Other Storytelling and the New Frontier

Abstract

Ashraf Zanati (see Figure 7.1), a former teacher and one of 52 men arrested in Cairo, Egypt, for ‘debauchery’ in 2001, in an incident which would stimulate worldwide attention concerning gay identity in the developing world, tells us (in the documentary Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World (John Scagliotti, 2001, US)):

I stayed in prison for 13 months. I tried to make myself quite useful, I adapted myself. I thought that I am there for a reason so I started to teach people in prison, English. I taught about 50 people in prison. ... Now I am leaving [my home] behind. I am leaving everything behind me, even my memories. My mum is very attached to me, and when I told her that I am leaving, she couldn’t believe it, and she said to me ‘try again to be here’. But I couldn’t.