Gay Iranian poet Payam Feili flees persecution, finds himself in Israel

AP
TEL AVIV, DECEMBER 11

Payam Feili fled his native Iran last year because of the persecution he faced over his sexuality. Now, the gay poet has made a years-long dream come true — he is visiting Israel, Iran’s archenemy and a country known for its tolerance toward gays.
But Mr. Feili (30) stands out not only because of his arrival in a country so at odds with his own, but because of his professed adoration for the state some Iranian leaders have dubbed a cancer and have called to be wiped off the map.
‘I can’t believe I am here’
“I still can’t believe I am here,” the soft-spoken Mr. Feili said in Farsi, speaking through his translator and the friend who brought him to Israel, Adi Liberman.
“All the stupid and ridiculous threats the regime issues against Israel have never influenced me and will never influence me,” he said.
The gay poet, who has written nine books, many of them openly discussing homosexuality, escaped to Turkey last year when the Iranian government’s threats against him and his family became unbearable.
Israel fascinates him
Mr. Feili has nurtured a fascination with Israel since he was a youngster, when he began watching films about the Holocaust and started learning about the Torah. He has a coin-sized ‘Star of David’ tattoo on his neck.
“I grew closer and closer to Israel and I fell in love with it,” he said.
Friends once, archrivals now
While Israel and Iran once had close economic and cultural ties, those links crumbled after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and relations since then have grown increasingly hostile. The two countries have no diplomatic ties and it is illegal for citizens of each country to visit the other, although Israel makes exceptions under certain circumstances.
Standing on the roof of Tel Aviv’s city hall with gleaming skyscrapers and the city’s signature Bauhaus buildings behind him, Mr. Feili brandished his Iranian passport, which declares “the holder of this passport is not entitled to travel to the occupied Palestine.”
Survived bureaucratic hoops
Bringing him to Israel involved four months of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, dealing with various government ministries and security issues, Ms. Liberman explained.
She said he was finally granted a three-month visa, but that he has begun a process to remain in Israel permanently on humanitarian grounds.
Mr. Feili’s novella, which is being produced in Israel by Ido Dagan, portrays the unrequited love of two Iranian soldiers fighting in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Mr. Dagan has said Feili is the first Iranian he has ever met.
Bound by desire for
freedom
“There are differences, big differences in terms of worldview, values, language and our background, but we connected because of his desire to taste freedom,” Mr. Dagan said. He said Mr. Feili’s Israeli friends have already come up with a nickname for him — Queen of Israel, a character from his latest book.
Mr. Feili said he was surprised by how boisterous Israelis could be and how much they honked their car horns, which reminded him of his Iranians.
At ease here
Sporting dark shades, a white scarf and a large indigo ring, he appeared to feel at home in Tel Aviv as he confidently walked through the city centre, greeting passers-by.
Israel’s economic and cultural hub, Tel Aviv is a popular gay-friendly destination. Israel accepts gays serving openly in its military, but homosexuality is shunned among the country’s conservative ultra-Orthodox community. This year, an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 15-year-old girl to death at a Jerusalem Pride parade.
The collection that ‘book’ed him
Mr. Feili was reluctant to talk about the threats against him back home, but said they began after the publication in Iran of a heavily censored version of his first book, a collection of poetry titled “The Sun’s Platform,” in 2005. Mr. Feili was blacklisted and has been banned from publishing in Iran since.
According to the PEN American Centre, a writers’ group advocating for freedom of expression, Mr. Feili’s e-mail account was hacked and he was locked out of his online blog.
Family still being harassed
Mr. Feili declined to discuss the details of the arrests but said his family, in the Iranian city of Karaj, was still being harassed.
Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of PEN, called Mr. Feili a “very courageous individual being hounded by his government because of his identity.” She said Iran’s treatment toward the poet was “a core crime against expression.”
But Mr. Feili refuses to be cowed.
Lifestyle wont change
“I am not going to stop living my life or changing something about my life because the regime threatens me or my family,” he said. “Even when I lived in Iran under an execution order, I continued living my life as I wanted to and nothing will affect that.”