From Egypt and beyond: Weaker than resisting

It’s a rainy morning to match the mood — staying in on Coming Out Day during October 11. It’s a day spent thinking about the young women I went to high school with, cousins, or global strangers I don’t know or haven’t met yet. Closeted lesbians and hetero-passing queers surround me, the unlucky ones created families they did not want and contributed their performative roles, part of a dysfunctional society. The lucky ones either live cautiously under the radar, or leave the country altogether if they are privileged enough to survive. No one knows their truth because the consequences of Coming Out are not worth it. Add in the seeded layers of domestic abuse and years of trauma. It’s okay if you’re not ready, or that you might never be. Sometimes even the smallest things can feel like the biggest wins.

The hidden heroes who make our hearts flutter, they teach us that it can be our turn to amplify the voices of those who deserve justice. Don’t lower their volume. Heroes like Sarah Hegazi sought justice. Eventually, all she wanted was peace. Her story is is rather simple. But the discourse she created brought forth the complex struggle many marginalized groups who live in fear face everyday. Was this the cruel lesson? That people like her cannot survive? She was arrested in Cairo for raising the rainbow community's flag during a Mashrou' Leila concert in 2017. From torture in prison that lasted three months, to having her asylum status approved in Canada, her voice was forever silenced when she took her own life. When someone of her strength can't take any more, there is not much hope for the rest of us. Still, she persists in thoughts, hearts, and literature because her smallest action  raised the biggest win in the community's wildest dreams.

"To my siblings,
I tried to survive but I failed, forgive me.
To my friends,
The experience is hard and I'm weaker than resisting, forgive me.
To the world
You were very cruel, but I forgive"

Simple acts so radical; raising flags costs lives.