|
The New York Times
middle east
Gays Living in
Shadows of New Iraq
 |
|
Joao Silva for The New York Times
Gay men and a woman in a Baghdad park. In a
city where sexual freedom once flourished, gay men and lesbians face
persecution. |
By CARA BUCKLEY,
nytimes.com on the Web, December 21, 2007
BAGHDAD, Dec.18 -- In a city
and country where outsiders are viewed with deep suspicion and attracting
attention can imperil one’s life, Mohammed could never blend in, even if he
wanted to.
Mohammed, 37, has been openly gay for much of his adult life. For him,
this has meant growing his hair long and taking estrogen. In the past, he
said, that held little danger. As is true throughout the Middle East, men
have always been publicly affectionate here.
But, at least until recently, Mohammed and many of his gay friends went one step
further, slipping into lovers’ houses late at night. And, until the
American invasion, they said, Iraqi society had quietly accepted them.
But being openly gay is not an option in the new Iraq, where the rise of
religious extremism has left Mohammed and his gay friends feeling especially
vilified.
In January, a United Nations report described the increased persecution, torture
and extrajudicial killing of Iraqi lesbians and gay men. In 2005, Iraq’s
most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or
religious decree, calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed in the “worst,
most severe way.”
He lifted it a year later, but neither that nor the recent ebb in violence has
made Mohammed or his friends feel safe. They yearn to leave Iraq, but do
not have the money or visas. They agreed to be interviewed on the
condition that their last names not be used.
They described an underground existence, eked out behind drawn curtains in a
dingy safe house in southwestern Baghdad. Five people share the apartment
— four gay men and one woman, who says she is bisexual. They have moved
six times in the last three years, just ahead, they say, of neighborhood raids
by Shiite and Sunni death squads. Even seemingly benign neighborhood
gossip can scare them enough to move.
“We seem suspicious because we look like a cell of terrorists,” said Mohammed,
nervously fingering the lapel of his shirt. “But we can’t tell people what
we really are. A cell, yes, but of gays.”
His hand drifted to his newly shorn hair. He had lopped it off days earlier.
There had been reports of extremists stopping long-haired men, shearing their
hair and forcing them to eat it.
It is impossible to say how many gay men and women face persecution in Iraq.
According to an Iraqi gay rights group, run by a former disc jockey in Baghdad
named Ali Hili who now lives in London, 400 people have been killed in Iraq
since 2003 for being gay.
Set against the many thousands of civilians and soldiers killed in the war, the
number is small. But for Mr. Hili, and Mohammed and his friends, it is a
painful barometer of just how far Iraq has shifted from its secular past.
For a brief, exhilarating time, from the mid-1980s until the early 1990s, they
say, gay night life flourished in Iraq. Whereas neighboring Iran turned
inward after its Islamic revolution in 1979, Baghdad allowed a measure of
liberation after the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
Abu Nawas Boulevard, which hugs the Tigris River opposite what is now the Green
Zone, became a promenade known for cruising. Discos opened in the city’s
best hotels, the Ishtar Sheraton, the Palestine and Saddam Hussein’s prized Al-Rasheed
Hotel, becoming magnets for gay men. Young men with rouged cheeks and
glossed lips paraded the streets of Mansour, an affluent neighborhood in
Baghdad.
“There were so many guys, from Kuwait, from Saudi Arabia, guys in the street
with makeup,” said Mr. Hili, who left Iraq in 2000. “Up until 1991, there
was sexual freedom. It was a revolutionary time.”
Then came the Persian Gulf war, and afterward Saddam Hussein put an end to
nightclubs. Iraq staggered under the yoke of economic sanctions.
While antigay laws were increasingly enforced, Mohammed and Mr. Hili said they
still felt safe. Homosexuality seemed accepted, as long as it was
practiced in private. And even when it was not tolerated, prison time
could be evaded with a well-placed bribe.
The American invasion was expected to usher in better times.
“We thought that with the presence of Americans, life would become paradise,
that Iraq would be Westernized,” Mohammed said. “But unfortunately the way
things were before was so much better than where we are now.”
One night shortly after Saddam Hussein fell, American soldiers burst into the
apartment that Mohammed shared with his two brothers. They were looking
for insurgents, but took one look at Mohammed, with his long hair and shapely
body wrapped in a robe, and teased him, he said.
“What are you, a lady man?” he remembered them barking. “A boy? Or a
girl?” They turned to one of Mohammed’s brothers, “Who is this?” they
asked, “Your girlfriend?”
The news raced through Mohammed’s building. “All my neighbors came to know
that I was gay,” he said. “My brother said, ‘Mohammed, leave the house;
you can’t live here anymore.’”
He rented another apartment, and was soon joined by some gay friends. They
moved nine months later, after suspicious neighbors began to talk. Nine
months after that, they moved again. They came to rely on remittances sent
by Mr. Hili, who raises money for them in London.
Mr. Hili taps a network of acquaintances in Baghdad to ferret out safe houses,
and pays extra for landlords to alert him to possible trouble. He says he
supports about 32 people.
Few work, though one of Mohammed’s roommates, Amjad, who is 33 and has manicured
eyebrows and feathered hair, said he sometimes sleeps with an older man for
money. “He loves me, but I hate him,” Amjad said. “He is jealous and
ugly.”
One of Mohammed’s friends, a 25-year-old law student named Rafi, said he was
especially desperate to get out of Iraq. It is a sentiment shared by
millions of Iraqis, but Rafi believes his future here is especially bleak.
The influence from Iran is growing, he said. And in Iran, homosexuality is
often punishable by death.
“I want to get out, but not just out of Iraq, out of the Middle East,” Rafi
said, “to a country that has respect for human rights. And for us.”
He paused, casting his eyes downward. “It will never be possible here.”
|
