"Iran has the death penalty for engaging in consensual same-sex acts. That's a case we would take," she continues, "whereas if someone comes from a country where the country conditions are mixed, like Brazil, where they have some same-sex relationship recognition but still a higher incidence of murders and violence against gays, lesbians and people who are bisexual or transgender," that's a tougher call.
El Salvador and Egypt both have bad track records, though neither is the worst of the worst. Ultimately, country conditions could matter more for Sam, whose life in Egypt as a gay man wasn't violent — mostly because he stayed hidden.
mark manger
Kassandra faced a hard life in El Salvador.
mark manger
Bryon Large can relate to his clients.
Related Content
More About
*****
In Sam's Egypt, no one talks about sex. But they do talk about religion — even if, he says, they're not terribly religious. His parents were a perfect example. Though they are Muslim, his father, an electrician who never finished high school, didn't pray, and his mother didn't wear a hijab. (She later started doing both.) But his parents' eschewing of daily prayer didn't make them any more tolerant, he says. "Like if you talk to them about anything forbidden, they're going to say, 'Oh, that's forbidden! That's bad!'" says Sam, who asked that his real name not be used.
In all, Sam's parents had nine children: four boys and five girls. Sam is the fourth. He grew up in Old Cairo, a part of the capital city sprinkled with historic churches and Roman ruins. As a boy, he preferred the company of his sisters. "The way I am acting or, you know, doing stuff, it was kind of a bit different than other boys," he says. "Growing up, you always have to watch what you are doing, and if you do something different, you think that it's wrong. With time, you keep trying harder and harder to fit in."
But Sam didn't always succeed. His parents criticized his tight clothes and the way he emulated the feminine body language of his sisters. "They think they can correct that," Sam says. "They're punishing you — sometimes shouting, sometimes making fun."
Sam felt the first twinges of attraction to other boys when he was in junior high school. But he didn't tell anyone. Instead, he wrestled with his feelings privately, worrying that he was the only person in all of Egypt who felt that way. He'd never even heard the word "gay" until he was thirteen and read a magazine article about the first-ever AIDS patient. "They were writing it in a way that makes you feel disgusted about what's going on," Sam says, "but it actually kind of excited me." Maybe there are other people in the world with these same feelings, he thought.
Still, Sam tried to distract himself by praying more and reading religious books. "I was just trying to avoid thinking about this stuff because I know it's wrong, everybody is saying that it's really bad." If I just get closer to God, Sam thought, this will all go away.
It didn't, of course, but his feelings were easy enough to hide. Occasionally, classmates teased him, but, Sam says, "it wasn't that much." He adds, "My looks are not that feminine, so that made it easier for me." Meanwhile, dating in the American sense of trips to the movies and first kisses didn't exist. Boys went to one high school and girls went to another. In college, men and women attended classes and socialized together, but always in groups. "If you like each other, you can get engaged," he says. "We don't have the boyfriend-girlfriend concept."
Sam's friends just figured he was shy, which he was. Too shy to act on the attractions he felt to other men while studying law at Cairo University. Too shy, or perhaps too ashamed, to act on the feelings he could tell other men felt for him.
After graduating in 1997, Sam continued to live at home with his parents and his other unmarried siblings, as is the tradition. He took a job in a gift shop, and soon after met his first boyfriend at a downtown marketplace. "He came and asked me what the time was," Sam recalls. As Sam turned to answer him, he noticed that his future boyfriend was wearing a watch of his own. "I said, 'You already have a watch. What are you asking for?' And he says, 'Oh, it's not working,'" Sam says, laughing. They started chatting and, perhaps nervous himself, the man blurted out, "I like you." Sam was shocked. "I told him, 'You know, I try to avoid that.'"
But he took the man's phone number anyway and called him — to tell him it wasn't going to work out. Then he called again. And again. "I guess I really wanted to meet him, which is why I kept calling him," Sam says. Plus, he was growing tired of the denial. "You keep trying and trying and trying, and it doesn't go away," he says.
Sam still wasn't at peace with his sexuality, however. Intense guilt gripped him after each date with his boyfriend, a man five years his senior whom he describes as "kind of cute," with hazel eyes and light skin. They often met in secret at his boyfriend's parents' second home. "I would really want to meet him, and then I would go meet him, and then I would come back and I would just feel bad," he says.
