Hello!

You love your parents because they’re your parents. But would you if they weren’t? This and other queer stories from the Middle East to Canada.

Today we meet Mike Z. and we’re talking about the book that saved his life: The Clothesline Swing by Danny Ramadan. And Danny joins us for the conversation!

Mike Z. lives in Lebanon and works in art therapy.

Danny Ramadan is a Lambda-award winning Syrian-Canadian author. His novels, The Clothesline Swing and The Foghorn Echoes continue to receive accolades. His is the author of the award-winning children’s books The Salma Series. Ramadan has raised over $350,000 for LGBTQ+ refugees. His memoir, Crooked Teeth, came out May 2024. He lives in Vancouver with his husband and two dogs.

The Clothesline Swing is a journey through the troublesome aftermath of the Arab Spring. A former Syrian refugee himself, Ramadan unveils an enthralling tale of courage that weaves through the mountains of Syria, the valleys of Lebanon, the encircling seas of Turkey, the heat of Egypt and finally, the hope of a new home in Canada.

Connect with Danny Ramadan

website: dannyramadan.com
instagram: @thedannyramadan
facebook: facebook.com/dannyramadan

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Credits

Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
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Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated by our recording platform Riverside.fm. This transcript does not include episode narration and contains the original interview between J.P. Der Boghossian and today’s guests. Any time-stamps do not correspond to the released audio file and tend not to be fully generated throughout the entire interview. It is approximately 85% accurate and will include spelling and grammatical errors. For any quotation purposes, we strongly recommend referencing the audio.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Okay, well why don’t we start with some introductions. So Mike, would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Mike Z. .
Hi, I’m Mike, I’m Lebanese -Armenian, I’m an LGBTQ activist in Beirut, have been for a very long time, and I’m a therapist as well.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
And may I ask like what type of therapy do you like, is there like with kids or with adults or like is around LGBTQ therapy? Like, can you give me a little bit about that if you’re able to?

Mike Z. .
Yeah, I work with all ages, all groups. It’s art therapy, so it kind of like is for everyone. And I’ve worked with a lot of people. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Wonderful. Wonderful. And Danny, would you like to introduce yourself?

Danny Ramadan .
Hi there, my name is Danny Ramadan. I am a Syrian Canadian author and an advocate for LGBTQ identifying refugees here in Canada. I’m coming to you today from my living room here in my home in Vancouver, British Columbia.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Beautiful. And what does that advocacy look like in Canada and Vancouver?

Danny Ramadan .
Well, it looks like raising as much money as freaking possible. The idea is when I was living in the Middle East, I was advocating with a lot of work on the ground. But over here, it’s not like I can do much about that other than to raise money and bring LGBTQ identifying folks here to Canada. So I have this fundraiser that has been running for years called An Evening in Damascus.

where basically I get Syrian food, a belly dance, a couple drag queens, I get people really drunk and then I ask them for as much money as possible.

Mike Z. .
That’s a good strategy.

Danny Ramadan .
It is, it is, it is. Yeah, yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
I’m glad I’m hopeful it’s very successful. Okay.

Danny Ramadan .
It is. We’ve raised $350,000 , so far. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. They go to an organization called Rainbow Refugee Society and this is the organization that sponsored me to come to Canada years ago. So basically they use the money to bring people like me here to Canada.

Mike Z. .
Amazing!

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Congratulations.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Congratulations on that work. Okay, well thank you for those introductions. And alright, here we go. So, Mike, what is the queer book that saved your life?

Danny Ramadan .
Thank you.

Mike Z. .
It’s a very nice queer book that is called The Clothesline Swing by an amazing author called Daniel Ramadan. I mean, I try to read as many books by Arab authors as I can, be it in English, in Arabic, in French also.

Danny Ramadan .
Hahaha.

Mike Z. .
And of course, whenever I see a queer book that is written by an Arabic person, I’m like, yeah, give me that. I want to read that. And I don’t remember actually how I stumbled upon it. I was trying to remember how did I get it, but I don’t remember. I just remember like seeking it, buying it. I don’t even remember if I bought it in Lebanon or abroad, probably abroad. I’m not sure.

But I do remember, however, that once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down. And I would take pictures, like snap pictures with my phone of some text and send them to my friends. And I’m like, look at that. Look how amazing. Look at this story. This is so beautiful. And all of that. So yeah, I mean, it’s just the way it.

And then I remember when I saw Danny online, I was like, okay, I need to know who that person is. And I’m like, he kind of looks familiar. And the time of the story, I mean, I have no idea how much, how biographical it is, and I don’t even care. But the things he described in the book look a lot similar to…

things I was observing around me in Beirut at the beginning of the Syrian crisis when a lot of Syrian people started coming to Lebanon. And when I started working with Syrian refugees, LGBTQ refugees here in Lebanon, and I’m like, I am sure I ran into him somewhere, maybe a club, especially that I used to DJ back then. And maybe…

Danny Ramadan .
God. I ran into a lot of people back then using the word ran into here between quotations. So maybe God knows. I don’t know.

Mike Z. .
But, but you know, that’s.

Mike Z. .
I’m sure.

Mike Z. .
i mean i can tell you later about the name of the club where you were the properties to the cheese and maybe but but it looked it it kind of reflected what the the stories that i was hearing from the refugees i mean i would work they would tell me a lot of stories and the whole book is about stories which i love and it it sounded like some of the stories i i i heard and i just and

It was very interesting. So there were like layer upon layer of interest for me, the stories of these two Syrian guys in Lebanon who just wanted to leave. And I remember saying goodbye to like, I stopped counting after a while. Like sometimes we’ll be working on a therapy cycle with someone and they’re like right in the middle or towards the end. They’re like, okay, this is the last week I see you because I just got my papers and we’re going to Amsterdam or Belgium or Canada or.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Wow.

Mike Z. .
or I don’t know where. So yeah, and then you have the layer of the whole two gay men living in an Arab country. I mean, I’m not that much familiar with Damascus. I’ve only visited Damascus a few times. I’m more familiar with Aleppo. But I mean, I could see that. I mean, a lot of the places he talked.

he talks about in the book I have seen. And then what happens in Beirut. And the stories I hear of a lot of the couples who leave together and go to Canada or whatever and the problems they have after a few years or a few months, you know. And it was so real and so true. And then on top of all of that, you have two…

Danny Ramadan .
gosh.

Mike Z. .
two subjects that were very personal to me, which are the war, because I’ve been through the civil war. The first years of my life were spent in a shelter, almost all the time in a shelter because of the civil war. And then facing death all the time and the relationship. The narrator, I’m saying, sorry, this is my…

Danny Ramadan .
narrator.

Mike Z. .
The narrator having with death is something that was equally interesting and frustrating to me at the same time because I would be like, I just want to like, I want to hate him, you know, but so yeah, this is where it got really personal. So there was one part that was not personal, but that were like,

it echoed a lot of the things I’ve seen and heard and everything and then the other part that was very very personal to me.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Danny, could you give us a description of the novel and what people can expect when they open to page one?

Danny Ramadan .
Wow.

gosh.

Gosh. So I wrote The Closed Line Swing years ago. And then it didn’t get published until . The Closed Line Swing is this mix of hyper realistic and magic realistic narrative in which my dog is yawning. So one second. I’ll come back.

Mike Z. .
I sometimes get carried away so cut me any time, don’t worry about it.

Danny Ramadan .
Hi, sorry she she has gotten into the habit this one of throwing her ball under the couch and then you’re whining so I can come and get her the ball because her joy is for me to get her the boy Anyways, hey

J.P. Der Boghossian .
No, is this great? It’s great Mike. You’re doing well.

Danny Ramadan .
So I wrote the Closed Line Swing, I want to say, years ago in . It didn’t get published until . And it’s this mixture between hyper -realistic and magic -realistic storytelling in which I try to tell you the reality of the war, the reality of seeking refuge specifically as a queer person, but also

there’s angels and demons and witches and magic in there. The story is about two queer refugees who are in their s and their s and one of them is passing away and the only way that the other will keep him alive is by telling him story after story about their past before they came to Canada, about their journey all the way to Canada.

There is a lot of magic in there, there is a lot of witches and many encounters with the Angel of Death himself, who is basically best buddies with one of the two characters.

Yeah, it’s funny. I wrote the Closed Line Swing back in Beirut. I was living in Beirut for two years as a refugee between and and that’s when I wrote the Closed Line Swing. I used to be a published author in the Arab world before I made it all the way to here to Canada. I published in Arabic. I have two collections of short stories in Arabic. But when I knew that I am due to travel to Canada in a couple of years,

J.P. Der Boghossian .
wow.

Danny Ramadan .
years and I knew that I wanted to continue being an author I decided to write my debut novel in English and that’s The Closed Line Swing.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Mike, my first question, if you remember, what were those screen captures that you were making that you were sending to your friends that were so like, do you remember what those were?

Mike Z. .
Not really, I mean I was, I actually read the book again a few weeks ago when we talked about this episode. So, and I couldn’t figure out actually which paragraphs mostly. I mean, I remember there were at least like five or six times I shared paragraphs. But I think…

because I read it around or when it came out. I’m sure if I choose now, it will not be the same paragraphs probably. So no, I don’t remember actually. But what I noticed this time reading is that was more… So when I read the first time, I was really into not just the stories, but…

you know, the use of the words, the descriptions, especially when it, as Danny said, there’s a lot of magic, but there’s a lot of mythology as well, which he didn’t mention. There’s a lot of mythology as well, which I love. And I think probably this is what I use because with my two best friends, we were very much into mythology and stuff like that. So this is what I sent probably. I’m not sure though. However, this time around, I was more taken by,

you know, between the lines, the emotions and everything that was happening between the characters. And this time I have to say, so the first time I read, I was not connected to the narrator. I was more, you know, connected to the other stories, the other characters, especially the mother. But this time I connected with the narrator on a much deeper level. Because the first time I was like, hmm, okay.

nice but it’s the other characters that interested me not this time this time i was really into the the narrator and the story and the way he was evolving.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Why do you think that is, that you were connecting more to the narrator?

Mike Z. .
Probably because there’s this I think it echoes more what’s happening in my life right now where I’m questioning a lot of things about my relationship with my parents and my surroundings So and with with all my failed relationships as well, so Probably that’s why

I think I see echoes of my own, you know, although I don’t have similar relationship with my parents at all, but I do see pieces that can echo parts of my relationship with my parents. And the way that has affected me, because this is what lately I’ve been, you know, discussing mostly and thinking about mostly with my friends.

The way you love your parents because they’re your parents, but sometimes you wonder, would you still love them and be talking to them if they were not your parents? And the way your parents unwillingly hurt you. There’s this passage that, I think it’s chapter , I’m not sure where, is it okay to share a bit of what happens in chapter ? So the…

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Mm.

Mike Z.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Yeah.

Mike Z. .
This is where the narrator explains why his mom tried to hurt him with a knife. And it’s because she wanted him to get rid of the demons she saw in him. And so you have, she wants to help him, but what she’s doing is gonna kill him. And this whole dynamic of…

you know your parents thinking they know best and you know doing what is best for you in their opinion and you have that a lot as well in other parts of the book where you know the narrator gets beaten up because his dad wants to like or when he his dad kicks his his comic books you know because they keep they’re not gonna you know give him a good future something like that so so this whole dynamic of you know

This is what parents do. They want to protect you the best way they can, but that’s not always a good thing. And I think this is a reflection of everything that recently has been going on in my life in a way. But I think as well, the whole, because there are like four or five coming out stories as well in the book, and these are important.

as well and thank God not all of them are bad. So this is related to parents as well. So I think this is now what has spoken to me mostly when I read it again.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
relationships with parents, particularly as queer kids and queer adults, can be very fraught. So Danny, I am interested to hear more about how you approached writing the relationship between, and I’m, ugh, the main character then goes by Hakawati? Hakawati. So, which means storyteller. So how did you approach the parental relationships and –

Danny Ramadan .
Hakkawetii, yes. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
telling that story.

Danny Ramadan .
Hm. It’s…

It’s interesting. So Mike alluded to this earlier, which is, is this based on real life experiences or is it not? And that question I get quite a lot specifically about the clothesline swing because I feel like a lot of people connect with the character and they find the truthfulness that is within the character, right?

I also have to say that during that time while I was writing this book I was navigating a lot of the same challenges that Mike is navigating right now. My relationship to my parents, my relationship to my mother who ever since has passed away, my relationship with who I am and how to connect and disconnect between.

my own person and the people that my parents are and what it means to be of that seed, if that makes sense. I will say that when I wrote Hakawati, I was not trying to write a character as much as trying to have conversations with myself through the fiction. I…

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Mm. Wow.

Danny Ramadan .
in a lot of times as I was writing the character there was no set script to where I’m going. I would sit down which is completely different from my current practice. My practice currently is very rigid and systemic and has sets and boundaries and specific goals and all of this. But back then I want to say naively I was writing from a place of exploration and there was a lot of times where I

I bring characters that are impossible to talk to each other and then force them in the same dynamic to talk to each other. Mainly because I have a lot of impossibilities that I was trying to force into my own identity and get them to talk to each other. I…

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Hm.

Danny Ramadan .
All of this is to be as philosophical as possible to say that yes, a lot of the stories that are between Hakawati and his mother are inspired by my own stories with my own mother who had since passed away.

My memoir comes out very soon. It comes out in two or three weeks. It’s called Crooked Teeth. And that memoir is all truth. But I want to say what I care about the most, both in my fiction and in my nonfiction, is that I’m not…

prescribed to truth as much as prescribed to what’s real and the emotions in the clothesline swing are real the the the navigation of of those impossible feelings is real so so that is what i believe in and that is how i believe i wrote that book

J.P. Der Boghossian .
amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Mike, to come back to you, I am curious about you said that when you were reading the novel for that first time you were seeing a lot of the themes and the stories coming up in the work that you were doing with your, I don’t know if clients is the right word, but in your therapeutic practice. Could you share a little bit more about that?

Mike Z. .
Yeah, I mean, on one end, the stories happening in Damascus remind me a lot of the stories I used to hear about how queer people used to live in Beirut during the war and just after the war. I was too young back then. By the time I was of age, things had changed and we had the internet, so it was fine. But…

But a lot of the stories reminded me, you know, there were echoes of stories I used to hear during the sessions, the art therapy sessions I would have with the Syrian refugees in Beirut. I started in , if I’m not mistaken.

and continued until COVID hit. Then I did something else, but I still continue working with a lot of refugees. So the stories of being locked in their rooms for days on end, not even being able to go to the bathroom and someone from the family opening the door in the dead of the night just so they can go to the bathroom.

the stories of teenagers running away from home because they were beaten up or because they were asked to leave. The parties during wartimes as if, you know, let’s just get drunk and let’s just enjoy our time and go get food while avoiding the checkpoints and all that. These are stories I heard in Lebanon.

from people who lived during the war here and from the refugees as well. And not just by Syrian refugees, some of these stories were told when it comes to being locked up and beaten up and told not to read this or do that. Were told by Palestinian refugees, even by LGBT refugees from Jordan. And we worked on that a lot during our sessions.

Danny Ramadan .
Mm.

Mike Z. .
So it was very interesting that way to see that, yeah, it’s sadly, it’s a very common thing and it’s almost the same kind of stories being repeated everywhere. But you do get as well some nice coming out stories. I mean, my own was very gentle. And other people also said that they were like, to some of their parents, they were like, yeah, tell us something we don’t know. So.

Danny Ramadan .
Yeah, I will say this though to to all of that is that my my My view on coming out coming out was a big deal in the clothesline swing. There’s a lot of characters coming out There’s a lot of navigation of coming out as a concept and now years later and I’m knocking on the doors of now I want to say that coming out does not

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Hehehe

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Mm.

Danny Ramadan .
hold as much of a value to me as it once used to be. If anything, coming out feels like a Western concept because it takes advantage of the fact that the laws and the society at large has spaces where if you came out and you were rejected, you can go elsewhere. But in the Middle East, coming out and getting rejected, you are…

you’re thrown to the trash, there is no alternative option. And if anything, I feel like coming out has become this hallmark, this milestone of what it means to be a queer person, as if, and that takes away from your own power, right? Because it takes away, basically you go to someone other than yourself and you tell them, I’m queer.

and then their acceptance or rejection of that forms who you are as a queer person. You’re basically giving away a lot of your own personal power and agency so somebody else can come in and decide for you if you’re worthy of love, care, or not. And I don’t think it’s all that jazz anymore. I just genuinely don’t think coming out is, if somebody came to me and they’re like, I’m struggling coming out to my parents, what is your first advice? I’ll be like, don’t.

If you’re struggling, you don’t need to do it. I’m sorry, like it’s not part of the dynamic that your gay card does not have to include coming out. You are of a certain gender and you’re attracted to people of diverse genders. You’re queer. Welcome to the club. Here’s your back of glitter. There’s nothing more you can do. You don’t have to be, you don’t have to come out.

Mike Z. .
Exactly, I would definitely say the same. I work with a lot of teenagers and young adults and whenever they struggle with a decision, I always tell them it’s on a need -to -know basis. You don’t have to come out with, you know, you don’t have to, you know. Just do it with people you feel safe around. If you’re sure they’re, you know, they’re a safe space, go for it. If not, there’s no need, you know.

Danny Ramadan .
Mm.

Danny Ramadan .
Mm.

Mike Z. .
It’s not going to add anything to your life. Sometimes you think you’re going to be rejected, but you don’t. It’s actually a very nice experience and it helps a lot. True. But until you know for sure, don’t risk it. Just like Danny said, it takes away some of your power. You don’t need that. It’s a lot different in Beirut than in other areas of Lebanon and in other Arab countries, definitely because of the nature of Beirut and how it’s open to the West and blah, blah. But it is always the same. It’s on a need -to -know basis, honestly.

Danny Ramadan .
Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
It’s interesting to me that even here, like I grew up between the States and France and my Armenian family is, you know, they ended up as refugees in France. but even here in the various little communities of the diaspora, what you’re, what you’re sharing right now, I’m like, yeah, even here, you know what I mean? In Glendale, in Detroit and Watertown, it’s the same, you know, theme. And then when I would talk to my American, friends, they were.

This idea of coming out was very much you can’t get your rights until there’s visibility. You know, that’s how we got our rights was by coming out. And so it is this weird. So for them, their advice always is yes, you have to come out. Otherwise there’ll never be any change, right? Within the, you know, Armenian community because they don’t even know that you’re there. And I’m like, yeah, but, you know, there’s a reason why I came out to y ‘all when I was in my early twenties and I didn’t come out to our Armenian family until I was in my thirties and in a –

very much different home life and secure and you know everything was in a place where I felt like I could have that conversation. A lot of then what comes up in my conversation with other Armenians is the feeling that if they accept their queer identity they have to leave the community that they don’t get to be or they’re just not Armenian anymore so I’m curious has that come up in your lives at all?

Danny Ramadan .
It’s a challenge to be honest, specifically as a Syrian here in diaspora here in Canada, because I don’t feel comfortable hanging out with other Syrians. It’s not a space that I feel comfortable doing, right? I find that a lot of my fellow Syrian queers feel that the only way that they can fit into the society around them is by either being absolutely Syrian,

which comes with homophobia or being absolutely queer which is then becoming a coconut because they are brown on the outside, but they’re white on the inside and I I genuinely Feel that tension right and I I feel like I don’t have anything to contribute to a conversation with a lot of my fellow Syrians and I I’m saddened by this because I feel like part of them

integrating into the Canadian queer society is by letting go of who they are as Syrian. At the same time, I wish some of the Syrians who are the mainstream society Syrians would let go of some of what makes them Syrians vis -a -vis homophobia and even racism and some judgment. We’re very judgmental as people, so some judgment would just out of the way, please. That would be great. So…

I do I’m not gonna pretend that I don’t have friends. I have a lot of friends many of them are Syrians I’m friends with my best one of my best friends is my sister who is a hijabi Syrian woman who lives couple blocks away from me now and and she is also best friends with my husband, so I’m not saying that it’s It’s actually really funny. We have this group texting thing and they text each other in the group all the time while I’m like

I’m working and I’m like, why am I involved in this? Can you just talk to each other? Why do I have to read your six billion texts to one another? I don’t understand why I’m a part of this at all. But yeah, it’s beautiful that I have those kind of relationships. But at the same time, I think twice before I enter a space that is absolutely Syrian.

Mike Z. .
Look, it’s the same when it comes to Lebanese people living abroad. We have the same here. We always make fun of them when we say like if they left in the s, they’re still stuck in the s. Even if it’s , if they left during the s, they’re still stuck there. You know, they come back and they have these all these ideas about how Lebanon should be. And they’re like, no, what? Why? That was in the s. Like, no. So I guess it’s the same like whenever people like lives in large amounts and go somewhere to another country, they just take that culture and get stuck with it. And culture is another big important thing. I mean, I go to Armenia a lot, for example, and so there are no laws against LGBT queer people in Armenia. However, the society there is unforgiving. And I find them much more afraid of being you know out of clear then in lebanon which is weird because we have horrible laws here but they don’t have them there but still they’re much more afraid over there so it’s it has more to do with not just the laws but with society and how it’s you know built in you know it’s still again i’d only a

Mike Z. .
I’m just like Daniel, whenever I’m abroad I avoid Lebanese people.

Danny Ramadan .
It’s so weird, honestly, because I love being Syrian. I genuinely love being a Syrian person. I love my culture. I love my heritage, my history, even the parts that a lot of Syrians disagree to look at.

like the fact that we are occupied by the Muslims who forced us into their language and into their religion. That’s besides the point. If I said that out loud among other Syrians, they will call me a heretic. But the point is… It’s…

It’s a challenge because I feel like in my writing I write only about Syria. In my life I think about Syria a lot and I am denied the well that I drink its water. I cannot go back to Syria, specifically after I wrote The Closed Line Swing. The Closed Line Swing has a scene, an imaginary scene where Hafez al -Assad, the dead president of Syria, is taken to court for his crimes. So I don’t think I’m ever going back to Syria.

Danny Ramadan .
And I can’t access the Syrian community here, so it feels like I’m limited in what I can do. But I’ll keep at it, I guess.

Mike Z. .
But your voice is important, what you’re writing about is very important. Sadly, it comes with a price, but you have no idea how important it is. And I say that because I see, I heard a lot of the same stories coming from the clients I worked with. And there is no denying how important these stories need to be told.

They have to be told and I have told a lot of these stories in a way. We actually found a way to talk about these things in closed group, but in public as well in closed public groups, if you want, mostly on stage. But this is a very important voice that needs to be heard that, you know, there should be more, you know, there should be more like it.

Mike Z. .
Please write more.

Danny Ramadan .
God knows I am. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have my second novel, The Foghorn Echoes, which came out a couple years ago. It won the Lambda, which is like winning an Oscar for a gay man. It’s such a big deal for me. And the memoir just came out and I have like children’s books as well. And I’m preparing a new nonfiction book, but this book is going to be about sex, which is… I’m really excited about that.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Ooh.

Danny Ramadan .
because I cannot

Mike Z. .
Well, if you have a chance of going back to Syria, now you don’t.

Danny Ramadan .
right but at the same time have you ever seen a book by a queer refugee that is just about pleasure and sex and sensuality I want to write that book I think it’s going to be amazing I think it’s going to be one hell of an awesome book

Mike Z. .
Good for you!

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Something that, yeah, when, let us know when that book comes out. We will do the help, everything we can to promote the heck out of that one. Something that I appreciated, well, there’s two questions I have, Danny, for you in the structure of the book. One is that you gave us the characters as older gentlemen, so they’ve survived. And you could have done, and I was so happy about that, because I’m like, I don’t have to spend the entire novel waiting.

Danny Ramadan .
Hahaha!

J.P. Der Boghossian .
for the deaths to come, in a different way, you know what I mean? Like you have the character of death there and Haka Wati is having these conversations in this relationship with him. So first I wanna kind of, why did you make that choice to not have us sit there and wonder the entire time? You gave us kind of not a happy, I mean, is it a happy ending? I mean, you gave us them in the future so we know that they’re gonna find a way to be together and to live together.

Danny Ramadan .
Mm. I I want to say that was a very intentional decision I always think about the after the happily ever after The book takes place after all the happiness they they they immigrated they integrated they become part of the society they live for years and then The after happily ever after which is that end of the life one of them is going to pass away and the other is holding on?

to his lover, right? And I think about that quite a lot, or at least I thought about that quite a lot back in the day. I was on the verge of breaking up with a very dear ex -boyfriend of mine, and we felt happy for the longest time, and then I could tell that we’re breaking up. I can tell that the end is nay, and I just wanted to hold on to it, but it felt just too strong, and that translated into this narrative.

The other thing is, again, I…

I read a lot of queer books. I’ve read so many queer books and I’m so tired, so tired, you have no idea, of the queer books that are about two hot young white men meeting in a meet -cute and then having some challenges about coming out and then breaking up and then coming back together into this monogamous heteronormative way of living happily ever after. I’m tired of it. It’s like drives me. I…

the opposite of what I want to write, it’s the opposite of what I want to read. I’m just so tired of its repetitiveness. So you tell me when was the last time that you read a book from the perspective of a queer elder, where it is , year old person sitting you down like the young person that you are and offering you this wisdom. And I wanted to write that.

Danny Ramadan .
And I also want to keep in mind, like, I’m , right? So the generation before mine, the people that are supposed to be my elders are mostly dead because of the HIV pandemic. So I don’t have that. I never had that. And now I have to be that to the -somethings that are coming out right now who I barely know how to have a conversation with. So this whole, the system feels fucked up. I don’t know what to do with it. But…

But the point that I’m making is I didn’t have that in my life and I needed that in my life, so I wrote it down.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Mike, you’ve been talking about how important those stories that Danny’s writing about in the clothesline swing, you know, you were, you were seeing them reflected in your life. You’re seeing them reflected in the community that you’re in and the therapeutic practice that you were doing. And so Danny, everything is.

Scheherazade, I mean, it’s how the character, you know, refers to themselves. Like, how did you land on that as the format for the book? Cause you’re now able to kind of include all of these really important stories so that, you know, readers can, I mean, I did not, you know, grow up in, in Syria. I didn’t grow up in Beirut, you know, I Armenian diaspora community. And yet even, you know, that I was able to see so much, even for myself, I’m like, wow.

Like a lot of this is resonating. So how did you come to that as the format that you wanted to use for the book?

Danny Ramadan .
I, Gosh, I haven’t thought about this book in in a good five years So I’m thankful for you both to bring me back into this. I will say this I do believe in the oral history specifically in our queer communities

We as queer folks in the Middle East, we don’t have historians. There are no books written about who we are. There are no elders that will sit you down and tell you about what life is like. It’s very jarring to be thrown into the queer community as a young person without any guidance. Yet, I had a good guidance.

when I was or , I was thrown out of the house and I lived on the streets for a while. And then this trans person took me in and she is this older trans person in Damascus who basically became my mother. And she introduced me to her parents, her queer parents, basically. And I was introduced to the family system in Syria, which is very similar to the family system of in the voguing scene in New York and the drag queen scene across the world where there’s daughters and mothers and aunties and

all of this and that offered me a lot of knowledge and a lot of oral knowledge about where I came from and what is the intersectional identity that I carry, how did it become what it is right now. So I’m very privileged with this knowledge and it felt like I had to put it down in writing somewhere.

I’m gonna die one day. All of those stories are going to die one day. Unless I write them down in books and I leave them on shelves and hope that people would read them. And a hundred years from now somebody is going to go into a Wikipedia and find my little page and then find my text and read it and I will be remembered and those stories will be remembered and the oral story that I heard would last forever. That is…

Danny Ramadan .
That is the way stories live.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Mic what comes up for you when you hear that.

Mike Z. .
I totally resonate with that. That is why I mean, I love stories. I, you know, when the character, the sick character is always saying, like, tell me a story. I love asking people to tell me stories all the time. Whenever I go to a new place, a new town.

anywhere in the world and I meet someone who has the time, like, can you tell me a story about this place or that? I love stories and oral tradition or not, some stories, I mean, you get a lot of similar stories everywhere. You go, that’s perfectly normal, but it’s important for these stories to be told, to be repeated, to be written, to be kept, and for a lot of reasons.

scientifically just to get a glimpse of what was happening at the time but also they will they will give away for other people to feel connected if they feel disconnected to to go back to a connection to gain back a connection they have lost to learn something from someone else’s sorry for vicki for my french again something they lived you know

telling stories is very important. I mean, that’s the way we got all of our humanity started by oral tradition before it was written. And writing these stories is always important.

Even even if I remember someone telling me I gifted that book to someone to close and swing to someone and he told me, it’s stories I’ve heard before. I’m like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. These are stories you’ve heard before, I’m sure, you know, but they are in a so well written here and put together here. And it’s like you have a document that tells you like, you know, this happened and you learn from it and.

you remember, it helps you remember a lot of while reading the second time, I remembered stories about my life that I had forgotten or about people I know as well. And that is very important. The memory game happening in the book as well is very important. These guys at the end of their lives, they’re retelling the story. And I love the part where death.

retells the stories in his own way and the haka -wati gets angry at him like, that’s not how it happened! You don’t have the right to do that, I love that part. Because you do not change my memories, you know? I know we have the tendency to make everything, you know, in hindsight look, you know, nice and everything, but no, I want the raw things, I want the raw memory, I want things as they happened. That is very important. I just want to add one thing because…

You talked about knowing the ending. As a theatre person, I would tell you that it’s very important while reading the book because from the go, you know what’s happening. You know they end up together. And you’re just focused on the stories and not the emotions. And I think that’s why I was more connected emotionally the second time because I…

I got the stories, I knew what was going to happen, I wasn’t involved emotionally as much. I got the stories and everything, I was very, very satisfied and happy with that. And in the second reading, I just discovered this whole other layer.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you both so much. We’re coming up on the hour mark. So my last question that I give to all the guests that come on the show, we’ll start with you, Mike. What is next in life for you?

Mike Z. .
More activism? Well, more social activism. I’m doing my best to help people because the situation is really bad here in Beirut, so I’m trying to help here while trying to help here between Beirut and Armenia. So basically that’s it. I’m definitely doing it with the therapy stuff, but I’ll be moving soon to theater as well. So we’ll see.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
And Danny, what’s next in life for you?

Danny Ramadan .
gosh. So the memoir comes out in two weeks. I don’t know when this episode is going to be released. The memoir comes out on May th, . It’s called Crooked Teeth. And…

I have been dreading writing this memoir, but finally I’ve reached a point in my life here as a successful author, well received, where I felt like I have enough power to write this memoir whichever way I want to. So there’s a lot of talking directly to the reader during in the memoir being like,

Why do you need to know more than this? I have given you what I want to give you. Any more than this is not cool for you to ask. So there’s a lot of balance and boundary making in that memoir. So I hope that that will come across. I’m also writing another nonfiction, which is just about joy and pleasure and sexual liberation as a queer person living in North America. So that is my next project. And I’m moving houses. I’m going back to…

I lived in the suburbs for a while during the pandemic and I don’t like it. I’m going back to downtown. Thank you.

J.P. Der Boghossian .
That’s fantastic. Well, thank you both so much. I’m going to click stop recording. Please don’t go anywhere.