I was born in Cairo, the capital of the Dictatorship of Egypt, with a traditional, abusive, and strict Muslim family. When I was in elementary school, I remember asking my biological mother: “What does God look like? Because I can see him as this big, brown giant creature that is always watching us.” Suddenly, my body shook, feeling the heavy hands of my mother slapping my face and yelling, “Haram! Never think or say anything like that again!” And just for the record, slapping on the face was a “nicer” form of punishment in my family. 

As I was growing up between 2011 and 2019, from ages 10 to 18, I watched the Dictatorship of Egypt unravel. Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship (1981-2011) endured a deadly revolution in 2011. Although the terrorist group of the Muslim Brotherhood played a role in the revolution in order to take control of the country with the assistance of the military, the military was already playing both sides, orchestrating a long con conspiracy. This later resulted in a coup on the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013 after they had won the first democratic elections in 2012 and its ongoing aftermath; an oppressive fog that never truly lifted. But oppression is not just written in history books or broadcast on the news; it seeps into life, friendships, choices, and the very sense of self.

Living under a dictatorship is not just about fearing the government; it is about fearing the people around you. The system does not just rule with an iron fist; it molds the minds of its citizens, turning them into its enforcers. Only those consumed by it know exactly how it feels when you are stripped of your personal, rudimentary rights. In layman’s terms, they are enforcing the policy of a corrupt government, which eradicates your rights. I call it the enslaved citizen policy. 

And when the system turns its own people into watchdogs, the betrayal does not come from distant officials in uniform; it comes from the very people you once trusted. When I was a teenager, making friends was effortless. It was easy because I was never truly myself. I was never able to be myself, and the one time I did, it caused my best friends of 5 years to be my executioners. They stabbed me in the back and tried to tell my biological family, “Your son is going down a ‘bad’ path. He is an atheist. He promotes and supports LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of religion, disagrees with the Qur’an, has long hair, and we suspect he is bisexual.” Yes, this was my very “bad path.”

While the system turns citizens into enforcers, it keeps its iron fist ready for those who slip through the cracks. In 2020, I encountered that firsthand. I was with a group of friends in a casual coffee shop in downtown Cairo when we were forcefully detained by two men identifying themselves as state officers—think of homeland security officers, though without uniforms, badges, or anything to indicate who they were. We were held for over 30 minutes. Our phones were thoroughly searched, and we were questioned for social media logins, such as text messages and Facebook, with no search warrant, prior criminal history, parole, or permission. It was this or else. And when I say else, please think about the CIA black sites in shown Hollywood blockbusters, but strip away the cinematic restraint, and mix it with a group of inhumane men who take pleasure in torture, armed with a dozen toys. One of those toys? An electroshock torture device.

In 2017, there was a concert in Cairo for the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila, whose lead singer, Hamed Sinno, is openly gay. Sarah Hegazi, an Egyptian activist, was among a group of fans arrested for waving a rainbow flag in support of LGBTQ+ rights. She was charged with “joining an organization whose intent was to contravene the law by inciting acts of immorality or debauchery.” According to Sarah, the officer blindfolded her and took her by car to a location she did not know. She sat in a chair, gagged with a cloth with her hands cuffed. She was subject to an electric shock until losing consciousness. Sarah sought asylum in Canada in 2018 but was unable to escape her mental prison and died by suicide in 2020. In 2019, a successful, “religious” engineering student went with his best friend, who mocked him for depression, to the Cairo Tower. All of a sudden, the engineering student jumped off the Cairo Tower, which is 614 ft.

In August 2020, I decided that was enough. I took a huge risk for the good it would bring. Something I knew would be illegal and punishable by the Egyptian Constitution. I created an online community, which eventually peaked at 33,000 members, to promote mental health awareness and human rights, support LGBTQ+ rights, and spread “real scientific information.” To illustrate, being or even supporting anything but heterosexuality is criminalized in the Constitution and the medical community in the Dictatorship of Egypt. All will be discussed in another part of the series named The Ridgeway Napkins of Crimes. 

Because of this continuous fear and oppression, prior to coming to the United States, I was a zombie; my overall health was poor. I was 77 pounds. I had sunken eyes. I was in a state of waiting, waiting for my arrest, waiting for nightmares to stop, and waiting for the moment I would follow through on the suicide I had already planned. But coming to the United States has changed everything for me. It did not just save my life; it has caused a renaissance of my soul. 

My decision to seek asylum may seem obvious to most, a dash for freedom, a way out, but it is never that simple. Choosing to flee was a Pyrrhic choice, a hollow triumph, where I traded one kind of prison for another. The doors for my asylum may lead to freedom in one sense, but also lead inward to the darker recesses of my mind, where all the wounds I thought were buried resurface, raw and unrelenting. It is a mental prison, not one with walls, but with roots that entangle me from within. Every step forward unravels the self I once knew, and with every breath, I feel the weight of a future that never truly feels under my own control. Would I turn back the clock and do anything differently?  Not in a million years. They say freedom comes with a price, but it also comes with access to mental health services.

This is part one of a series of personal essays. Until then, the mystery remains: Had I escaped the cage or just stepped into a larger one? I do not have the answer, and perhaps the answer is not yet mine to know.