Double Lives Gays Lead in Baghdad
Even when public spaces not lethal, freedom, privacy are relative terms
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 4:26 PM CDT
BY MICHAEL T. LUONGO
http://www.chelseanow.com/articles/2010/09/29/gay_city_news/features/doc4ca383398974b270063740.txt (http://www.chelseanow.com/articles/2010/09/29/gay_city_news/features/doc4ca383398974b270063740.txt)
Hassan told me Laith was a "ladyboy" undergoing hormone therapy. Despite the scarcities of wartime, Hassan said, hormones are readily available. Opening his shirt and exposing his own breasts, Hassan said he too was taking hormones. Suddenly, I understood his babyface and smooth skin that looks like it never needs a shave. Here within the safe house Hassan revealed to me things he and Laith hid in public out of fear for their lives.
"When we dress," Hassan told me, "we wear a jacket, or when we go to buy something, we come back quickly because of the checkpoints." He talked about a friend who had been killed just a few days before in the Karada district, the generally liberal neighborhood that is home to the ShiSha Café, popular among gay men. "They get him from his car, and there is another one who comes to the car and kills him," he said. He reminded me, as well, of a video he had earlier shown me of Ahmed Sadoun Saleh, a transgender friend killed at a checkpoint, who tried to hide his physique under a jacket, his hair, like Hassan's, tucked under a baseball cap. In the heat of the summer, such clothing stands out, making the winter an easier time for transgenders to escape detection on the streets.