Unspeakable Love: Notes to Chapter 1
1. Interview in Egypt, April 2004. Names of interviewees in this chapter have been changed; in some cases they assigned themselves a nickname.
2. Interview in Egypt, 2001. Ahmed himself later fled to the United States where he applied for political asylum.
3. Interview in Lebanon, June 2004. He spoke at length about his treatment. Because of the threats to his life, various details of his story that would make him easily identifiable have been omitted.
4. For example, a letter from a Sudanese man to gaymiddleeast.com told of a friend whose brother threatened to kill him after seeing him kiss another man. Three days later he was found stabbed to death. http://www.gaymiddleeast.com/news/article2.htm
5. Jimenez, Marina: ‘Gay Jordanian Now “Gloriously Free” in Canada’. The Globe & Mail, Toronto, May 20, 2004. http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040520/GAY20/TPNational/TopStories. The documentary, Gloriously Free, was made by Filmblanc, a Canadian production company.
6. “Honour” killings of women are common in Jordan and are also regarded by many as family matters. If the killers are prosecuted they usually receive very short sentences.
7. Jimenez, op cit.
8. Interview in Egypt, April 2004. He said he chose the nickname Billy “because I like Billy Holliday”.
9. A typical psychiatric session costs 100 Egyptian pounds. Two sessions a week, spread over six months, makes a total of 5,000 pounds. This would be more than a year’s wages for the average Egyptian, though incomes vary hugely and for a middle-class family it would be a smaller proportion of their annual income. According to one interviewee, free treatment is sometimes available through charities.
10. Aitkenhead, Decca: ‘Going Straight’, The Guardian, April 3, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1183596,00.html. For further information about the concept of sexual orientation, and the debates about it, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_orientation.
11. The sources of information most frequently used by young Egyptians appear to be www.gay.com and www.planetout.com.
12. Interview in Egypt, April 2004.
13. Interview in Beirut, March 2005.
14. Interview in Egypt, April 2004. Adagio – also sometimes known as “Bonbon” – had grown up with five sisters, which he suggested could be the reason for his homosexuality.
15. Interview, March 2005.
17. It is an old Arab tradition, reflecting the importance of male lineage, for parents to be popularly known by the name of their first-born son: Umm Ali (“the mother of Ali”), Abu Ali (“the father of Ali”), etc.
18. Interview in Beirut, April 2005.
19. R v IAT ex parte Shah.House of Lords, 1999.
20. In 1994 the case of Toboso-Alfonso, 20 I&N Dec. 819 (Board of Immigration Appeals 1990), involving a gay Cuban refugee, was designated as a legal precedent.
21. Stonewall: ‘Applying for asylum as a refugee’ http://www.stonewall-immigration.org.uk/Asylum.htm. For a summary of the British asylum rules see: http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/en/home/laws___policy/immigration_rules/part_11.html
22. Sanders, Clive: ‘Gay Times Law’. Gay Times website article dated April 14, 2003. http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/gt/default.asp?topic=article&ID=9104&pub=2127
23. Stonewall, op cit.
25. Sapsted, David: ‘Gay killed himself over asylum failure’, Daily Telegraph, April 20, 2005. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/20/nsuic20.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/20/ixhome.html; Athwal, Harmit: ‘Inquest finds asylum refusal was motive for gay Iranian's suicide’, Independent Race and Refugee Network, April 20, 2005. http://www.irr.org.uk/2005/april/ha000014.html
26. Athwal, op cit.
27. Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force: ‘Gay men from China, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Romania, and Russia win asylum’. http://www.lgirtf.org/newsletters/Summer96/SU3.html (no longer available)
28. Hansen, Kvore: ‘Gay asylum seeker from Morocco not allowed to stay’. Aftenposten, Norway, June 15, 2000. Reproduced at http://www.globalgayz.com/norway-news.html
29. ‘Gay Algerian granted asylum in France’. Behind the Mask (website on gay and lesbian affairs in Africa), undated article. http://www.mask.org.za/SECTIONS/AfricaPerCountry/ABC/algeria/alg_2.html
30. See Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force website: www.lgirtf.org. The US does not consider same-sex partners of American citizens as “spouses”. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act defines marriage as a union between a man and woman, with the result that same-sex unions recognised by some individual states (such as Hawaii and Vermont) or other countries (eg the Netherlands) are not recognised for immigration purposes.
31. Stonewall: ‘Evidence’. http://www.stonewall-immigration.org.uk/Evidence.htm
32. Eron, Lewis. ‘Homosexuality and Judaism’ in Homosexuality and World Religions, ed. Arlene Swidler, pp 103-134. Trinity Press International. 1993. Valley Forge, PA:
33. According to one report, sodomy carries a jail sentence of three to 10 years. See: Baron, Dan: ‘Palestinian gays seek safety in Israel’, Cleveland Jewish News, January 15, 2004. http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2004/01/15/news/israel/nseek0116.txt (also available at http://www.sodomylaws.org/world/israel/isnews005.htm).
34. Tayseer was not his real name.
35. Halevi, Yossi: ‘Refugee status’, The New Republic, August 19, 2002. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020819&s=halevi081902 (subscription only). Also at http://www.jpef.net/sep02/Refugee%20status.pdf. Two other accounts involving a man from Gaza of about the same age were published by the BBC (‘Palestinian gays flee to Israel’, October 22, 2003 http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/3211772.stm) and the London gay magazine, QX (‘Tortured and jailed by the Palestinian police’, Issue 462, December 10, 2003 http://www.outrage.org.uk/qx-palestine.html). Although the man was not identified, similarities in the three stories suggest they may all refer to the same person.
36. ‘ “Death threat” to Palestinian gays’. BBC, March 6, 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2826963.stm
37. ‘Palestinian gay runaways survive on Israeli streets’. Reuters, September 17, 2003. Reproduced at http://www.sodomylaws.org/world/palestine/psnews003.htm
38. There are echoes here of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s when gay men engaged in secret government work were regarded as a particular security risk. The fact that there sexual activities were illegal at the time and had to be concealed exposed them to the possibility of blackmail by Soviet agents.
39. Halevi, op cit.
40. Reuters, September 17, 2003, op cit.>
41. Baron, op cit.
42. Reuters, September 17, 2003, op. cit. Halevi, op cit.
43. Several deportations were reported in 2003. See, for example, BBC, March 6 2003, op cit.
44. Reuters, September 17, 2003, op cit.
45. ‘Palestinian gays flee to Israel.’ BBC, October 22, 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/3211772.stm