An Egyptian friend took me and a few others down to the Nile. After seven years, I was back in my parents’ country of birth. On the way, we were stopped. Along the riverbank road, police routinely pull cars over in the evenings, supposedly at random. But this time they had singled us out. For how we looked. The earrings on one of us, the crop top on another, two boys sitting in each other’s laps.

I already knew about officers who had called men faggots during pat-downs. Who searched phones for dating apps and explicit photos, and used vague decency laws to lock someone up. Not because they had to. Because they could.

We had alcohol on us, one bottle of wine already open. We weren’t doing anything illegal, but for the officer it was reason enough to question us. My heart was pounding. If he wanted to, he could take the driver in for a breathalyser test. I saw everyone tensing up, glancing around nervously. I took out my passport, started speaking in English and said firmly: these are my bottles. The driver hasn’t been drinking. I brought them. They brought me to my hotel nearby. The officer relaxed slightly. A conflict with a tourist was apparently less appealing. A few minutes later, we were on our way back towards the Nile.

On the felucca, people vogued on deck and the music rang out across the water. As if everyone had collectively decided: no one was taking this evening from us. On the water, no one could touch us. This evening had been organised as a warm welcome for me.

I have long lived a life without restrictions. I broke with my father, but I am surrounded by family and friends who accept me. In that freedom, I had almost forgotten that my story, the story of rejection, of hiding yourself, of starting over, is still the only story for so many people. Back in Egypt after all those years, I realised: I could have lived their lives, if fate had played out just slightly differently.

During the weeks I spent in Egypt, I heard several queer stories: someone leading a double life that was carefully overlooked at home. Someone who knew he would be thrown out on the street the moment his father found out. A mother who had rung psychologists together with her son to find out how they could cure him. She really did love him, he said. And another mother who had no problem with it at all, who even joked about marrying her son off to a wealthy Arab, to solve the family’s financial problems.

But in front of strangers, no one lets anything show. Newcomers like me are screened thoroughly in advance. Because everyone here lives in a country without a single protection. And yet: these were people who warned each other about dangers, who checked that everyone had got home safely, who immediately offered a place to sleep if someone had had a row, or who went to the police station to get someone released. I recognise something in it that I encounter less and less in Europe.

A large part of the Western queer community lives in (legal) safety. That is a victory. But that safety has also made us more individualistic. Being LGBTQ+ has slowly shifted from community to identity, while rights are being eroded in other countries. While people like us are adjusting themselves every single day to fit the space around them.

I went to Egypt and expected invisibility. What I did not expect was to find something there that I encounter less and less in Europe: a community that genuinely looks out for one another. Perhaps that is the most dangerous thing about sloth: it looks so much like rest.