2023-05-21 05:59:00
Difficult to live his homosexuality when we know that it is strongly repressed in his country. Weesam, originally from Iraq, knows something regarding this: “Some get caught by militias. Many families don’t accept gays. They reject them and in some families they even kill their sons.”
It’s 2015, Weesam is leaving home to go to work. Since the withdrawal of American troops, the neighborhoods of Baghdad have been controlled by various Islamist militias. Like every morning, Weesam is checked at a checkpoint: “They started joking and asked me for my phone to check it. They forced me to give them my pin code.”
In his phone, the guards find traces of his hidden life and do not hesitate to blackmail him: “They were asking me for $300 and since my brother was checking in on me every morning, they took his call.”
The case is settled with his brother and his cousins who come to pay the ransom. Everyone will know very quickly. Weesam fears for his life and flees. He takes a plane to Istanbul where he can breathe a little but fears that his family will find his trace. He therefore decides to go to Europe. “For us Iraqis, it’s not easy to get a visa for Europe. So I had to take the risk of crossing the sea to reach a Greek island, illegally.”
The weather is mild, the crossing by inflatable boat goes smoothly. Weesam will take two weeks to reach Brussels, alternating between buses, trains, taxis… and crossing the borders on foot between two Red Cross camps.
One day when Weesam is recharging his phone in the central station, the police question him: “At the time, I didn’t speak French at all. They asked to see my phone. At that moment, my memories caught up with me.” The policeman sees messages coming on the phone and asks him if he is gay: “He just said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid, everything is OK. Don’t worry.’ At that time, I really felt that I was safe here.”
Today, Weesam works as a bartender in a gay bar, he learned French and became Belgian.
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