“As a Muslim and an only child, two things were expected of me. Act as girly as I could by being submissive and eventually marrying when I’m of age. Now this was where the problem started. I was far from submissive and very far from wanting to settle down with any man. Being myself, that is, in the decisions that I make concerning my life, choice of clothing, choice of friends, that is gender of friends that I could socialize with, etc., was deemed as being rebellious. Eventually when the pressure to get married became too much I left home.

Coming from a strong Christian background, my Mom who had two girls, always dreamed of the day her girls would get married and have kids to conform with the normal Christian values, eventually she realized who I was and that was where the problem started. It became worse when my big sister got married and started having her kids. She used to say, ‘It was demonic, could push my womb favor away, and I won’t be able to have kids.’ It used to get to me a lot, because I love kids and knew I wanted to have my own, except I couldn’t do it the way she wanted me to. I used to wonder what was to happen to my child since I was living in a homophobic country, but I knew it had to happen in my terms, not my mother’s.

• So we met in 2012 and then in 2014 amidst challenges we decided we wanted to have a child.
• We couldn’t afford a clinical insemination so he came up with the idea of getting a non-community member to donate his sperms so we could do the insemination at home.
• Initially she wasn’t buying the idea, yes she wanted a child, but I don’t want anyone coming back to claim the child.
• Eventually I got to know the gentlemen, he was very cool, handsome, and intelligent.
• So we arranged have the sperms and did the insemination; we succeeded on the second try.
• Nine months down the lane we had a baby, our heaven on earth.
• He’s our everything, our life and our future. Sometimes when we are settling our differences and he walks in on us, in the heat of everything, he smiles and then takes all the tension away. I could say he’s the pillar of this relationship.
• We got engaged last year, and eventually hope to get married, somehow someday.
• It’s a dream we are hoping will eventually happen, just the same way we dream of being able to publicly live our lives like heterosexual couples do, with no form of discrimination.”

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