CROOKED TEETH

A gay Muslim refugee navigates the fractured memories from his past.

“Writing this memoir is a betrayal,” Ramadan writes in his opening line—and then proceeds to brilliantly betray. From his family’s roots in Damascus to subsequent experiences in North Africa and Canada, the Syrian-born writer traces the experiences that shaped him. Many are charged with a political edge. He writes as a seasoned journalist, evident in the chronicles of major political moments, from Cairo during the Arab Spring riots to working as a journalist at an English-language, government-sanctioned magazine in Syria. But there are also lighthearted moments about romance and sex and found community. Throughout the narrative, there’s the author’s overarching fear of persecution—the looming threat of imprisonment for being too rebellious or “too queer.” Ramadan writes with a finger on the pulse of Arab culture and history, piecing together a life from fragmented memory alongside the political currents from British occupation to the men arrested on a Nile boat for accusations of being gay. The prose aches with a melancholic longing from his new home in Canada with his husband—“I am losing the streets of Damascus”—as he searches “old photos taken in Damascus for stable backgrounds and faces of people whose names I can’t recall.” Ramadan’s journalism shines through and fills a needed gap in reportage seen through a queer lens. But from a universal lens, it’s for anyone who has been on the outskirts of the community they were born into, and, with that, Ramadan writes a tender exploration of diaspora.

A vital addition to queer Arab lit.