“Habibi, I want to meet you. I want to be in the same room with you. I enjoy our Skype sessions, but I want to be with you. I want to show you my country, my culture. I want to prepare meals for you, to show you my talent at that and for you to taste the food we eat. You do not want to visit me, to meet me?”
I was beginning to squirm now, as he was putting me on the spot for an answer. How could I possibly meet him? In a small town in the desert in a not too friendly Muslim country where there were ISIS cells and where I would be perceived by the residents as a wealthy American that someone might want to kidnap and hold for ransom?
But I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t want to say anything that would discourage him, as I understood well his hopeless situation. He had had the misfortune to be born a gay man in the wrong place, and I was his only connection to the world he belonged in.