even care, I believe it, I actually believe it and it would make me cry.

what is it? am I just sad? is this what sadness is? I wish this would stop. I wish months to go by, and I’m feeling normal and functional. is this too hard to get? I wish I were dead before all this shit broke free within me. and I wouldn’t have to deal with it at all. 

Someone I know died today. We weren’t really close, but we’ve talked enough to know his dreams and ambitious. He was gay. He was very shy and an introvert, that he couldn’t even fit in the gay community, not to mention the society itself. He was masculine, so he survived at first years of Medical school, no one knew about him. Two years ago he went to Germany, and there, he went to a gay club, somehow the word spread in his school. He left his parents house, his daily school life was terrible and very hard, even from his professor. He lived alone and had to work and study, at the same time.

I feel horrible, unbelievably shocked and devastated. I can’t stop crying. I’m not sure exactly what breaks my heart the most. I openly speak about violence of Islam, women’s rights, homosexuality, and LGBTQ rights. I’ve more than 80 death threats on my Facebook others-inbox.  Should I wait my turn? To be arrested and put to jail, or should I kill myself too? Life is becoming more and more difficult. The police is using gay-dating mobile application and websites to hunt gays down. The economy is down and it doesn’t support the independence life. I’m not sure if I’m scared of jail more or to end up killing myself more?

I can’t stop thinking that maybe if I were for him more often, he’d have been alive now, or maybe if I should more caring and loving, maybe if I hugged him more, or called him more, gave him more time, or called him more often, he’d be alive now. I wish I were a believer of any kind, but I’ve no evidence of what lies beyond death, but I hope, I really hope, that he’s somewhere better, however, for us, gay Arabs, gay Egyptians, nowhere - the non-existence - is better than here. But I deeply hope that he’s somewhere where he can be everything he wanted to be and couldn't, where he could be as gay as the sun, where he can run, dance, fly, grow roses and green plants, and where he can write poetry, 

something he wrote:  One day I had to feel alive One day I had to break the chains One day I wanted to fly Into the arms of a hurricane

You try and try Until you fall on the floor and forget what you are looking for You cry and cry Until you think you can't cry anymore but then you cry some more Time is ticking I'm quiting You're making me suffocate

Direct the rudder Release the anchor I'm going to sail before it's too late

I can’t even begin to explain it, and that’s exactly what it is to fight with her. It’s all very chaotic, illogical, almost crazy, and has lots of meaningless bullshit.

I want to cry, for my loss, but nothing comes out. Perhaps we can’t lose what we didn’t even possess. She went through lots of trouble just to get a chance to hurt me again, I even find difficulty to believe she would do such a thing.

I even hate to consume time and energy trying to process all the amount of shit she leaves behind every fucking time. 

And I’m not even sure how I feel. I feel mad; I feel heartache; I feel very chaotic, almost crazy in my head. I want to die; I want to disappear. 

Here I write to you again. I hope you still remember me. I write to you whenever I feel lonely, urging to vent out, and desperate for a thread of understanding. 

Something about me repel people. Something I don’t know. Something I don’t have the gut to ask about. Something no one wants to bring it up into my face. I feel rejected. It doesn’t feel good, but it’s not that bad. I have felt worse. My friends are distant. (I think they’re tired of me!) I thought maybe because of my whining and my depression, so I swore to myself to never speak again about it. I even stopped writing here. But it’s still the issue; maybe not. No one cares about me - it feels so strange, almost shocking, after all these years. We went out, they took pictures of each others, with each others, and I wasn’t even there. Like I was air or something. They’re ashamed of me, They hide me from the world. My gut moves with disgust when I think of it; it feels so disgusting that I feel like vomiting. 

It’s okay. It’s alright. I just wish they would come up to me and tell me what bothers them about me. Maybe I can do something about it. Maybe I can change it. My heart aches, for all the love I’ve carried to each and everyone of them. My heart aches for all the caring, all the hours I spent listening to them. I’m like you, in the group. I’m the one they run to, when they feel sad and desperate for understanding and compassion. I come with wide arms and patient ears. 

I feel so stupid; I feel so used. 

I feel so tired. I’m tired of being lonely, even when I’m not alone and surrounded by people. And I’m tired of being surrounded, even when I’m all alone, surrounded by thoughts and feelings and darkness. I’m tired of people, because I long for them, while they are right in front of me, I feel detached from them and fail to connect with them, they seem to be cold and distant, though I miss them. I’m tired of myself, of my waves, of my ups and downs. I’m tired of my professors, and sometimes I would think of telling them: hey, though I take 0.5 milligram of tranquilizer, it seems like nothing compared to the so much pressure and stress you’re throwing upon me. I make perfectly sense to myself, I make no sense to anyone, and no one makes any sense to me. My heart is flat, and my head is gray and crowded like Cairo streets. 

I want to sleep for a very long time. 

What if all we’ve been tricked? What if all what we’ve been told about living wholeheartedly is just lies? What if going everywhere with your heart will eventually damage you and break you to millions of scattered pieces? 

No one ever should go with his whole heart all the way. No one should love with his whole heart all the way. We’ve been tricked and lied to. If one ever felt loving some people, one should leave them; one should instead be around those whom he doesn’t give a shit about. One shouldn’t study what he’s passionate at; one should study the least of his passions. One should go all the way with his heart on his palm, it’s idiotic; one should only walk around with his skin. Don’t live passionately, you will end up with nothing. Don’t love anyone, you will end up lonely and broken. Avoid the people you love, the things you like, the bag you cherish, the major you’re curious about, the home you belong too. Be a mess, love no one. Be like an ice, show nothing to anyone. Care less and less. Expect nothing. And you’ll be free. 

How awful it is to be neglected by the ones you love! It’s very hurtful. I feel like my heart is being squeezed inside a cube. All the sides of the cube are pushing in, and my heart is pressured and pressed over and over. 

How careless people can be! How harsh! It makes me wanna kill myself. Though, I know I shouldn’t kill myself for someone who doesn’t really give a slightest shit, for someone who is cruel, insensible, and inhuman. I care too much. I care too much, and they couldn’t care less. 

My death would hurt my father so much. I don’t want to hurt the person who loves me the most, for the shity things I call ‘friends’. My heart is aching. I wish I could stop it. I wish I could end it all. 

I wrote a letter to my friends today, or rather my old ones. I told them that they made me feel worthless and horrible, that they were cruel, that they never cared enough, and that they weren’t as kind to me as they should be. And I apologized for loving them so much, for bothering them with my stupid sad habits, and for following them everywhere while it was obvious they didn’t want me. 

I was told I’m crazy, that none of this is true, and that I’m coward for cutting myself or attempting to suicide. And they said if I ever wanted to talk, I should call them, it’s up to me. I’m free even if I wanted to kill myself. 

Reading their responds, I felt terrible pain in my chest. I cried. It was awful. None of them said anything about loving me, or caring about me, or said how much it would hurt them if I died. I said I loved them, and they didn’t say it back.  

I don’t know how I feel. I thought of killing myself, but I wanted to kill myself more than one time, I don’t know why. I loath myself even more now. I want to kill myself, and then come back to life, and then kill myself one more than, and then keep doing this over and over. I don’t know why the hell I want to do this. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this at all. It hurts. I was falling apart when I wrote them this message; I wrote thinking they’re the only people who would pick me up together, but they didn’t, they scattered me all over the places. 

I don’t understand. I just wanted them to rebut what I said. I wanted them to tell me that they cared, that they love me, and that they want me alive. I feel so stupid. I feel like there’s a bomb inside of me. My skin is so hot. I want to harm myself. There’s a deep cry inside me that I want to scream it out, but I can’t. I don’t understand how could they do this to me, how could I do this to myself, and why it’s all happening. It’s so painful. It tearing and ripping my chest. I don’t know what to do. I feel so alone and by myself.