Exhausted , Disappointed, and Sad

Artist: Yasser Abu Hamad

Anan plan only managed to get my friends more distant. It only bought the regime more time to oppress people, even those who are not politically active. I am away from home – tired, sad, nostalgic, and facing one humiliation after another. I used to have Facebook as a means of contact with my friends in Syria, it was the only way to know how they were/are doing.

I have two families in Syria – my real family and my gay one. We are eight guys who call each other brothers/sisters/aunts/mothers/uncles/fathers and sometimes bitches, or “sharmuta”! It’s been more than a year since we had our gay weekly meetings and night-outs. It’s been more than a year since we got dramatic and acted like real queens. It’s been a long year for us and for all Syrians.

It’s been more than five months since we had a group hug, got drunk together, made fun of our “dates” – it’s been more than five months since I’ve seen any of them.

It’s also been more than five months since I talked to my mother. I don’t even know how my nephews and nieces look like now. I also don’t know if they are fine or not. Since Assad’s last attack on Hama on 25 April 2012, I haven’t heard any news about them, the only message I got was from my brother saying “things are really bad, I will let you know soon. Don’t call them”.

The sanctions imposed on the Assad regime didn’t succeed at preventing technologies and arms from coming to Syria – Assad now has the technology to track everyone, every phone call, and they even have voice recognition technology. Knowing all that, I never called anyone in Syria. My brother was my only means of contact with my family, and Facebook was my only means of contact with my gay family.

One mistake – one phone call – almost two months ago, to a gay friend, put my five gay family members who stayed in Syria at risk. I just found out now that they had been investigated and questioned about that phone call for about a month. ONE phone call, a five-minute phone call, forced my friends to delete and block me on all their accounts with a message saying: “you know how much I love you, but it’s been very hard here for me, I hope you understand”.

I do understand, and it just became harder for me as well. I just lost contact with other family members, and now both families are out of reach; both families are at risk if my voice is detected by the American and British technologies that Assad managed to obtain after the sanctions were imposed, while I can’t even open a bank account because of the sanctions that are imposed upon the Assad regime. Ironic, but true! Only people are suffering while Anan and his half-ass plan are getting family members further away from each other.

I remember when we used to tease each other, we used to respond with “shut up and go to hell sharmuta” – queenie, but also loving. Well, I am a sharmuta in hell, but I will never shut up! I hate Anan, I hate Assad, I hate UN and I hate the world. I just want to hear a queenie voice from Syria even if it’s going to tell me to fuck off!