Front Burner - Weekend Listen: Gay Girl Gone

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Of all the young revolutionaries in Syria during the Arab Spring, Amina is different. An out lesbian in a country where homosexuality is illegal, she bravely documents her life on the blog Gay Girl in Damascus. Her candid posts attract readers from around the world, and soon she has a wide, ardent following. But then a post appears saying Amina has been abducted. Her fans mobilize, desperate to track down and save their fearless heroine. What they find shocks them. Journalist Samira Mohyeddin investigates what actually happened to the infamous Gay Girl in Damascus in this 6-part series. The result is a twisted yarn that spans the globe and challenges our thinking on love, politics and identity in cyberspace. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/Bm2uZHLZ

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, Damon Fairless here. We've got a special episode for you today from the brand new CBC podcast, Gay Girl Gone. Of all the young revolutionaries in Syria during the Arab Spring, Amina is different. An out lesbian in a country where homosexuality is illegal, she bravely documents her life on the blog Gay Girl in Damascus. Her candid posts attract readers from around the world,

and soon she's got a wide, devoted following. But then a post appears saying Amina's been abducted. Desperate to track down and save her, her fans mobilize. And what they find, that shocks them. Journalist Samira Moydan investigates what actually happened to the infamous Gay Girl in Damascus. It's a mind-blowing story. It's full of unreal twists, and it spans the globe and challenges our thinking on love,

politics, and identity in cyberspace. Have a listen. The first time I heard about Amina and her blog, it was 2011. I was in my cramped Toronto apartment, nestled just right above a cake shop. At least, that's where I was physically. Mentally, I was in a whole other place. The Arab Spring was popping off, and I was glued to the news about it, just constantly scrolling through these videos of crowds of people chanting and protesting. You see, right before the Arab Spring started, there was another thwarted revolution in the region, what came to be known as the Green Movement in Iran, which is where I'm from originally.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets protesting what they said were rigged presidential elections. It was huge, but the response from the government to the protests was brutal. Thousands tortured, many killed, and others just disappeared. Anyway, I felt totally helpless watching Tehran from Toronto, so I took to writing on my blog, writing about what was happening in the streets and what people were hoping for. Now, I wasn't a journalist yet. I was writing the odd op-ed and national newspapers, but I was mainly concentrating on my blog. I would write about Mideast politics, women, and LGBTQ rights. You see, the blogging world gave me a way to connect with other people like me, young queer Muslims, no matter where we were in the world.

We formed our own collectives, we built Facebook groups and pitched in on each other's blogs. And it was in one of those groups that I came across a link to another blog, one called Gay Girl in Damascus. It had the kind of writing that just stops you in your tracks. It makes you look up and want to tell everyone about it. I live in Damascus, Syria. It's a repressive police state. Most LGBT people are still deep in the closet or staying as invisible as possible. But I have set up a blog announcing my sexuality, with my name in my photo. Am I crazy? Maybe. But I am also aware of the winds of freedom and change blowing from one end of the Arab world to the other. And I want that freedom wind to bring with it our liberation,

not just as Arabs and as Syrians, but also as women and as lesbians. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't. But if I want it to happen, I have to do something bold and visible. Bold and visible. That's exactly what she was. I was reading and rooting for her with every sentence. Because you do not start a blog in Syria and talk about being gay. That's a ticket to prison. And speaking out against Assad, that's something that can get you killed. And she's doing it all, all of it it under her real name, Amina Araf. In the top left-hand corner of Amina's blog is her photo, and under it, her bio. I am an Arab. I am Syrian.

I am a woman. I am queer. I saw so much of myself in Amina. We're both bloggers, both lesbians, So much of myself in Amina. We're both bloggers, both lesbians, both the same age, born 1975. And we were neighbors once. She's Syrian, I'm Iranian. But more than anything, Amina was living the life I wanted. She was loud and proud and back in her own country, taking part in a revolution. I would have given anything to be able to do that.

Amina's my unicorn. My queer Syrian unicorn. Reading that blog post from Amina, I knew it was big. But I had no clue just how big and weird it was going to get. And what the consequences would be for her readers. At some point I was like, what am I actually doing? Like, what is going on in this story? This story remains one of the strangest episodes of The Arab Spring. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. You just can't.

The truth is going to come out. Whether you persuade me of something, it's already in motion. They were rounding up people left and right, and it seemed at the time that they had finally caught up with her. Worst case scenario, we would never hear about her again. We would never know what happened.

I'm Samira Moyadin. This is Gay Girl Gone, Episode 1, The Unicorn. It's early 2011. Sandra Bagaria is just trying to get through another drawn-out, miserable Montreal winter. You go out of work and it's like dark. You feel more isolated. It's the moment where you actually spend the most time with yourself. Sandra's spending most of that time on the sofa, curled up under blankets with her cat nearby.

Her escape is a book she just ordered, a book of love letters between writers and lovers, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. I think the romantic part of me, I really like, find it beautiful, you know, that two people could write to each other in letters and like wait for the letter and respond to it. And I have a fascination for like correspondence. There's a French word, epistolaire. I found it so beautiful, the writings between these two, like the way they can be at the same time so transparent in a way and hidden. They were women in love at a time when it was really impossible for two women to love openly. And Sandra, she's all in with Vida and Virginia. But in her own love life, there is a lot less happening. She's in her 30s and has been single for about a year. She has flirted with a few women, but nothing to get excited about. It was disappointing because, you know, you have hopes and sometimes you think that there's a connection and then you realize there's actually no connection.

I said to myself, OK, let's find some distraction. So finding distraction can only go two ways. Like whether you step out and you meet other people or whether you do it through and behind a screen. So I went for option two under the cover of a bed or on the couch with a tea or anything that could make it more convenient and more relaxed. or anything that could make it more convenient and more relaxed. Pretty soon, the book of love letters is set aside, and all Sandra is doing is scrolling through online dating apps. I took the BlackBerry in bed, next to my bed, and I was hooked on these applications,

checking out the profiles of people, of women, like where they're coming from, their interests. But nothing is hitting until... And I remember it was a snowshoeing day with a friend of mine. And we were snowshoeing and I started receiving like notification messages. like notification messages. And we were kind of like, oh, wow, who is that girl? Like already accepting, already starting to text. I saw her name first, Amina Araf.

And I was like, oh, this is a very unusual name for Quebec. So that was my first like curiosity out of her name. She was brunette with strong dark eyes. Amina Araf. The profile picture's striking. Amina has chin-length hair, an elegant neck, and a mole just right above her left eyebrow. She's smiling shyly and glancing down.

She's smiling shyly and glancing down. She's beautiful. In the first messages, she told me that she was in Damascus. So since the beginning, I knew that she was in Syria. My great-grandmother was born in Syria, in Aleppo, so the fact that she was coming from there was, you know, very cool. It might sound like a small connection, but for Sandra, it means a lot. For a few generations, her family lived in both Egypt and Morocco, before her mom immigrated to France, where Sandra was born. I missed a lot of, you know, the exotic angle that I was raised with and that I was always exposed to. So for me, it was a great package.

She had Middle Eastern roots, the perfect English writing. She could express herself very well. She was interested in me. She was single. I always value when people are being honest and true to themselves. So for me, it was really appealing that she had that openness about who she was and at the same time not being afraid of sharing the fact that she was from Syria and gay. from Syria and gay.

So they start chatting. And the more Sandra finds out, the more intrigued she becomes. I found out that she had dual citizenship, U.S. and Syria. Her mom was American and her dad was Syrian. Amina had been living in the United States but recently moved back to the family home, a sprawling house in Damascus. I actually know where they lived in the neighborhood because she

sent me a postal address also once. So I remember putting in Google Maps and looking it up and seeing where she was living. Sandra looks up everything she can about Damascus, trying to imagine Amina there. She watches tourism videos, and she loves it when Amina paints pictures of the city. For her, it's the smell of jasmine, tea, that I totally foresee in Damascus because I experience it when I go to Morocco.

So it's always based on like the flavors that you taste and the smells that you randomly catch when you walk in the medinas. And I was imagining her there, wandering around the city and also, you know, projecting myself in a city that I actually don't know, but that I started to learn and to know more about through her.

And soon the messages are zipping back and forth across the globe. Could be at work, during the day, when I have a break, or like at lunchtime. I was texting till the moment I just couldn't anymore, you know, that your eyes are starting to hurt. And it was super, super late. And as soon as I was waking up in the morning, you know, I would reach for the phone, opening it and seeing if there's any messages. When I didn't find messages, I was also very disappointed, you know. When Amina doesn't respond right away, it's sometimes because of a power outage. Just one result of the chaos in the country in 2011.

Amina tells Sandra that she wants to join the revolution and that she wants to document it too, both the protests and her own life as a lesbian in Syria. So she thought to do it all, to start a blog and to put her writings and at the same time report on her day-to-day life in Syria. But Amina's decision to write her blog under her real name terrifies Sandra. I think she already had in her head what she wanted to do. Even if I would have told her, maybe it's not a good idea, maybe you should wait, I don't think it would have changed anything, honestly, because she was the type of personality that was also stubborn and had a clear idea where she wanted to go and what she wanted to achieve.

It's about a month and a half after Amina and Sandra first message one another that Amina publishes her first blog post. And just a heads up, we've asked an actor to read Amina's writing for us. Here I start. And since I am the one writing here, I will begin my way. Since, of course, that's the best way. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, which means, in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate,

and is the way any account is supposed to begin. I set myself a task, make sense of the contradictions, and explain myself to me. I remember being probably in the first four or five person to follow the blog, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog. And yeah, that's how it started.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Damascus is the place that I was born, right? It's the place that I wore shorts for the first time. It's the place that I kissed a boy for the first time in. This city is one of the oldest cities in the world.

It has existed for the last 7,000 years. And you can tell as you're walking in the streets of Damascus, it's this maze of humans and buildings and historical sites, all covered in those jasmine trees. And you can tell that this city is old. It feels like a wise woman. You just can walk the streets and it will answer all of your questions. Danny Ramadan is a queer Syrian activist and a writer.

He was born in 1984 in Damascus. I would say that my childhood was a conflicting experience, a complex experience. I was in love with my city. I was in love with my city. I was in love with my language. But I had a very difficult relationship with my parents. I think that my father could tell since a very young age that I was going to grow up to be a queer man because he was trying to straighten me up, I guess. me up, I guess. And the more push towards this masculinity that my father is pushing me, the more I am becoming aware of my queer identity, of who I want to be, if that makes sense.

And who Danny wants to be is the Backstreet Boys. Boy bands were huge in the 90s. Their packaging of synchronized dance moves and boy-next-door looks piqued many a queer youth's sexual awakening, even if that wasn't the intended audience. They're hard, right? Like, I was a 13, 14-year-old, and all of those hot men are singing in, like, those monster outfits. I'm like, that is my aesthetics. I like this. This is what I like. And these teen heartthrobs are the reason why Danny wanted to learn English.

I joke all the time that I fell in love with the Backstreet Boys when I was 13, and I just wanted to know what the hell these people are singing about, which kind of is partly true. English is not a language that is very popular in Syria. And we learn it in high school, but not to the point where it becomes a second language or where you become fluent in it. But boy band Fantasylands can't shelter Danny from a hostile home life.

It gets worse as he gets older, and it really comes to a head when he's about 18. We had a confrontation, my father and I, I would say, and it ended up with me announcing to the world that I was a queer man. And of course, that sounds like I'm, I don't know, like raising rainbow flags across the streets of Damascus. It wasn't like a brave act. It was extremely naive, heat of the moment kind of a thing. My father, both physically and emotionally, was abusive towards me that night, and I ended up being kicked out of the house. My father, both physically and emotionally, was abusive towards me that night, and I ended up being kicked out of the house. Danny's still a kid, really, one who has to grow up fast.

After getting kicked out, he stays on friends' couches and sometimes even sleeps on the streets. Eventually, he manages to get a job at a place of his own. Newly independent, Danny is also about to discover a whole new side of Damascus. I did not realize that there is a queer community in Damascus. It's very hushed. It's very secretive.

It requires a chance for you to enter. And I, in a cruising cinema at the age of 18, I ran into a trans woman who introduced herself. She explained her transness to me and introduced me to all of her daughters, which are other gay men that she took under her wing. And I realized that Damascus has this queer family system of sorts. And it has continued for, I don't know, 100 years or so. My mother, and I would call her my mother, Sama, she can trace her queer lineage back to the 1920s.

She knows who is her mother in the queer scene and who's that person's mother up to like 1920, 1915. That story of the family reminds me so much of families, as you said, that develop in Chicago or even Toronto where I am. This is sort of this idea of a chosen family. And mentors exist, right? They sort of bring you into the queer world and say there is something else, you know, there is these possibilities. It feels like it just authentically is born because of the need of a family system, really.

Specifically, the more troublesome the society is around you, the more you find this pearl of safety that is hidden that you just have to dig for for a bit. And that is what my trans mother offered me. Danny stays with his new family for a few years before moving to Egypt to pursue his career as a writer. But by 2011, things are changing, both for Danny and for the Middle East. I decided to move back to Syria around the time that the Tunisian revolution started. People in Tunisia began protesting, and in less than a month, the government of Ben Ali was no more. Protests spread to countries nearby, and then the dominoes started falling. Libya's Gaddafi,

Egypt's Mubarak. They're calling it the Arab Spring. It was the year of people, power, of revolution. This will send shockwaves throughout the region. Setting in motion a wave of discontent that promises to wash into the years to come. It just felt like it was the right time, right? It felt like there is a movement towards civil rights in the Middle East and just felt that I wanted to be part of that experience.

I just wanted to be part of that. It's just a few months after Danny arrives home in Syria that the protests against the Assad regime begin. Soon the internet is buzzing with videos of demonstrations across Syria and the diaspora. A group of teenagers are accused of spray painting Your Next Doctor on a wall in a town called Dara. The regime takes it as a direct threat against Assad. The security forces capture those kids and torture them. And when people find out, huge numbers go to the streets

and the Syrian uprising begins. People of Daraa, these men shout, your blood is ours. The Western media is paying attention, including the UK's Channel 4 News. And tonight, hundreds descended on the biggest bazaar in Damascus. The footage was posted on the internet within minutes. At the same time, Syria's information minister appeared on state television, claiming all parts of the country were calm. He'd obviously not checked YouTube.

There is talk that Syria is fast reaching the point of no return. talk that Syria is fast reaching the point of no return. In the days and weeks that follow, protests in Syria spread to dozens of towns and cities. And right there in the thick of it is Amina, documenting what's happening around her in her brand new Gay Girl in Damascus blog. Sadist was the news from the south. girl in Damascus blog. Sadist was the news from the south. In Daraa, near the Jordanian border,

demonstrators had been met by armed force. First, we heard that two of us had been killed when the police had opened fire on the crowd. Later, reports raised the number to three, then four, now five.

The state had shown its fear of us and its naked violence. Today, we are mourning the first martyrs of the Danny feels more whole than he ever has. Me and my siblings started inviting other queer folks to my house, a one-floor house in a very shabby neighborhood in Damascus. And I would say there was around 40 or 50 copies of my home keys floating around Damascus at one point in 2011. It had two bedrooms, my bedroom, which was off-limit to everybody unless you're invited, It had two bedrooms, my bedroom, which was off-limit to everybody unless you're invited, and then the second bedroom, which people used as a safe space to practice intimacy and to have fun hookups, I guess.

And then the living room was this space covered in cushions and broken furniture that we found around Damascus that we just gather and fix and clean and then use. Samira, you have to understand, there's a moment that when I walk through my door and there are a couple of queer folks in the other bedroom having an intimate time and there are four or five sitting in my living room talking or watching TV and there's somebody making coffee in the kitchen while the other is making omelets on the oven. It felt like home. It felt lively, right? Weirdly enough, while a civil war is raging in the country, while people are dying,

while there's so much happening that is difficult, that was one of the happiest times I've ever had in my life. And in some ways, his community is safer in the chaos. So the fact that we were so low in the hierarchy of our own society Had created a sense of safety for us Where nobody would care about us If that makes sense During that time The first six months I would say of 2011

We were feeling quite protected By our insignificance I would say Danny's keeping his head down, feeling like this is the best and most realistic way to keep his community safe. Amina, on the other hand, is taking a completely different approach. We assembled in the courtyard and marched through the soup, hundreds of us, And coming the other way was a second crowd, chanting, Our blood, our souls, for you Bashar.

Rumor says that they were bussed in. The two crowds met. We shouted at each other. I heard that there were blows but saw none. The police came in and scattered us, siding with the other crowd. We went home to V ready for next time. How did I first hear about the blog Gay Girl in Damascus? Hmm.

I think we talked about it in the house. I think at one point we were talking about blogging and I said, there's this one and there's that one and there's the gay girl in Damascus. I would say that was around the time that blogging was a big deal in the queer community. And I had a blog myself that was extremely insignificant and nobody clicked on it. I would say mainly the blogs that I followed were other gay men in Lebanon and Syria. And they were just writing about their intimate experiences, writing about their heartbreaks, writing these kind of things. And sometimes I would sit on a chair and I would open the laptop and I would go blog post to blog post and just read and translate the stories to the folks who wanted to hear. We are, we feel, sitting in the middle of a revolution.

Maybe we can hope these changes will mean a real blossoming of freedom. We are ready. We've been waiting. I would sit there and I would read it in English and then people would nod and then I knew that half of them didn't understand what I was saying so I would translate it in Arabic and I would see them just engaging

with the stories. Amina wrote about a lot of different things on her blog. Some of it was impressionistic descriptions of Damascus. A lot of it was about politics. But that's not what Danny's friends want to hear about the most. They were interested in the intimate, sexy details.

Up on the rooftop, our bodies entwined. You're slick with my sweat and the saour of your salts on my skin, The sun on my shoulders, My shadow across your breasts, Rising, falling, with your breath, Calling my name, they beckon. The poems were for me. She would say, I wrote this, I'm going to post it online, It is for you, when I say this, I'm speaking of you. So yeah, for me, it was quite obvious that she was writing, thinking of me. While Danny and his chosen family follow along with Amina's blog in Syria,

Sandra is in Montreal, reading between the lines. There was a poem, I don't recall the name of it, but I remember reading that there was one or two lines that were like, in French. And I knew it was for me, because she would never write in French.

Mon amour est moi. Elle sait. Side by side, we are lying here, our fingers entwined, our lips are open. It totally felt like I was the special one, the chosen one out of the rest of the world. We were talking to each other every day many times for weeks sharing personal details sharing our day-to-day but there's also you know now we call that sexting there was also some sexting

so I guess this is where it was like just like one plus one plus one equals girlfriend, you know, or lover. I don't remember if it was Amina that said it first or I did. You know, I was writing. She was answering, vice versa. So there was a commitment to keep on that relationship happening and living through the days and weeks. Sandra's relationship with Amina is really flourishing, and she wants to tell everyone about her girlfriend's mission. Sharing Amina's story, discussing it with people I knew,

sharing the blog when she started the blog, that was my personal activism, was to spread the word about what she was living. She starts with her friend group. It was not very difficult to convince them to follow the blog. All of my friends are very engaged in life. They're interested, curious, adventurous, diverse, and have character.

And Amina had all of this. So for me, it was just like adding an extra member to the circle. So for them, it was not even a question that, like for them, they knew why I was interested in Amina. And the rest of my friends are very interested in geopolitics. So, you know, all of them were like moved and shaking up with the Arab Spring starting and what it meant. It's not just Sandra's friends. The Arab Spring captured the attention of the

world. And it wasn't just traditional newsrooms bringing people the latest from Tunisia, Egypt, and now Syria. The news was also trending on Twitter and other social media. Minute by minute, citizen journalists were reporting what was happening on the ground. It was unprecedented coverage. And many people were turning to Amina's blog. There were like events in Syria that were happening and she was writing about it. It was only a few moments after it was reported in the news. She felt that we had an insight by reading her post.

So people felt the connection and the human connection by identifying with her, through her. On Friday, this writer went for prayers at the Umayyah Mosque, the large central mosque here. When the service ended in the men's section, someone shouted, Freedom! And the crowd took up the call. Repeated calls of the Takbir, God is the greatest, and calls of freedom echoed through the ancient shrine. Police who dissembled outside came in and pulled a few men out while everyone inside shouted out resistance. Sandra and Amina are really excited about the blog and their growing intimacy, but they're also really scared. I remember creating like a secure email address so her content was not easily traceable. She gave authorization and codes of her bank accounts, email addresses and all her personal

belongings to her cousin. So she was making sure in a way that in case something happened to her, there was someone that knew how to access it. Sandra keeps telling Amina that she should leave, go back to America or even come to Canada. And then one day, Sandra's fears become a reality. Amina gets a visit from Assad's secret police. become a reality. Amina gets a visit from Assad's secret police. One evening, there's a knock on the door of Amina's family house. Next time on Gay Girl Gone. Everybody in Syria have had a relative who was arrested by the Mukhabarat, and nobody will stand in their way. So they will take her. There's no two ways about it.

Sandra waits anxiously for news. I was freaking out that I would receive a message from someone telling me that, you know, she'd been killed, she'd been arrested, that she's in hiding. And Amina's blog is getting a lot of attention. I distinctly remember thinking that we now had a public face of the revolution in Syria. Gay Girl Gone was written and produced by me, Samira Moyadin, Brenna Daldorf, and executive producer Peggy Sutton. Sound design and mixing by Jeff Empman.

Original music by Reza Moghadas. Amina's blog posts are read by Tracy Rahi. Debra Dudgeon is the executive producer of podcasts at Raw, and Georgina Savage is the lead producer. Suzanne Hamilton is the production executive. Our team from CBC Podcasts includes Roshni Nair, who is our digital producer. Ashley Mack is our senior producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak.

Tanya Springer is the senior manager of CBC Podcasts, and Arif Noorani is the director. Special thanks goes to Raw production team, Joanne Patterson, Anna-Marie Batho, and Rowan Lee Potter. Thanks to CNN for the use of an archive clip. If you're enjoying this series and want to help new listeners discover the show, please take some time to give us a rating and review wherever you listen. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Gay Girl Gone.

Or you can hear next week's episode now by subscribing to our channel on Apple Podcasts. You'll get access to the best of CBC storytelling early and ad-free. That was an episode from Gay Girl Gone. us to the best of CBC storytelling, early and ad-free. That was an episode from Gay Girl Gone. You can listen to more episodes right now on the CBC Listen app and everywhere you get your podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.