Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Anouar Rahmani, is an exiled Algerian writer and human rights advocate.
“Not long ago, I was a celebrated exiled writer, one of the most visible faces at City of Asylum Pittsburgh — a grassroots organization that helps endangered writers build new homes and new lives in Pittsburgh. Today, I am alone, unable to find a job, without health insurance, and, if I remain in this situation, I may soon be unable to pay my rent and find myself — God forbid — homeless. My story begins in Algeria — the country that prompted Salman Rushdie and other writers to first establish the “parliament of writers” internationally in 1993 because of the alarming number of attacks on, and assassinations of, writers in the country in the ’90s during the civil war. This is the same country that had earlier welcomed the international Black Panthers, and many African liberation movements since its independence from France. I came here as a threatened men in the family. In 2017, I was interrogated for hours about one writer. For years in Algeria, I was persecuted because of my novels, my legal and constitutional struggle as a gay Muslim man, and my defense of women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and freedom of expression. In 2015, I was the first Algerian to call for the legalization of samesex marriage. I started speaking up on taboo topics, crimes against children, for example, and family laws that relegated women to second-class citizens and prioritized of my novels, which highlighted the participation of the LGBTQ community in the war of independence against the French — another taboo topic. In 2019, I broke the greatest taboo of all in Algeria, calling for the truth to be told about the 20,000 young men kidnapped during the civil war…”