Support MIRAL & NOURAN

Hi. We are Miral and Nouran, a lesbian couple forced to flee to Canada from Egypt following abuse, threats of being raped or murdered, and years of homophobic mistreatment at the hands of our families and people we once thought of as a community of friends.  

We are sharing our story here because we need your help to finally settle in Canada and to complete our education so that we can pay back to Canada for the support that has saved our lives.  

As young gay women growing up in Egypt, our families forced us into the indignity of undergoing archaic conversion therapy, hounded us out of our homes and colleges, for no reason other than that we happen to love one another. Having lived in constant fear of our lives, in a country where death threats against the LGBTQ+ community too often become a reality, we will be eternally grateful to LQBTQ+ community and groups who helped us to escape the very real death threats from family, ex friends and hundreds of online strangers who knew nothing about us, but felt entitled to hate and terrorize us.  

Since arriving safely in Canada, a country we had never visited and knew little about, we have had some struggles we never expected to face:  in 2018 Miral fell ill and needed heart ablation surgery and her chronic illness will require lifelong treatment; at the depths of our needs things got worse when our property owner forced us out onto the streets just as the work we were doing dried up.  Then, at this low point but with a feeling that we were about to achieve some liberty and freedom, our escape story was picked up by the Egyptian media who painted us as demons, traitors and an affront to our religion.  And so we faced a new online campaign of hatred started against us, including daily threats of rape and murder; this onslaught of  intimidation and hate speech was launched against us not just from Egypt, but sadly also from too many members of the Egyptian community here in Canada. We once again felt scared as we walked in the streets of a country that had given us sanctuary and hope.   

The freedom we enjoy being ourselves here in Canada is much cherished, and we will forever be grateful to the people of Canada for giving us a place in this amazing country. And we will never be silenced by haters as we campaign for equality, inclusion and a sense of belonging for all.

Although now feeling safer today than at any time before in our lives, life as a refugee is no bed of roses; we cannot get into well paid jobs as we do not have Canadian accredited education. So we have worked manual jobs, anything that would help us gain our independence and freedom from kitchen assistants to low paid back-office jobs, warehousing, and factory work, but thee jobs cannot offer the security of a safe home that feels permanent or a career where we can flourish and pay-back to Canada for helping us escape the torture we faced at home. We live one day at a time, often out of a suitcase as we cannot get the stability to settle in one place and complete our educations. 

That is our dream and that is where we would be grateful of any help, no matter how small you may be able to offer us. We have provisionally secured places to study and complete our education in social care and ASSAULTED WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S COUNSELLOR/ADVOCATE PROGRAM : we want to pay back local Canadians as well as current and future refugees for the help we have had but we need some assistance to get us secured so that we can study, graduate and start to payback.

Our appeal is for $8500 and that will make us secure: we can enroll in college, get a modest place to live, buy the supplements needed to alleviate some of Miral’s chronic symptoms and to fulfil our dream of living of being able to live as openly loving, independent, gay women who will work tirelessly to help others for the rest of our professional lives.

We know that the world is amid a devastating pandemic and that we are but two women out of many who are having a bit of a hard time, so we appreciate every piece of help that anyone can give us, whether that be a much appreciated donation to our fund, or by purchasing any art piece from Miral's art gallery  https://mirale-mokhtar.wixsite.com/miral 
  
Thank you so much for taking the time to read about out story and if you can also help us to get our story out to a wider audience, we will be eternally grateful. 




Petition link for our movement https://www.change.org/p/help-lgbtq-refugees-get-their-voice-heard-by-the-canadian-government