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Tag: queersyrian

Episode 208 [in English]: Pride for Sarah Hegazi

Hey everyone! We’ve missed you, and we’re excited to return from our break with an episode we’ve had cooking for a while! 

CW: general discussion of suicide

Taim is a student from Syria in Cologne, Germany, and one of the organizers of the organization Pride for Sarah Hegazi. Taim discusses the organization’s second demonstration that took place in the summer of 2023, dedicated to the Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi and the Saudi trans woman Eden Knight, both of whom died by suicide in conditions of structural queerphobia. 

The protest took place in an Arab neighborhood and involved 50 participants chanting queer slogans in Arabic, with the goal of creating both visibility and discomfort. Taim discusses the importance of putting queer Arabic lingo in the streets—not just in academic settings—and maintaining Sarah’s revolutionary communist ethics in protest organizing. They also discuss future hopes that the organization can work to help queer people still living in the SWANA region.  Taim’s fellow organizers are Fadi, Ahmed and Salman.

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Episode 182 [in English]: Samer Ghrawi


Samer Ghrawi is a Palestinian/Syrian-American musical artist based in California. With musical influences including Gospel, Soul, RnB, Arab pop, and older Arab music, his work sheds light on emotional struggles that are often swept under the rug.  

Samer tells us about growing up gay in a strict Christian environment and Arab in an overwhelmingly white school, falling in love with RnB music as a “guilty” pleasure, experiencing conversion therapy, and eventually repairing his relationship with his parents. He also discusses the unspoken prevalence of alcoholism and addiction in both Arab and queer cultures, his own to sobriety and recovery, and running BIPOC-centered AA groups. We also talked about the particular difficulty of friendship breakups, recording zaghareet in Ikea, Americans not knowing geography, and why heteronormativity is actually kinda gay.  

You’ll also hear Samer’s most recent track “I Ain’t Got No Time.”

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