The first time I met Sarah was in a sex shop in Kyiv. Both of us were looking for a lace-up outfit for the upcoming queer party in one of Kyiv’s top techno clubsand I recall her picking a swell look. We glimpsed at each other and smiled. If you\u2019re looking for queer party clothing, a sex shop is the best way to find it.<\/p>\n
Two years later, we sit in a tacky football pub. It\u2019s half-empty now but the barman assures, it will be crowded soon. We are cold and starving, so being picky is not an option. \u201cWe chose the most ‘suitable’ place for the confidential interview,” Sarah jokes. She looks a bit hesitant but keen. She\u2019s excited about the idea that the issues disturbing her will have some media coverage: \u201cI bet the most challenging part of this interview is to find a quiet spot in Berlin at 7 pm,” she scoffs.<\/p>\n
As we’re scrutinising for seats, Sarah shares her first interview experience. \u201cOnce, this girl asked me for an interview. I shared my story frankly with her but it didn\u2019t end well. She portrayed me as this sad and tragic Iranian girl you couldn’t help but feel pity for, but that isn’t me.\u201d Sarah questionably peaks at me. I reply that she could kick my ass if I do something like this.<\/p>\n
Sarah is tall and has soft curly hair arranged into a ponytail. Her posture looks drastic and tenacious as though she\u2019s ready to run a marathon anytime. The light from an excessively decorated room with vulgar red neon reflects on her determined face. Sarah is Iranian, she\u2019s a trans woman and queer. She moved to Ukraine to study in her late teens and chose to stay. When the Russian invasion started, Sarah moved to Austria. Now, she\u2019s working as a programmer in one of the biggest IT companies there.<\/p>\n
I turn on the recorder. Reminiscing her childhood in Iran, she says: \u201cI was just an ordinary kid beside the part when it reaches identity\u201d. Starting at an early age, Sarah began showing signs of gender nonconformity. She always tended to socialise with girls and had a girl best friend but soon parents banned them from seeing each other. “There is a tradition in Iran to bring toys before a child is born. I recall having this entire collection of ‘feminine’ toys locked away. The more I revealed my curiosity toward non-masculine things, the more alarmed my family got. My grandma once said, “If someone like you plays with girl\u2019s toys, their future will be wrecked.” These words remained with me for years.”<\/p>\n
I ask Sarah if she ever wore a hijab in Iran. She answers that her socialisation and upbringing were as male, confessing after you lived on both sides, you discover \u201cthe fierce effort society endures to control women\u2019s bodies\u201d.<\/p>\n
As time passes by, the music grows louder. We are sitting in a bare room and are rarely interrupted by the staff members running in and out of the kitchen. There are some pieces Sarah leaves to discuss. Her concern is, if her dad finds out about the article, he can make her life difficult. Sarah\u2019s father is an influential man in Iran, she has never revealed her transition to him. They haven\u2019t seen each other for more than ten years now and rarely speak on the phone. Their relationships was complicated since Sarah\u2019s childhood. Her father never approved of her leaving Iran and from her early teens, she had to take care of herself alone. Whenever someone crosses the room, we start whispering.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"blockquote","text":"\"In Ukraine, I met a girl. We met online, but after seeing in person we grew close quickly.\", Sarah smiles. ","source":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
\u201cShe was a queer person, and I felt comfortable coming out to her,” Sarah says of her partner, her greatest ally from the very beginning. Without her immense support, she would not be here. They have been married for ten years now.<\/p>\n
As soon as she moved to Ukraine, Sarah started examining ways to transition. Shortly via her community, she found an organisation that works with LGBTQA+ people in Ukraine. They assisted her with legal advice and provided special psychological support. “My transition in Ukraine was smooth compared to what trans people sometimes go through\u201d. Nowadays, there are still countries in Europe that maintain mandatory sterilisation if you need to change your gender. About 14 progressive countries \u2013 Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium are among them \u2013 have just recently banned obligatory sterilisation in the past years.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill, even though luckily I had no complications, the procedure in today\u2019s world is dehumanising. To get access to hormone therapy, you need to be in a mental health facility for two weeks and get a documented \u201cdiagnosis\u201d of body dysphoria. It is humiliating.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is getting late and Sarah rushes home to feed her cat. I ask if we can meet tomorrow and she nods. French people blasting in the background, their football team is winning. The waiter gets us Berliner Luft on the house and we suggest he joins us. He says \u201cProst!” and we respond with \u201cByd\u2019mo\u201d. Sweet peppermint shots prepare us for a freezing street.<\/p>\n
The following day I meet Sarah at the apartment where she stays with her wife, they came to Berlin for the holidays. Sarah\u2019s wife Nina is cooking dinner for us, it smells spicy. We are observing Nina cutting a carrot. She is so fast I can sense a little tingle on the end of my fingertips as if they are about to get a cut.<\/p>\n
“I can not believe it is winter again,” Sarah whispers.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I don\u2019t think we have recovered from the previous one,” Nina says. For the moment, everyone went quiet. We were sitting and recreating those first days of the Russian invasion in our heads.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember that morning perfectly well”, Sarah reminisced. \u201cAs the first thing I grabbed my phone in the morning and saw a dozen messages from my colleagues. I checked the news and it became clear.”<\/p>\n
Sarah and Nina managed to find a nearby shelter and decided to spend the night there. The next day they woke up from the deafening scratching noise. A military airplane had been shot and crashed into a building just a block away. They spent four more days in a shelter.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes before bed, I am waiting for an air raid. And if it does happen, where should I go? There are no bomb shelters by my house in Austria.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah says she feels like she is in between two flames. On one hand, Russia has started the campaign of the most perverse crimes against humanity and acts of genocide in Ukraine. She adds someone might consider it an exaggeration, yet, it can not be named anything less than that. On the other hand, the Iranian government commenced the massacre and murder of unarmed protesters with heavy weaponry.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth my homes are on fire and all I can do is try to keep going, donating and spreading the word.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah states it’s not just their fight and calls on people with representative governments to unite and demand their authorities to put a grim cost on Russia and Iran for their crimes. In wars and riots, all we got as a piece of information is depersonalised talks about statistics and numbers. We must not fail to recognise these are real people and we should call their names. Nika Shakarami, a queer girl from Iran, was killed after protesting. She used to date Nele, a German girl from Leipzig. Ukrainian heart surgeon Ira, who worked with cancer-ill kids, was killed along with her husband and unborn child in their apartment in Kyiv by an Iranian drone, launched by the Russian military. A newborn, in a maternity hospital in Zaporizhya, Ukraine, was killed by a Russian missile.<\/p>\n
“I’d love to say his name but he was too young to get one.”<\/p>\n
The talk became vigorous, and the room went silent. I can hear a little crunching sound. It\u2019s their cat, unbothered, having her snack. Sarah tells me the cat was diagnosed with cancer and that it can’t be cured. The cat just came into their apartment last November, recently before the war. She has never left ever since.<\/p>\n
Sarah pets her on the back: \u201cTen years ago I moved to Ukraine, a peaceful country in Europe where not much was happening. Where people too once had the privilege to perceive a war as something hectic and unreal that only exists from a historical perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
After everything that has happened, Sarah no longer has a sense of home as a stable fixed location: \u201dMy home is wherever I am\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n
This sentence, which from another person would sound as flat as the wisdom from a fortune cookie, spoken by her somehow sounds unique. \u201cLife has prepared me to live in a moment. And sometimes I have to move to survive, so my home moves with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turn off the recorder. Sarah says that she wishes she could turn off her thoughts as effortlessly.<\/p>\n
Written by Shoshanna Kiyanitsa<\/a>.<\/p>\n