Moroccan Author Pens Open Letter to LGBTQ Youth Amid Pandemic Challenges

"[...] We have been told for a few months now that human beings must change. They will no longer be cruel, they will no longer be selfish, they will no longer be hyper-capitalists, frenzied and frightening consumers. I don’t know if I should believe all these beautiful speeches. Beautiful lies are everywhere," writes the writer.

"On the other hand, I see the assumed cruelty renewing itself, mutating, in Morocco as soon as it comes to LGBTQ, your community, our community that is both virtual and very real. These last few weeks, he says, your country has invented a new way to jostle you, to bring you to your knees, to make you tremble. To exclude you. To designate you as the enemy to be defeated."

The author of the book "La vie lente" evokes the campaign of denigration against the LGBTQ community in Morocco orchestrated by the influencer Sofia Taloni, a young Moroccan living in Turkey. "She says she wanted to expose the homosexual truth in Morocco. She didn’t understand that if you hide, if others hide, it’s because they have no choice. No one protects them. Neither family, nor friends, nor society and certainly not the authorities," he points out.

"Loneliness and fragility. That’s your situation. And you don’t know what to do except to become, despite yourself, an actor, a very great actor. [...] To endure the dictatorship of heterosexuals. But you must remain alive. You are alive. And I am here too. Abdellah, your brother. Moroccan like you. In the same fear as you. I am with you. I take your hand. And I sing in your ears all my love. [...] Hold on. Hold on. You are the one who is right. You are the one who will win this battle," he encourages.