The guard’s name was Michael, which in Lebanese Arabic is pronounced Michelle. He stopped our car at a military checkpoint on the highway to Hariri airport, on that day in 2014 when I made my final trip out of Beirut. “Why are you going to the airport?” asked Michael, as he examined my Syrian passport, flipping its pages too fast to read. His M16 rifle rested on his shoulder. His military uniform had never felt the touch of an iron.
“I am emigrating to Canada,” I answered. My words seemed to anger him. He flicked through the pages until he found the Canadian visa. He waited a moment, then tossed the passport through the car window. It landed in my lap.
“You fucking refugee,” he shouted. “You Syrians come to Lebanon, eat our food, take our jobs, then get to fly away to some fancy country.”
I remained silent. I wasn’t going to argue with an armed teenager. My Lebanese friend, who was driving, shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Go to your promised land!”
A couple of hours later, I sat on a crowded plane heading to that promised land. My life was changing – I just didn’t know it yet. Over the next nine months, the stress of being an immigrant would get to me. I would lose more than a quarter of my weight, self-medicate with weed, alcohol and party drugs, and finally crash and burn out.
But that is jumping ahead.
I had a beautiful, albeit naive idea of what my life would be like in Canada. After two years of being a queer Syrian refugee in Lebanon, I thought everything would just fall into place. The usual images of queer joy in the west filled my head: Pride parades; boys holding hands over hot beverages in cutesy cafes. I had been sponsored through a Canada-specific initiative called the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program: a group of Canadian citizens, most of whom were older white men, joined forces to submit an application to their government requesting my safe delivery to Canada. I thought I would be instantly loved and protected – and that, finally, I would be safe.
This could not have been further from the truth. I joke sometimes that my first year in Canada was the hardest year of my life – but it is not really a joke.
My assumption was similar to the one made by Michael, the Lebanese guard. I believed that having shaken off the shackles of homophobia in the Middle East, I would be welcomed to the land of milk and honey, and doors would open. I would be the writer I always wanted to be. I would have the out-of-the-closet queer life I had always dreamed of. Looking back, it was silly – as if I were expecting an agent with a contract to be waiting for me at the airport, and a queue of cute boys to take me on romantic dates.
Trauma, it seems, is not luggage you can leave behind at Beirut’s airport. When I arrived in Canada, I brought my own list of traumatic experiences. They were hidden, like sleeping crocodiles in muddy water: a complicated family history of abandonment and rejection, the years I lived in fear due to my sexual orientation, a brief arrest by the Syrian authorities because of my activism in the LGBTQ+ community, and two years of living as a refugee in Lebanon – surrounded by homophobia, xenophobia and the possibility of being sent back to the civil war zone in my homeland.
I remember waking up for the first time in Canada. I sat in the darkness of the early morning, shook off the jet lag and listened. It was quiet: not a sound outside. No explosions or honking cars. No melody of people shouting or police sirens.
For some reason, that silence scared me.
Belonging, I soon discovered, is not a gift you receive at the doors of your new home. Over the next months, I struggled to find a community of friends; to understand the social cues of this society I had joined; to find a job that aligned with my aspirations.
Most importantly, I had to learn to navigate a concept new to me: racism. I grew up as part of the mainstream racial identity of Syria, a privilege I didn’t realise was mine until I moved to Canada and became a racial minority. That combined with my accented English and my refugee background, and I was flooded with micro-aggressions, limitations to my prospects in the job market, assumptions about my character and – worst of all – pity.
“Are you Aladdin?” a drunk man asked me, in an underground club.
“Excuse me?”
“ARE YOU ALADDIN?” he shouted over the DJ’s music.
“Aladdin is a fictional character.”
“Huh.” He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled my neck towards him: “Just kiss me, you desert monkey.”
I pushed him back, untangled myself and walked outside. I lit a joint and smoked my hurt away.
When I talk about this change, I feel as if I have to defend myself. The agreed narrative here is that Syria is bad, while Canada is good. This is an oversimplification. Syria can be bad, but it is also the place in which I grew up, with the language I had spoken since I was a child. It is my chosen family and friends, the first tree I ever climbed and the first boy I ever kissed. Canada can be good, but it is also new and confusing, with a history of colonisation and racism. It is a place where I couldn’t find work for a year, and where I faced discrimination based on the colour of my skin.
In the first week after I finally found a job, my boss sat me down. “I think you need to go to therapy,” she said. She had a couple of booklets listing supportive counselling services in Vancouver. “You need to look after yourself.”
I silently collected the booklets, and left her office. I hurried to the bathroom and locked the door. In the mirror, I could see the dark circles under my eyes. I lifted my T-shirt and I could count my ribs. I thought I was hiding my anxiety attacks well and that weed was calming me down. Instead, it was clear that I needed help.
Seven years later, I am married and have friends who came to my wedding, and babysit my dog when I travel for a book tour. If you looked at me now, you wouldn’t be able to see the hidden hurt boy who arrived in Canada eight years ago. I am here, though. I never leave. I sit back and watch as I balance on a tightrope between being a Syrian and being a Canadian.
• Danny Ramadan’s novel The Foghorn Echoes is out now (£16.99, Canongate)
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. The charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and ChildLine on 0800 1111. Wellness Together Canada is available for 24-hour support on 1-866-585-0445. In the US, Mental Health America is available on 800-273-8255.
• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
