{"id":37102,"date":"2016-03-05T18:05:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T16:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=37102"},"modified":"2016-03-03T15:44:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T13:44:23","slug":"05-00-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=37102","title":{"rendered":"Blacklisted in Iran, Gay Poet Seeks Asylum in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Blacklisted in Iran, Gay Poet Seeks Asylum in Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ISABEL KERSHNER<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"
\nPayam Feili in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. \u201cThe more I gained a reputation outside Iran, the harder it became for me to live in Iran,\u201d he said. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

JERUSALEM \u2014 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 \u201cspecial relationship\u201d with the place, imagining it in his stories, which are replete with gay themes and Jewish symbols.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now Mr. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I gained a reputation outside Iran, the harder it became for me to live in Iran,\u201d Mr. Feili said of the Islamic republic, where gay people have been executed. \u201cLong before I left Iran,\u201d he added, \u201cI thought that the only other place in the world I could live was Israel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His is certainly an unusual path. Iran does not allow its nationals to visit Israel, which it has condemned as a \u201cLittle Satan.\u201d Israel does not permit its citizens to travel to Iran, whose nuclear program 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 \u2014 before Mr. Feili was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at a news conference this week in Jerusalem, Mr. Feili recounted how he got from there to here.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe regime was pressing me to leave the country,\u201d Mr. Feili said, speaking in Persian through a translator. \u201cI got afraid,\u201d he added. \u201cPeople warned me that the articles could be a harbinger of worse things to come.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A slender, delicate figure sporting a ring with a large turquoise stone, blue nail polish and ripped skinny jeans, Mr. Feili grew up in a Muslim family in Karaj, Iran\u2019s fourth largest city with about 2 million people.<\/span><\/p>\n

A censored edition of Mr. Feili\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

His new milieu is the bustling, easygoing Mediterranean city of Tel Aviv, a favorite gay destination.<\/span><\/p>\n

He lives on Lilienblum Street, which is lined with hip bars, and he has been taken under the wing of the city\u2019s gay community. He has not sought out Israeli Jews of Iranian descent.<\/span><\/p>\n

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, \u201cis exactly as I expected and even better and more beautiful.\u201d But, he said, \u201cI have no special connection with Judaism and do not want one, nor with any other religion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Israel Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group, organized this week\u2019s news conference with Mr. Feili, promoting his story as an example of Israel\u2019s openness in contrast to its Middle East neighbors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel has sometimes been accused of \u201cpinkwashing,\u201d or portraying itself as a progressive hub of tolerance, particularly toward gays, to detract attention from the government\u2019s policies toward Palestinians. At Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s annual meeting with the international press this year, there was a performance by the Israeli transgender pop singer Dana International, who appealed to reporters to go easy on Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

His journey to Israel began after Ido Dagan, an Israeli writer and director, interviewed him for NRG, an Israeli news site. Mr. Dagan was directing a show called \u201cThree Reasons,\u201d which he described as \u201ca kind of cabaret\u201d based in part on Mr. Feili\u2019s work. Mr. Dagan asked Mr. Feili if he would like to visit Israel, and decided to try to bring him over for the premiere at the Tzavta Theater in Tel Aviv.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Feili\u2019s sponsors approached Miri Regev, the Israeli minister of culture, who sent a recommendation to the interior minister. Still, Mr. Dagan said it took a few months of lobbying until Mr. Feili was granted a short-term visitor\u2019s visa.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hagai Kalai, a Tel Aviv lawyer representing Mr. Feili, said he was not getting any special treatment as the asylum request goes through the normal channels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel, which now has a population of tens of thousands of migrants from Africa, is notoriously tough on asylum applications, wanting to deter a larger influx. The authorities cannot deport Mr. Feili pending a decision from the committee that grants refugee status, but the process takes time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMeanwhile,\u201d Mr. Kalai said, \u201che has no work permit or health insurance, so it is a bit problematic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. 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. Mr. Kalai said he understood that Mr. Feili had been detained three times by government forces, and that he had been \u201chumiliated and maybe even tortured.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

An article published by The Daily Beast in 2014 described Mr. 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Feili said he was in contact with his family in Iran via Skype almost daily.<\/span><\/p>\n

He noted that the Iranian government did not recognize homosexuality or refer to it by name, describing it as a \u201cdeviation,\u201d just as it refused to recognize 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe it is even more dangerous when people live in hiding, behind false identities,\u201d he said. \u201cThrough time you start lying to yourself and you become isolated in your loneliness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Blacklisted in Iran, Gay Poet Seeks Asylum in Israel ISABEL KERSHNER Payam Feili in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. \u201cThe more I gained a reputation outside Iran, the harder it became for me to live in Iran,\u201d he said. Credit Uriel Sinai for The New York Times JERUSALEM \u2014 In his native Iran, leaders openly wish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37102"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37133,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37102\/revisions\/37133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}