I remember the first time Azizah* told me she was a lesbian. We sat on her single bed in a cramped room in south London and my new friend poured her heart out to me as though we had known each other for a lifetime. She spoke in broken, hushed sobs, clutching my hand and checking over her shoulder as though her life depended on it. Which, in many ways, it did.
Azizah, a 24-year-old chemistry student from Iran, is an asylum seeker here in the UK. Like many asylum seekers, she came in search of a safe haven. She and her father had fled their country after persecution and death threats relating to their family’s political affiliations. But Azizah’s story was complicated further by her sexual identity.