This was the first book that I wrote and in reality it became my true birth. As it happened, it was to become an unusual book, starting with the first text I wrote on the cover.
Everyone became surprised that a man could define himself as soft; as a person who on the first line declares that he has gotten a new identity and talks about things no one dares talk about; unusual things to say in Arabic and in conservative Muslim society, and how he goes to explain in his text that he isn’t the same as the other men with their coarseness, and who neither doesn’t agree with women’s redundant existence in this world.
There are actually parts in the book (Have stopped laughing) that tell about a man with a woman’s voice, or who only borrows a woman’s voice to express himself. It was new and provocative for others.
This was my real voice though. My voice was the reason I felt shame during all my teenage years, and a source of mockery from friends and acquaintances around me, and later the reason for feelings of guilt and remorse that I have sinned. This was when I was an adult and after that I had gone to the Gulf to work for a government agency that dealt with journalism. After having worked there a long time, I was called to an interrogation, by an officer who worked for a security service there, about the book and what these odd expressions meant; these expressions that were not at all befitting a respected civil servant. The main idea was that I didn’t have any right to speak so boldly about myself, and in such a shocking way, and why am I writing like a woman, even though I am a man?!And why don’t I have a family; that is to say, a wife and children?! He was looking after something to accuse me of, so that he could put me on trial or launch an official investigation. This is what consequently happened.
After that, my work colleagues started threatening me, giving me the impression that the optimal solution to my problem was murder. That is all I deserved according to them at least.
Within the government agency I worked for, there was a religious division that was responsible for the employees’ behavior and lifestyle. They are fanatics and apply a type of guardianship that the state approves and oversees. It’s a group that is associated with Saudi Wahhabi doctrines.
I was forbidden from writing or expressing myself in the newspapers I usually wrote for. They started watching and spying on me wherever I went. I experienced terror and fear from the national security service that was chasing me everywhere. A security officer who interrogated me, forced me to sign a confession that I to this day do not know what it said. I was forbidden from reading it. They said the most important thing was to sign it. The other fear came from my religious colleagues that belonged to the Salafi faith.
At the first possible chance I used my vacation time to visit my family, and fled to Europe and Sweden, where I had friends who lent me a helping hand so that I could contact lawyers and an association that works with homosexuals and works to protect them. It is called RFSL.
I finally feel that I am free.
This is the story of my first book, which is the reason that I find myself in this wonderful country and which could have led to my death in the Middle East.