Zeyad

The religious background that I had limited me, of course it was a shackle to me; he’s my friend and stuff, but this was a matter that I didn’t know how to deal with. But on the other hand, there was this part in me that wanted to understand more, to know more, I was a bit contradictive at that time. I was one of those who gave the advice like you can go see a shrink or something of the sort, and we can start treating this issue; I dealt with it as if it’s a disease.

My first interaction with someone from the LGBTQ+ community was with a friend of mine at school, we had always studied together and back then I was a bit religious, mildly, and he was to me the person who had many revolutionary ideas, I mean he was different from the people I knew. We started to get to know each other more and became close friends. He started to tell me by asking “If you knew I was gay, how would you react?” and honestly at the time I wasn’t really in wonder because I had no knowledge of the whole thing, but when he told me I started dealing with it by reading about it. With time our friendship relationship wasn’t getting weaker, but on the contrary, it was getting stronger.

In the period after the revolution I started going out, meeting and getting to know lots of people, when he, at the same time, was building his own safe circles. I’ve built my knowledge about sexual and gender pluralities by asking him questions, and they would turn into discussions, and I get back home and start looking more to understand more. Bit by bit, when I started getting liberated from the religious mindset, I started to understand and see it all differently… by then the old ways of thinking had somehow collapsed, or I started to build them all over again.

I started to work with the Queer community via a queer friend as well, he’s a really good friend of mine. I used to show him my work and the things I made, and one time he came to me and told me that there are those people who he works with and they want me in some job with them, and I met them through him, and afterwards I also got another job from another party. Honestly it was a little terrifying in the beginning, based on the fact that you know that you’d be exposed to lots of trouble if someone sees what you’re doing. I am somehow typically a cautious person, if I have my laptop on me and I’m passing by a police checkpoint, I always would had already taken my measures and hidden all the work files… it happened once and it was quite scary, there was this work chat between me and someone else, and there was a checkpoint and I instantly thought they might stop me, ask me to get off, and check my phone, so I did the first thing that came to my mind and deleted Whatsapp, and by chance all my accounts were deactivated at that time… he did knock on the window and checked my phone but nothing happened, he was just questioning the fact that I had no social media at all.

My work with the Queer community was mostly in graphic design… Other than that, what I do is supporting friends or providing habitation for them in times of need, or advice from others’ experiences to new people who don’t have much experience.

It’s like someone who’s on the side of a certain team and the other people far far away don’t have the same language or reactions to this team, each team only understands its own language. There are groups that usually exist between the people within certain communities and those outside of them; there are groups in the middle that rub against both sides with the people who don’t have the readiness or willingness to comprehend, or the people who already belong to the Queer community…. The challenge to me is to be able to communicate something that is fully understandable when it reaches someone who is not from the Queer community, and if it has a part of suffering they would be able to empathize without facing it.. to be able to create a language that you can speak with people who can accept new ideas, but don’t have a convenient language… to be able to create something visual that would make those who read it or see it have feelings towards it, or to be clear to them.

There are things that are not in my hand to control, but there are situations that make you try to act a certain way when you encounter them, with the purpose of leaving a mark that would make this person change his way of thinking even a little, and see things differently. Hence, there is something specific that I want to reach, I am supposed to take certain steps to reach it, and I have the minimal amount of tools that make me capable of doing something like this… To me, this is the meaning of the word “challenge”.

From my interaction with the Queer community I have gained lots of positive things like relationships, like how your mindset changes in every period of your life and being comprehensive that the ideas you have now are changeable with time, for your thinking to be flexible and fluid, and that things don’t have to always go according the plan you want; You have the idea that things happen and things change, and this makes you a new person or a different person.

People are supposed to start gaining the qualities of listening and seeing without hurrying in making the final judgment, or to not be in a hurry to reach the molds and stereotypes that we make for everything by the rulings of religion, what we’re used to, or whatever; To have the capacity to listen and understand more, and judge in the end. It is not a given that what is wrong to you, to your doctrine, or to your principles would be harmful to you, there is no constant concept of what is right and wrong; you have to understand that what is suitable for people is different from one person to the other, and you should respect the idea of the differentiation of choices.

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