Finding his way

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This article was published 08/06/2024 (519 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In his powerful new memoir, Danny Ramadan takes aim at Western assumptions about refugee and immigrant narratives.

“It’s true that I’m a queer man who grew up in a homophobic society; Damascus force-fed me its cruelty on a daily basis,” he recalls in the first chapter of Crooked Teeth.

“But it also spoke to me in my mother tongue and giggled at my jokes,” he wryly adds. “It opened its arms and embraced me on a late-night stroll, and it hid me in its alleyways as I had my first kiss. It covered me with its star-dotted sky when I had no home but its roads.”

Ramadan’s is an epic, cross-border journey. From his humble childhood in Damascus, to bearing witness to the Arab Spring uprisings, to his traumatic imprisonment in Syria, to the sunny beaches of Lebanon and his eventual arrival in Canada, Ramadan’s coming of age is a dramatic and inspiring read.

The Syrian-born, Vancouver-based writer chronicles the first 40 years of his life with candor and a healthy dose of courage. On the surface, Crooked Teeth looks like a typical queer coming-of-age story. Escaping abusive parents at an early age, the author “finds his people” in the home of a trans woman, later meeting an older gay Syrian man who introduces him to the finer things in life and teaches him self-love.

The author faces societal rejection with grace and dignity. Ramadan refuses to be defined by his trauma, insisting on holding space for joy as well. This is a writer in love with paradox; he resists easy conclusions, diving fearlessly into what it means to be a queer man in a Muslim society where violence is acceptable, and loving who you choose is not.

Ramadan can produce startling emotion with a single word or phrase. When describing his mother’s declining mental health, he gently observes, “Her voice is high-pitched, yet monotonous, lacking in colour — a harboured ship creaking with the waves, but not a soul on board.”

After moving out on his parents, he begins a casual affair with Adnan, an older Syrian man. Adnan doesn’t hide the fact that he has a wife and can only see Danny when she is away. Ramadan finds a feeling of belonging as they lie together in bed reading poetry and bingeing on TV, observing, “(Adnan) was instrumental in ensuring I was armed with knowledge about who I was and what it meant to be a queer Syrian man.”

The tender beauty of this inter-generational relationship appears in stark contrast to his friendship with another older gay man named Gary, who sponsors the author’s immigration to Canada later in the story. Gary has a serious case of white saviour complex and is possessive, prone to moments of extreme jealousy and seemingly oblivious to what Ramadan has endured.

Ramadan is an expert at establishing intimacy. Using brief asides, he asks his readers to trust his decisions about what to tell and what not to tell from his story. He actively questions how much of his pain is necessary to share, particularly in a section about his time in a Syrian prison. “Trust my silence as you’ve trusted my voice,” he implores.

In his previous book, the 2022 Lambda award-winning novel The Foghorn Echoes, the author similarly meditated on themes of found family and how to heal from trauma. His message is that refugees are whole people, not people in need of being saved or pitied.

Ramadan now works to help get other queer refugees out of homophobic countries. Some of the rage he feels on their behalf comes through in Crooked Teeth. While enduring the long two-year wait for his immigration papers to arrive, he is scolded by a wealthy white man for posting a picture of himself on a beach on social media. He’s supposed to look needy, not like he is having fun.

Crooked Teeth challenges its readers, but is never heavy-handed. It may recalibrate your notions about the refugee narrative.

Based on his last two books, Danny Ramadan is a writer to watch. His prose is fiercely intelligent and deeply moving.

Crooked Teeth strives to make the world a better, more empathetic, place. You will be a better human being for having read this book.

Greg Klassen is a Winnipeg writer and marketer.