This text was written after the passing of Sarah Hejazi, by Diary of a Queer Refugee.

Arabic translation is available too.

My phone is ringing.
I answer the phone. My friend's voice comes throughout the technology that we invented to allow us to communicate without being physically in the same place. The first sentence he says : “Are you alive?”
Throughout the years, every time I saw this friend he only got skinnier and less lively. The last time I saw him we had a long conversation in the middle of the night about this lifeless life we are living.
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I ring a friend’s phone.
I ask : how are you doing ?
He replies: I am reading the comments on Sara’s death.
It’s the same friend I was with on the phone few weeks ago who tells me that another LGBT+ Arab new comer we know committed suicide jumping from the 15th floor.
He says: I ask myself, Is that something I would do to myself? How did my friend feel during the time he was falling?
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My phone rings again.
She said: Hello.
I said: you want to know if am alive.
She laughs and says yes.
The friend who got hospitalized twice in the same month. I know that her pain is very deep and I wonder if anything that I say can even make her feel any better. She said I want people to remember me with happy photos if I die. Please stay with us here, I wished in my heart.
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I ring a friend’s phone.
I ask: how’s your surgery?
She replies: I am good and I am happy that when I will go back to Toronto I will be at the women’s safe house again. They are taking good care of me and listening to me. Why didn’t the government put me there when I first came to Canada? Why did I have to fall and almost die for me to get access to that care?
The friend who showed up to my house at 3 am with a blue eye. She took the 8 hours bus ride in the middle of the night running away from a man who is trying to call her. I have known her since 6 years and that was not the first time she shows up or calls me saying some man beaten her or tried to kill her.
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My phone rings again.
They say: Today, I was walking in the street and an Arab man in his car stopped, opened his car window and said to me “Kos Oumak”.
The friend who arrived to Canada when they were a teenager. Got beaten up 3 times in their first months in Canada.
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My phone rings again.
She says: I want to kill myself.
The friend who disappeared last summer and no one was able to find her. I took the 8 hours bus to Toronto. My head kept repeating all the way “please be alive”. Every time we walked outside we got stares and verbal harassments. That’s her daily life. Chased or cursed at.
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I ring a friend’s phone.
I say: How are you feeling today?
He replies: I am better but-
The friend who arrived to Canada few months ago just before the lockdown. He used to read my writings and couldn’t understand why am I sad if I live in Canada now. I have always answered with wait until you arrive here. I waited for it. The bomb he doesn’t know is activated once he got his feet here. I saw his face get less lively everyday. I asked him: You started getting nightmares? Yes, he answered. He got drunk in one of the nights, walked at night while I was searching for him in the streets. I found him lying down in the middle of the street and thanked the universe no car ran over him.
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I ring a friend's phone.
I say: What are you doing these days?
She says: I am just home all the time. People think I am weird because I am glad that I get the chance to be home all the time because of the pandemic.
The friend who lives in another country and is scared of leaving home even after going to a safer country.
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I ring a friend's phone.
He says: My racist neighbour keeps giving me dirty looks every time I enter the building. I brought the report that the psychologist gave me. I threw it in his face and I screamed at him saying that I am depressed and I don’t want to be in this country too but I have nowhere else to go.
The friend who takes happy photos that fill his social media but cries a lot when he is alone.
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I ring a friend’s phone.
She says: I try to not leave the house if I don’t need to. My area is filled with Arabs and I don’t want to get beaten up.
The friend who spent the winter in the streets of Toronto unable to access help easily because she speaks only Arabic.
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I ring a friend’s phone.
She says: A friend got beaten up badly and was left in the street with her blood. She couldn’t handle so she ended her life after she got home.
The friend who distracts herself by doing a lot for other people trying to help them.
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I ring a friend’s phone.
He says: Pandemic or not. I stay home for my safety so there’s no difference.
The friend who understands me when I say I don’t leave the house if I don’t have to and I don’t want to leave.
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My phone rings again.
She says: You know, I was at the metro coming back from my work at the hospital today. I looked at a man with his girlfriend. I wondered why can’t I get that. Why am I only for sex and pleasure and she is for when it’s serious. Is it only because she has a vagina and can give him children. Why do people treat me like shit in the hospital even though I am trying to help them throughout this pandemic.
The friend whom I told her that not all men from minorities are assholes. Then she got cursed at while I was with her in the middle of the streets few minutes later by a group of men from a minority. With that happening to her everyday of her life it’s hard to have energy and space to analyze why there’s aggressive behaviours shooting at us from our own communities and other minority communities. I shut my mouth and I meet my friend at where they are at and what is within their energy rather than lecturing them. I gently explain things to them in the right time with a story they could relate to.
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It’s been a week of non stop calls with my LGBT+ Arab friends immigrants and refugee across Canada and Europe and the friends who are stuck in the middle east in their home countries or dangerous countries that they fled to. Sharing what happened to them in the past or what’s happening to them now. We are all thinking about it not necessarily out loud. Who’s next? Is it me?
I was there not too long ago. Looking at my reflection in the metro’s window. An image slid to my brain. I saw myself. I was being sneaked into a police car. The police officer took me from the detention center for a while somewhere away where anything could be done to me. I came back to the present shocked cause I forget that happened to me. I forgot as if it was whipped from my memory and it suddenly came back. I got scared. What else is hiding there?
When I first came to the country I was getting intense nightmares. Now I get them even when I am awake.
I started seeing someone. We got into fights. You spend too much time with the TV, she said.
I watch TV until I pass out. I don’t want to be left with my head. I don’t want to deal. It’s a lot of energy to deal. I don’t have that kind of energy. I haven’t written in a very long time because I couldn’t. Even the last song I made was without lyrics.
Just right before the pandemic, I called the suicide hotline for the first time since I arrived to this country. I almost threw myself in front of the train. I got scared and avoided metro stations for a while. I scream in my head over those moments of weakness that could be the end. I scream at them that I want to exist in this world, I deserve to be here, I fought to be here.