In the past few years, I have focused my research on the inconsistencies in
refugee regimes, wherein Iranian queer and transgender refugee applicants
in Turkey who are waiting for their cases to be processed by the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Turkish state,
and the “third country of asylum” are denied rights while seemingly living
under the protection of rights.2
At first glance, it might appear that a mid1990s semiautobiographical text about Fatima Mernissi’s (1940–2015)
childhood in a Moroccan harem is irrelevant to my scholarship on refugee
regimes and queer kinship. Nonetheless, this article brings together these
seemingly disparate topics—queer and trans refugee sponsorship, queer
kinship, and Mernissi’s semifictional account of harem life—in order to
question assumptions of incommensurability and to suggest an epistemic
shift. Reflecting on “forgotten” texts from “elsewheres” may give us insights