What to do after being dragged through town tied to a horse cart

In the last chapter of The Pink Line, Mark Gevisser’s survey of the state of the LGBT movement worldwide, Gevisser recounts this story:

In Egypt in 2013, I met a kid who called himself Juelz, a teenager from a provincial city, who was found by his family with his male lover. His head was shaved and he was dragged through town tied to a horse cart, and then locked in a room for a month, beaten daily. He wanted to kill himself but kept himself alive by posting ‘It Gets Better videos,’ he told me, on YouTube via his cell phone, advising others in similar situations. It did get better for Juelz: he qualified as a lawyer, stayed defiantly out of the closet, and was planning, when we last spoke, to join his boyfriend in the United States.

Egypt is currently a terrible place legally for gay people. Besides hostile families like this, the Egyptian state security forces regularly hunt and persecute gay people, even beating and jailing them. But, boy, what a story Juelz tells! He had access to a cell phone to record and post YouTube videos? Maybe that was after the month-long captivity; I’m sure he was still in shock. I hope he’s in the US now. Even with Trump it’s better than Egypt. 

source: The Pink Line: journeys across the world’s queer frontiers

by Mark Gevisser

2020. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York