In a fictional dialogue, the voice of Inas Ait Abdel Salam recounts the struggles that reflect the lived realities of many members of Algeria’s LGBTQ+ community. Based on a real person’s experience, this narrative draws from the lived experiences of communities living on the margins of recognition, enduring their suffering in silence.
With a cold expression that hid the true depth of her anguish, Inas Ait Abdel-Salam answered my question: “How are you?”
“Fine, for those who don’t care and refuse to acknowledge my existence,” she replied. Then, after a moment of silence, she added, “As for the rest, I want to say that ever since the night my soul first tasted the bitterness of death, I’ve been haunted by relentless questions about my right to mourn. Does society have the right to deny me the ability to grieve or to take part in funeral rites? Is it fair to force my soul to suppress the cries of my deepest sorrow? Can I be expected to accept decisions made by people my partner didn’t even like when she was alive? Will anyone honor her final wishes after she’s gone?
How do I tell her that I failed to make anyone respect her choices, that I couldn’t even say a word? How do I keep moving forward despite the overwhelming feelings of oppression and exclusion? How can I cope with the struggle between accepting the situation and asserting my right to express the depth of my anguish, while battling the frustration of being powerless to change anything and denied the chance to grieve with dignity?”
Living with two identities
The lives of LGBTQ people in Algeria are fraught with challenges due to legal criminalization, deeply rooted traditional values, and rigid social norms. These pressures force them to lead a double life, constantly navigating the divide between their public and private selves.
In my circle, there are diverse experiences among non-normative individuals. In private, LGBTQ people experience love and friendships in total secrecy, hidden from prying eyes, driven by the constant fear of exposure, which could result in social ostracism or legal prosecution.
In public, they are compelled to conform to societal expectations, often entering heterosexual relationships or marriage to avoid suspicion. They must adopt the traditional values and behaviors necessary to keep their true identities concealed. At work and in social settings, they avoid discussing their private lives in order to maintain a semblance of normalcy and stability.
This dual existence comes with significant consequences. The constant secrecy and fear create intense psychological pressure, often leading to depression and emotional breakdowns. These burdens also strain personal relationships, deepening their social isolation.
To illuminate a piece of that darkness, I conducted this fictional dialogue with Inas Ait Abdel Salam, an imagined young Algerian lesbian. She lives under the relentless weight of anxiety, seized by it, in a society that utterly denies her existence.
I know attending must have been painful, but were you able to endure that moment? Did you manage to attend the funeral?
Yes, but it was incredibly hard. I had to pull myself together, go out, and offer condolences to her official family. I had to pretend, almost overnight, that she hadn’t been lying next to me for months. I couldn’t tell anyone how death’s shadow was haunting me in the solitude of the house we shared, where her voice still echoes. While I was forced to spend the night staring at the strands of her hair clinging to the pillow, her official family received all the sympathy and comfort.
I hesitated, but when I heard the coffin was going to her family’s house for a final farewell, I couldn’t stop myself. I ran, despite all the conflicting emotions, knowing it was my last chance to say goodbye. I didn’t think about what I would say, how to make my presence known among her relatives, or how to steal those last few moments with her… I hated the world in that instant. She had died with me, but they were the ones burying her.
Were you able to say goodbye the way you wanted? Did you get the chance to take one last look at her face?
Yes, I believe someone gently pushed me forward among the close ones. At first, I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face and wanted to escape. I was overwhelmed by the coldness of death standing before her coffin and terrified of her family’s judgment and reproach.
I broke down crying outside the house, unaware of everything around me until I noticed people preparing to move the coffin to the cemetery. My mind wavered between collapse and recovery, constantly fearing that someone might be watching me. Did anyone find out the truth? In those moments, when the bitterness of death consumed me, I wanted to tell everyone the truth, disregarding the authority and mindset of a society that forces us to live and die in the shadows. But fear and oppression silenced me.
In those final moments, her father spoke to me, as if sensing her will. He asked if I wanted to see her one last time before the vehicle departed, and I couldn’t hold back. I approached the coffin after everyone had left. Surrounded by the few men assigned to carry and accompany it, I held my breath and tears, uncovered her face, kissed her forehead, and ran away.
I wonder… did her father have any idea about your relationship?
I’m not sure, but I’ve come to realize that families gradually start to suspect their children’s orientations. Some reject it, some fight it… Others ignore it, and some suppress it until they finally give in. What all families share, though, is a deadly silence and the refusal to confront the truth head-on.
I was surprised by her father’s gesture, but I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity.
In our customs, men accompany the coffin to the cemetery for burial, while women stay behind to handle the remaining funeral rites. Although I reject these traditional roles, on that day, my situation made me indifferent to them.
The house that brought us together, where she spent her final days, didn’t host her funeral, and the cemetery wasn’t open to women during the burial. Despite that, I did what felt natural to me. I followed the vehicle, watching her burial from afar, as though realizing that those moments might be what saved me from the horror of feeling like I belonged to nothing.
I was completely distracted and shattered, yet many people kept asking me about her family and close relatives. At that moment, I felt like a nobody. I had to answer their questions, reassuring some and comforting others. I was expected to care for everyone’s feelings and forget that my own pain might be the deepest. But isn’t that normal? Am I not already ostracized by a society that would seek forgiveness for me and pray against me if they knew about my existence, and would fight me if I dared to assert myself?
After all of that, how was the journey home?
I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness. I’m not sure why, but I was uncomfortable with the presence of some of my acquaintances. Most of them weren’t from our ostracized community—the community of forbidden and outlawed relationships, the LGBTQ community. My family was completely absent. That day, I couldn’t help but wonder, how come no one from my family is here to console me, to support me in this difficult time, or to honor the memory of my partner? Is this loneliness simply because I am different? Would anyone forgive me if I failed to console them after losing a spouse or a child? Why does it feel impossible to have my needs met in these moments? Even when I called some friends to tell them I wasn’t okay, their responses were similar—each one dismissing my pain. They told me others in life face far worse than I do, especially those who lose a close family member.
Even some of our close friends, who knew about our relationship, chose to offer their condolences to her family, whom they had never even met, rather than stand by me and support the fears I had shared with my partner for so long.
I had never felt as cold as I did that day, despite the warm weather. I tried to honor her memory but failed. I couldn’t bear how some disregarded my feelings. I couldn’t endure the rationalizing and intellectualizing of emotions, as some friends visited only to talk about my situation in a detached, theoretical way, without considering my emotions or my mental state. I had never seen this happen at any other funeral.
In the midst of the bitterness of losing my partner, I was confronted by a whirlwind of emotions—anger, despair, weakness, and terrifying fear. That day, I reached a point where I could no longer bear it and retreated to our room—no, my terrifying room. I didn’t sleep that night. I waited impatiently for the morning, desperate to visit my lover’s grave. It was the morning after her burial. When I arrived at the cemetery, I rushed toward her final resting place. I couldn’t grasp the meaning of life or death in those moments. I remembered her beliefs and choices—the ones I would have imposed at her funeral if I had been her spouse, if I had been the person society acknowledges and respects.
Standing by her peaceful grave, I kept apologizing. I couldn’t do more because I was nobody. The bitterness of my grief mixed with the coldness of fear, and I found myself drowning in thoughts, until a final blow struck my heart, which could bear no more. Someone whispered to me, “Move away; you must leave space for the family.”
When I heard those words, I realized her recognized relatives had arrived. They were harsh words, though I forced a fake smile and left, as I had no choice. Of course, the family, the close ones—they are the ones with rights in those moments. But me? No one cares about me, because I am nobody. From that day on, our relationship was no longer a challenge; it had become an illusion. Overnight, I became a stranger to her—a stranger forced into silence, a silence as bitter as death itself. Even the right to grieve, the right to receive condolences, was denied to me. Since we came together, we were destined to remain in the darkness of oblivion.
Since that day, I walk in the streets everyday, seeking exhaustion… seeking oblivion. I’ve wanted to forget my grief and longing, what had been imposed on me, and what I had been deprived of. In moments when the force of conflicting emotions overwhelms me, my steps quicken, just as they did when I ran toward her grave, as if I were fleeing ghosts that haunt me, finding solace only when the wind brushes against my face. I don’t know why the wind makes me feel free… Freedom, or perhaps the illusion of it, can only be fragments of childhood memories, filled with dreams. And hope, it seems, can only survive when illusions kill us.
Against my will, I lived the first months of separation in absolute solitude.
Don’t you think this neglect might also affect partners in heterosexual relationships outside of marriage?
Maybe, I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t want to know. We don’t choose to be together outside of marriage. Marriage is only available to heterosexuals. We are forced into secret relationships and live with dual identities. Our relationships are criminalized by law, even though love between consenting adults poses no harm to the safety of others or society. Frankly, I don’t want to think about or answer questions concerning heterosexuals, even in their moments of vulnerability.
Their vulnerability isn’t connected to my existence, but the reverse is true.
And now, what are you thinking? Will you continue on like this, or are you considering migrating to a country that recognizes LGBTQ+ rights?
No, after everything I’ve been through, it’s too late for me to consider another life. What’s the point, when I’m now completely incapable of experiencing romantic life again?
Today, I am just a woman demanding her right to mourn, without receiving sermons from people who can’t comprehend what I’ve gone through. I am the result of experiences and struggles they’ve never faced. I will continue to resist, to live my solitude in peace, and to silence those who are indifferent to the suffering of marginalized communities. They have no right to claim they understand me, or to assume they know what’s best for me.
I don’t want others to indulge in describing and justifying what we go through as an unrecognized community because, in the hardest times, I was treated as less than nothing. When I was completely devastated, those with privileges couldn’t console me. My partner passed away, and the worst part is that she took her own life after 20 years of battling mental illness. Her doctor didn’t advise me like she advised her family, because she considered me a nobody. Even though she knew we lived together, she didn’t see me as relevant to my partner’s health and care. I wasn’t treated like family.
I didn’t have the legal status to admit her to a psychiatric hospital when her condition worsened because, despite everything we shared as life partners, the law doesn’t recognize our relationship and criminalizes it. My partner was fading away, and we were fighting just to protect our relationship—and protect her—from the tightening grip of her father’s health guardianship, which turned into tyranny that forced us, and especially me, to fail. I failed because I was weaker than any partner who has the right to fail. I failed because I forgot who I was. I ignored the fact that when I try to appear without a mask to satisfy society, I am nothing but nobody.
This painful experience opened my eyes to another side of the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community. In the last few months, I had to take responsibility for everything due to my partner’s deteriorating mental and financial state. Her family was involved to some extent, but my partner hid her deepest thoughts from them, afraid that revealing them would cost her the few freedoms she had fought so hard to win. I was fighting alone, but I failed. I couldn’t save her.
Yes, I failed, but I’m not guilty. I failed because I faced the limits imposed by my sexual identity. Perhaps I meant something important to her and to our relationship, but ultimately, I was nothing, I was nobody.
