Across Borders: Non-Binary!

I realized I had to leave when a Syrian friend — now seeking refuge in a European country — bluntly pointed out what was obvious to me: this war won’t end quickly enough for me to wait for it to run its course and resume my life. He said I must flee to Egypt before the borders close. He knows what war means; he lived it. His words were like a slap — pitying me for the worst outcomes that follow denial and disbelief, but still a slap — and they pushed me to leave everything behind and look for survival to the north. I wasn’t so afraid of exposing my queer identity as I was of suffocating. On a long, exhausting journey I abandoned the appearance I’d kept in my revolutionary years: I wore a black abaya, hoping not to face discrimination, but I couldn’t bear the suffocation and let a scarf fall loosely over my shoulder because I couldn’t wrap it tightly.

When I arrived in Egypt, my primary identity became “refugee.” I started searching for official papers and feared their being matched to who I am. At first I wanted to bury myself deep — not my gender, but myself as a whole — to hide my identity in a place of memory I couldn’t reach. I didn’t even use my conscience to describe myself, not even in my inner conversations. I tried to bury a part of myself out of fear of the unknown. When I met my friend K. , she reminded me of my journey inward and awakened in me the rightful feeling to be myself, here and now.

I feel frustrated. In Sudan’s December revolution I used to wear a small ribbon in the colors of the rainbow flag — a symbol of my own revolution within the larger one. Here, there is no revolution, no flag, not even the “me” I used to be. I try to adapt: I visit a psychiatrist sometimes, stick close to my friends, but I miss my private, independent existence because of the lack of spaces where I can fully realize myself.

I don’t want to send a message to the world. The world that watches Gaza being annihilated, that sees queer people sharing their stories under bombardment while it washes the reputation of a “Nazi defense army” with colorful flags, will not care about my story unless I present myself as someone asking to join it. I do not want to leave. I want to be me, here and now, even if that is hard to achieve. I want to stay here and work toward a better reality, and I hope allies — or those who claim to be allies — will support that direction. This text is a cry to hold the hands of others who lost themselves among crossings and borders. We may not be the most oppressed in a war that destroyed everyone, but we are still important and worthy of having our voices heard. Peace to all. Make peace possible, so we can resume building our own peace.