It's a beautiful story, because when two people love each other, it's always a beautiful story. It's an even more beautiful story because these two people are from Israel and Palestine, almost as if the mystery of love has the strength to knock down human walls. But what we're about to tell you also becomes a terrible story because, in reality, human walls resist, they don't crumble, because the two protagonists are from two enemy peoples, even more so because they are two men. Gay. Two ’mortal sins,‘ in the literal sense of the term: Fuad, the Palestinian, 27, risks the death penalty. He's under house arrest in Jerusalem, at the home of Ezra, 50, his Jewish partner of three years. Any day now, the judges will decide his future: Fuad is an illegal immigrant, they have already wanted to send him back to his homeland, but Ezra has always found a way to hide him, cover him up: he would load him into the trunk of his car and take him home, their home, a studio apartment in Jerusalem where they live, love each other, and work in Ezra's plumbing company.
But not this time, it's a showdown: either one side or the other. But if he ends up there, beyond the wall, in Palestine (which is his homeland), Fuad dies.
Monstrous tortures
It's not the judges who will burn him, but his family members themselves. It's already happened to many other Palestinian youths, and they were murders that went unnoticed, with the police accustomed to looking the other way. Boys stoned. Mutilated. For those who commit homosexuality, Islamic Sharia has no mercy: it will even tear out your eyes. And before the final blow, it makes you suffer the pains of hell: your head in a sack of excrement for hours and a bottle to inflict the worst torture: physical and metaphorical. Let's be clear: we're not talking about morality or some general principle here. This isn't meant to be a treatise on homosexuality or heterosexuality. No, let's try to be more concrete: this is about life. This is about trying to scream out a cry for salvation for a 27-year-old boy, who has a name, Fuad, a surname, Moussa, and also a face, which we show you in the photo on the side. If he stays in Jerusalem with the person he loves, Fuad will be safe. If they send him back to his homeland, no: he will be killed. Even though homosexuality is not strictly a crime in Palestine, it is in Islam. What to do? There are two solutions. The first is the simplest, and it's the one that several people are already admirably trying to pursue. Since being gay is not a sin in Israel, a sort of chain letter is being created, consisting of letters and emails to the Israeli government: even twenty Italian parliamentarians have joined in. They are asking for Fuad to be pardoned, to be spared from returning to his homeland where he would be tortured and killed. Let him remain in peace in Jerusalem, together with Ezra. For now, Sharon's government isn't listening, and it needs to be understood: it fears setting a precedent, fears that granting ‘asylum‘ to homosexuals expelled or threatened with death from Palestine will become yet another weapon for terrorists who are just waiting to blow themselves up, creating more deaths and mourning. I pretend to be gay, enter Jerusalem, and act as a ‘man-bomb’: that's Israel's concern.
But there's another path we could try. It's terribly more complicated, of course; but it can also be taken to avoid the kind of political speculation that unfortunately always wins these days, almost as if saving Fuad were a battle against insensitive Israel...
But no, let's remember that it's in Palestine that they want to kill the boy and in any case, Fuad is involved here, let's leave aside Sharon, Arafat or who knows who, please.
We write to relatives
Relatives. Here's the second way. Fuad's parents also necessarily have a face, a heart, a soul. His father, his mother, his cousins; yes, all those who want to kill him. Who feel shame and anger. So: let's try to tell, to write to a mother that a child is a gift and not private property. You make him, you love him, you don't kill him. Write to the Israeli government, so they can let Fuad live in Jerusalem:
Internet address: [email protected]
Text: I am applying for a residence permit in Fuad, ID number 861611707..
But also write (for now, send everything to our email) to Fuad's mother and father: in the name of love, don't kill him if he comes back. Hug him, he loves you.
