Gay poet blacklisted in Iran seeks asylum in Israel

In his native Iran, leaders openly wish for Israel to be wiped off the map. Yet Payam Feili, a poet and novelist, developed what he called a "special relationship" with the place, imagining it in his stories, which are replete with gay themes and Jewish symbols.

Now Feili, who is 30 and openly gay, is living in Tel Aviv as he seeks asylum in Israel. He has tattooed a Star of David on his neck. “The more I gained a reputation outside Iran, the harder it became for me to live in Iran,” Feili said of the Islamic republic, where gay people have been executed. “Long before I left Iran,” he added, “I thought that the only other place in the world I could live was Israel.”

His is certainly an unusual path. Iran does not allow its nationals to visit Israel, which it has condemned as a “Little Satan”. Israel does not permit its citizens to travel to Iran, whose nuclear programme Israeli leaders have deemed a potentially existential threat to the Jewish state. The two countries once had close ties, but that ended with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 – before Feili was born.

Speaking at a news conference this week in Jerusalem, Feili recounted how he got from there to here. In recent years, he was unable to publish anything in Iran and even his friends hesitated to contact him. He said that when he began working with an Israeli who was translating his latest novella into Hebrew, government loyalists wrote articles accusing him of immorality and collaborating with the enemy.

He fled to Turkey in 2014 after being blacklisted and detained several times. Israel granted him entry on a temporary visa as a visiting artist about three months ago. “The regime was pressing me to leave the country,” Feili said, speaking in Persian through a translator. “I got afraid,” he added. “People warned me that the articles could be a harbinger of worse things to come.”

A slender, delicate figure sporting a ring with a large turquoise stone, blue nail polish and ripped skinny jeans, Feili grew up in a Muslim family in Karaj, Iran's fourth largest city with about two million people. A censored edition of Feili's first book of poetry was published in Iran when he was 19. About half a dozen subsequent works have been published abroad, mostly in Persian.

His new milieu is the bustling, easy-going Mediterranean city of Tel Aviv, a favourite gay destination. He lives on Lilienblum Street, which is lined with hip bars, and he has been taken under the wing of the city’s gay community. He has not sought out Israeli Jews of Iranian descent. His fascination with Israel began as a young man, he said, after watching movies about the Holocaust. He then began reading the Torah, for its cultural and literary value. Present-day Israel, he said, “is exactly as I expected and even better and more beautiful.” But, he said, “I have no special connection with Judaism and do not want one, nor with any other religion.”

The Israel Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group, organised this week's news conference with Feili, promoting his story as an example of Israel's openness in contrast to its Middle East neighbours. Israel has sometimes been accused of "pinkwashing", or portraying itself as a progressive hub of tolerance, particularly toward gays, to detract attention from the government's policies toward Palestinians. At prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's annual meeting with the international news media this year, there was a performance by the Israeli transgender pop singer Dana International, who appealed to reporters to go easy on Israel.

Feili said that he was aware that not all Israelis were so tolerant, and that a 16-year-old Jewish girl, Shira Banki, was fatally stabbed at a gay pride march in Jerusalem last year. But he noted that many countries of the world were now grappling with extremism.

His journey to Israel began after Ido Dagan, an Israeli writer and director, interviewed him for NRG, an Israeli news site. Dagan was directing a show called "Three Reasons", which he described as "a kind of cabaret" based in part on Feili's work. Dagan asked Feili if he would like to visit Israel, and decided to try to bring him over for the premiere at the Tzavta Theatre in Tel Aviv.

Short-term visa

Feili's sponsors approached Miri Regev, the Israeli minister of culture, who sent a recommendation to the interior minister. Still, Dagan said it took a few months of lobbying until Feili was granted a short-term visitor's visa. Feili, who got the Star of David tattoo while in Turkey, said he had also been invited to the United States, but chose Israel. He said he had not met with any Israeli officials since his arrival.

Hagai Kalai, a Tel Aviv lawyer representing Feili, said he was not getting any special treatment as the asylum request goes through the normal channels. Israel, which now has a population of tens of thousands of migrants from Africa, is notoriously tough on asylum applications. The authorities cannot deport Feili pending a decision from the committee that grants refugee status, but the process takes time.

“Meanwhile,” Kalai said, “he has no work permit or health insurance, so it is a bit problematic.” Feili has been reluctant to speak in detail about his experiences with the Iranian authorities, though he said he had been fired from his job as an editor at a publishing company after his last book was published in Germany. Kalai said he understood that Feili had been detained three times by government forces, and that he had been “humiliated and maybe even tortured”.

An article published by the Daily Beast in 2014 described Feili as having recently emerged from his third and longest stint in captivity, and said he was held in a shipping container for 44 days. Feili said he was in contact with his family in Iran via Skype almost daily. He noted that the Iranian government did not recognize homosexuality or refer to it by name, describing it as a "deviation", just as it refused to recognise or name Israel. A lot of people thought he had been foolish to be so open about his sexuality in Iran, he said, but he had wanted to inspire others.

“I believe it is even more dangerous when people live in hiding, behind false identities,” he said. “Through time you start lying to yourself and you become isolated in your loneliness.”

New York Times