“My name is Omar, I am a 21 years old Sudanese guy, My hobbies are swimming and writing. I am very known with my wide funny smile and recognizable laugh between my friends.
I studied my primary school at an only boys school, My school was very religious and strict, I’ve been beaten for the silliest reasons. When I reached grade three, my cousin came from Saudi-Arabia to live with us, he was very polite. he was older than me with five years, When I reached grade 4 (I was 9 years old) my cousin started acting very weird, he started getting bad grades in school and brought weird looking guys to our house, One day he asked me to give him a cheek kiss, I ignored him and went to the bathroom to shower, when I got out, he said “oh you look very beautiful, I love clean people, come to me”, I ignored him again, but this time he jumped on me in front of my brothers, he forced me to lay on bed and surrounded me with his legs, held my hands behind my back with one hand and the other hand in my head. he couldn’t take off my clothes because I was going to run, he was barely holding me, I felt his boner in my back, then he wanted to kiss me, I moved my head left and right avoiding him, so my brother held my head for him, my other brother stood still watching, and my cousin started kissing me. I felt very vulnerable, I thought my brothers were going to help me afterwards, but they didn’t, instead they threatened me to tell my parents with what happened, I was very afraid, both of my parents are very religious and strict so I thought they will kill me if they, so I had to obey my cousin. yes my cousin didn’t stop, he kept harassing me for almost a month.
In the next months I was sexually harassed by 5 of my cousins and My Islamic studies teacher (for several times). I have been sexually harassed like million times, but none of them really had sex with me “raped me”.
This part of my life was by far the most difficult part, because I felt insecure with my own close family, also because my parents used to beat me a lot.
When I was 16 I felt attracted to guys, I was very afraid to get exposed, so I started searching in Google for a solution, “how to be straight? what should I do?”, and I remember reading lots of articles about gay people who wanted to be converted into straight, I did all the things they mentioned, but nothing changed, my feeling were still the same. I remember watching straight porn, but I focused more in the male than the female.
After a while I moved to Saudi-Arabia with my family, I used to go to “Al-Kaaba” which is the holiest place for Muslims to go. I asked god lots of things but part of that was to fix my feelings, “make me straight”, to end my life if it’s going to be malignant, to not get exposed to anyone and of course to live my life without any restrictions. After a while of living in Saudi-Arabia I downloaded Grindr, and enjoyed chatting with many people. The next week I knew I wasn’t going to change, I will not be straight and I was never straight, I became very sad, I remember crying alone because this is going to be a secret for life and no one will ever know about this, I felt oppressed, lonely, that I will never experience the real love and angry because I asked god in the holiest place to heal me but nothing changed.
one month ago I went to Europe again and I found a gay guy there who took me to a gay bar, and it was my first time ever inside a gay bar, and I was even dancing, not very comfortable but I was doing it.
Everyone was convincing me to stay in Europe, to apply for asylum, and for a minute I was really thinking about it, because there you’re given the right to be whoever you wanna be. But I couldn’t because I really love the place I was born in, I really love Sudan, so why do I have to leave and start my life all over again? Why not my country just break these stupid laws? why not give freedom to all to be whatever they wanna be? unless am paying my taxes, not harming anyone and not doing any crimes, how am I even disturbing you? am just deeply sad, because if I decided to live my life as gay I will properly leave Sudan and live abroad, cause people like me are brought to this life only to suffer and am so tired of suffering, I just want to rest.”

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