If You Were a Gay Boy in Uzbekistan… – Interactive Story

Dancing was everything for you. Deprived of that outlet, you feel like you’re going crazy. It’s like having a giant stone tied to your neck, and you can’t untie the knot. You start thinking that you can’t keep going, that you want to end it all: you’re only 12 years old, but the pain is already too much to bear. But you toughen up and you keep going. You pay attention to every gesture, to the way your voice sounds with every word you say. Every day seems to last forever, but years go by nonetheless. You grow sadder every day, more sullen every day.

One cold winter afternoon, while you are on a walk with your best friend Amaliya, she suddenly stops. You turn around to face her and you see a stern, grave expression on her face, which you find to be surprising and worrisome on someone as calm and sweet as she is. “You always look so gloomy. Why don’t you ever tell what’s wrong with you?!” she says, in a stern, almost accusatory tone.

What do you do?
She is your best friend, you feel like you can trust her: you decide to come out to her. Go to Part 3
Amaliya loves you, but she could never accept you as a gay man: you can’t say anything. Go to Part 4

You are sure you made the right choice: to you, dance is pure oxygen. When you dance, you feel good, you feel free, you feel like you’re being yourself. And what with these dances being part of your country’s ancient heritage, you feel reconciled with your origins, you truly feel like there’s nothing wrong with you. This feeling helps you face your peers’ increasingly vicious insults. They only talk to you to make fun of you, they’re only around you to pull increasingly cruel pranks on you. You don’t go to adults for help, because you feel like they also eye you with suspicion, resignation and reproach.

One day, after arriving at your Traditional Dance class, the teacher gives you a hateful look and tells you to go away and never return. You are confused, baffled, unable to process. Your mind is blank as you walk back home. You get there, open the door, and find your dad sitting at the table, a dark look in his eyes. As soon as he sees you, he gets up, walks up to you and slaps you so hard you fall to the ground. Then a kick to your stomach, a kick to your head. The world loses colour. You pass out.

Start over from the beginning and choose a different path.

“Well… I…” No, you can’t say it. Amaliya stares at you without talking. It almost seems like she’s angry. Doubts race through your head, but just can’t keep it secret any longer. Your voice is barely a whisper as you confess: “I’m… I like… I like boys.” Her face immediately relaxes, and she says: “Finally… How long were you going to keep this from me?” And then she hugs you. You both start crying at the same moment and you don’t understand if these tears are making you feel better or worse.

When you finally pull yourselves together, she anxiously tells you: “Muzaffar, you can’t stay in Uzbekistan. You will never be happy here. You have to leave.” She’s right. You tell her you will ask a Western country’s embassy for help and request political asylum. Amaliya shakes her head: she thinks you’re daydreaming. “Who knows how long you’ll have to wait, and they might not even accept your request. You can go to Russia with your Uzbek passport, flee there,” she says. You remind her that Russia has Putin and laws against “gay propaganda”, but she insists.

What do you do?
It would be better to go to an embassy, you don’t want to go out of the frying pan into the fire. Go to Part 5
Amaliya is your first and only ally, you have to trust her: you leave towards Moscow. Go to Part 6

“I really don’t want to talk about it right now. – you tell her – I need to go home.” Amaliya gives you a sad, long and deep look: “Talk soon, alright?” You nod and walk away in silence. You will never call her again, you will never answer her calls and texts.

You hear through the grapevine that there is a park, in the city outskirts, where men meet up at night. One evening, you gather your courage and you go. The place, already dreary during the day, becomes downright scary at night. It looks like it’s going to rain, but you decide to walk around. The park seems empty and you are about to leave when you notice a tall man, his hood hiding his face. He stares at you for a moment and then walks through the trees. Your heart is pounding, your brain is begging to run away, but a new strength gets a hold of you, making you follow that unknown man.

He stopped at a small clearing. You get closer. It’s very dark out there, and it’s not until the very last moment that you notice the man’s hand moving towards your face. He caresses your cheek with the back of his hand, then grabs the nape of your neck and pulls you towards him. Your lips brush against each other’s, meet, explore. The kisses become insatiable. His fingers grab your hand and push it towards the inside of his thighs. Everything happens quickly, but it feels like you’ve finally found happiness.

The following day, you can’t think of anything else. Your erection doesn’t go down. It hurts, even. That very night, you go back to the park. Luck is on your side: the sky is clear, the moon shines brightly. After a few minutes, from behind a tree, you spot what looks like an angel: a man in his thirties, not very tall, muscular, his face as beautiful as the moon shining its light upon him. He smiles at you, signals you to follow him in the underbrush. After a few steps, he tells you to kneel in front of him. You do it, adoringly, and you start rubbing your nose against his crotch. At that moment, you hear a noise behind you, and your angel bursts out laughing.

There’s 5 or 6 of them, holding iron bars and wooden branches. One of them shines the light from his phone. “You found one tonight as well, huh?” One of them orders you to undress. “Naked. Take off your socks and underwear, too.” One of them hands you a glass bottle. “Show us how much you enjoy taking it up in your ass.” One of them films you with his cell phone. “Don’t cry, you’ll spoil the movie.” When they leave, you are surprised to be still alive, but you’re not sure if you should be happy about it. And you suddenly feel the anger rising in you like a tidal wave, fueled by years of torment, which has finally found its target: your assailants.

What do you do?
You run to the police station to report the people who assaulted you. Go to Part 7
You’d rather bury the secret deep down in your heart and never talk about it to anybody. Go to Part 8

People laugh at you at the first embassy you go to. At the second one, they write down your phone number and tell you they’ll call you back. They never will. The same happens at the third embassy. But this time they really call you back, after a couple of months. You ask Amaliya to go with you, to give you some strength. You talk to an officer who appears to really feel sorry about your situation. His niece too, he explains, is gay and lives far away in Europe. “But there’s nothing I can do for you. The doors to Europe have been shut for years now.” You leave the embassy, in silence. Amaliya asks: “What are you going to do now?” Go to Part 4

Moscow is an incredible city, its beauty takes your breath away. You spend hours every day aimlessly walking around, and you manage to forget about your problems. You know you are not safe here, but you’ve never felt so free and cheerful. You test your luck and search for LGBT groups on Facebook. You find one and you post a message, asking for help. They tell you someone will meet you at a bar, in a neighbourhood you are not familiar with. You are hesitant, but hey…sink or swim, right? You somehow manage to find the bar, and when you go inside you are surprised to find out the group sent a girl to meet you. Her name is Julia, she is bisexual, and she is a lawyer.

You meet up with her several times over the following weeks, and she finds a way to send you to Toronto, Canada. Once there, you’ll have to get in touch with Rami, a Canadian activist who will help you apply for political asylum. Julia warns you: it won’t be easy, you’ll have to fend for yourself in an unknown country, you might end up panhandling on the streets. But at least it will be on the streets of a free country. As you board your flight to Canada, you are fully aware of all the obstacles that are awaiting you. But you also know that there couldn’t have been a happier ending. THE END

“What were you doing at the park?,” “Did you like it?,” “Did you have an erection when they shoved that bottle up your ass?,” “Did you give them a reason?,” “Did you like their looks?,” “Why didn’t you fight back?,” “Was it the first time sticking something up your ass?” These questions rain on you like slaps, the same ones over and over again, along with the most recurring one: “Are you a homosexual?,” which soon becomes “Are you a faggot?” The police officers’ scorn and mocking are getting more and more obvious and brazen. “Were you hoping for a bigger bottle?,” “So you are reporting them because they got your hopes up but then didn’t allow you to blow them?”…

It doesn’t matter that you clearly saw your aggressors, that you remember their faces perfectly. They wave their police sketches, as accurate as photographs, under your face, asking you which one of them you wish were your boyfriend. Your anger blinded you and you forgot that homosexuality is illegal in Uzbekistan. You remember how, only a month ago, papers had reported a police raid on a bar, resulting in the arrest of ten allegedly gay people. The police won’t do anything to the people who attacked you. It’s clear, now: you will be the one going to trial and facing up to 3 years in jail.

Start over from the beginning and choose a different path.

Your anus slowly heals, but your anguish doesn’t. You keep having the same nightmares every night. In those nightmares, you are at that same park, with that same damn bottle, but the people around you, laughing at you and filming you, change: sometimes they’re strangers, sometimes they’re your neighbours and classmates, more and more often they’re your grandmother, your dad, and your mom. Every night you wake and sit straight up, your mouth wide open in a terrible and silent scream.

One day, you decide you can’t go on anymore. You grab your phone and start recording. You tell your story leaving nothing out, you admit to being gay and you demand respect. Why is it that two men living in the U.S. can love each other without having to hide it, get married, and adopt kids, but, here in Uzbekistan, they would have to live in hiding, slowly dying? You watch the video again and you’re proud of it. You think it’s really effective and sincere.

What do you do?
You immediately delete the video, fearing that someone might watch it. Go to Part 9
You post the video on Instagram: change requires courage. Go to Part 10

The nightmares don’t stop, and neither does your longing for the lips of the stranger you met the first night. Going back to the park is definitely not an option, so you try something different. You download an app for gay meet-ups, and you start chatting with people. But how can you trust them? There could be anyone behind those online profiles. You finally find a man who you think you can trust, who understands your hesitancy. He doesn’t rush you. Eventually, you ask him to meet up. To feel safer, you ask him to come to your place.

Two days later, the doorbell rings. You open it: three police officers, waving their guns. They come inside without asking for permission, and they tell you to sit down. One of them goes straight to the point and explains what’s going to happen: “Mr Faggot, the man you thought you were chatting with does not exist. You were chatting with us. Now we have proof of your perversion. You’re facing three years in jail, and trust me, it will be three hellish years. Even in jail, people like you are not welcome. We are feeling generous, however, and could do you favour…” The favour is them looking the other way, just this once, but it’s an expensive one: they ask for more money than you have. You look down. You have no way out.

Start over from the beginning and choose a different path.

You can’t believe it: your video is online. You wait for the phone calls to start: your friends calling to make fun of you, your father calling to let you know he is writing you off his will, your mother calling to curse you. But nothing happens. The whole day goes quietly. Night comes, and for the first time in ages, your sleep is dreamless. You don’t leave your house, because you feel like you are living in an alternate reality. And the world stays out, too: no calls, no messages. You spend two days at home, then three, waiting for a catastrophe that never comes. It’s hard for you to believe: you came out to the world, and the world didn’t do anything. Maybe the devil is not as ugly as everyone thinks he is, after all.

Finally, you decide to go out. It’s nighttime, it’s cold. You go to a bar. There are no familiar faces there, and nobody seems to recognize you. You came out to the world and the world didn’t even notice. To think about all those scenarios, you kept running through your head, and then nothing happened. You smile thinking about how melodramatic you had been. And then two men come in. They say they are from the “ethical police” and drag you out. Your decapitated body will soon be found in a hotel room. They will blame the boyfriend you never had.

Start over from the beginning and choose a different path.

All parts are inspired by real news stories and testimonials. The background and parts 1, 3 and 6 are inspired by the story of Anvar Latipov; part 4 by videos published online by groups of anti-gay “avengers”, of which we do not provide the link out of respect for the (perfectly visible) victims; parts 7 and 9 by various testimonies and by a raid that took place last September; part 10 by the story of Shokir Shavkatov.