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‘We were looking for something beautiful’
War brought gay ‘Out of Iraq’ couple together
Nayyef Hrebid and Btoo Allami (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Nayyef Hrebid was a translator for the U.S. Marines in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2004 when he first saw Btoo Allami, who was a sergeant in the Iraqi army.
The two men spoke for the first time a few months later when they were on a joint mission to clear Ramadi of terrorists. Hrebid and Allami spent the next week together and they had their first kiss late one night in a garden that was surrounded by a makeshift fence made with sandbags.
“We were looking for something beautiful during a time that was very difficult for us,” Hrebid told the Washington Blade on April 28 during an interview at the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to THRIVE conference that took place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Woodley Park. “We didn’t know if we were going to die or not so we were looking for something beautiful.”
“He’s something beautiful that happened to me,” he added.
Allami agreed, telling the Blade that he saw Hrebid first.
“It was just a really beautiful time,” said Allami.
Fellow Iraqi translator beat Hrebid because he is gay
“Out of Iraq,” which premiered last June at the LA Film Festival, documents Hrebid and Allami’s relationship.
“Out of Iraq” is on Logo and has been nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. The documentary won a Daytime Emmy Award a few hours after Hrebid and Allami spoke with the Blade.
The two men spent two years in Ramadi until they were both transferred to Diwaniyah, a city in southern Iraq, in 2007. Hrebid told the Blade “people in the military started knowing about our relationship.”
“A lot of people started talking,” he said.
Hrebid told the Blade that a fellow Iraqi translator who was his “best friend” broke his arm after he beat him because he is gay. He said the U.S. major to whom he reported the incident threatened him.
“‘If you say anything, I’ll throw you outside the camp, which is between the terrorists so they’d kill me,'” said the major, according to Hrebid.
“So I kept it inside me and I was crying because I knew there’s no justice,” he added.
Gay Iraqis targeted by militias, ISIS
Gay men could not serve openly in the U.S. military until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed in 2010.
Members of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia that prominent cleric Muqtada al-Sadr runs, in 2007 killed gay men who recorded themselves belly dancing at a birthday party. Hrebid told the Blade militia members killed more than 200 people in Baghdad in a single week “just because they are gay.”
“That’s by smashing their head with a big block in the middle of the street,” he said.
Allami was born into a poor Shiite family in Baghdad.
Al-Sadr last summer banned his followers from committing violence against LGBT people. Violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity nevertheless remains commonplace in Iraq, with Hrebid telling the Blade his friend’s parents killed him in front of their home after they found out he was gay.
“Everyone can judge you on the street,” he said. “It’s not easy to be gay in the Middle East, especially in Iraq.”
“A lot, a lot,” added Allami.
The so-called Islamic State has publicly executed dozens of men in portions of Iraq and Syria that it controls or once controlled.
UNHCR denies Allami refugee status application
Hrebid moved to Seattle in 2009 after he received asylum because he worked as a translator with the U.S. military.
“I came in 2009 and I saw the life here and how it’s different, but I was feeling so bad because he was left behind,” said Hrebid. “I promised to bring him here.”
Hrebid told the Blade that Allami’s family found out about their relationship when they heard them talking on the phone or on Skype.
“His life was getting more in danger,” Hrebid told the Blade as Allami listened. “He had to run away.”
Michael Failla, a Seattle-based immigration advocate who Hrebid befriended at a party, gave Allami money to travel to Lebanon on a 30 day tourist visa. Allami deserted the Iraqi army and flew to Beirut on Dec. 6, 2010.
Allami in early 2011 applied for refugee status with the U.N. Refugee Agency. Lebanese authorities would have sent him back to Iraq if they found him living in the country without documentation, but he said the UNHCR employee who interviewed him said the agency cared “more about families” than those who are gay.
“The first time the guy told me, ‘We don’t care about gay refugees,'” Allami told the Blade.
Hrebid in January 2013 saw Allami for the first time in more than three years when he and Failla traveled to Beirut.
Allami soon had a second UNHCR interview that lasted 11 hours. The agency deemed him ineligible for resettlement because a UNHCR employee with whom he previously met incorrectly reported that he witnessed U.S. soldiers torture Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.
“We had never been there,” Hrebid told the Blade, noting Allami learned about the torture through a newscast.
It took six years ‘for us to be together’
Allami had begun the process of applying for asylum in Canada as he waited for UNHCR’s decision. A group of Canadians sponsored him and the government approved his application in 2013.
Allami arrived in Vancouver on Sept. 9, 2013.
“That was the happiest day ever in my life,” Hrebid told the Blade. “I finally felt he was safe and he had papers and he could stand up and walk without anyone bothering him.”
Hrebid became a U.S. citizen in 2014, which is the same year in which same-sex couples received marriage rights in Washington State.
Nayyef Hrebid and Btoo Allami speak to the Washington Blade in D.C. on April 28, 2017. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
He and Allami married in Canada on Valentine’s Day in 2014. Allami applied for a visa that would allow him to live in the U.S.
It was granted in March 2015 after Allami had an interview in Montreal. He and Hrebid men married for a second time at Cailla’s Seattle home in August of that year.
“It took us basically six years for us to be together,” said Hrebid.
Families ‘freaked out’ after Ellen DeGeneres show appearance
Hrebid and Allami in January appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” after Ellen DeGeneres read an interview the couple had done with the BBC.
Hrebid told the Blade their families in Iraq “freaked out” after show aired and news about their appearance spread throughout social media.
Hrebid said his uncle told him to return to Iraq so members of his tribe could kill him and “cut the shame.” He told the Blade that Allami’s family has disowned him.
“No one can mention his name in the family anymore,” said Hrebid.
Trump policies ‘going to put’ lives in danger
President Trump on Jan. 27 signed an executive order that banned citizens of Iraq and six other predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days. A revised travel ban that Trump signed in March did not include Iraq.
The second executive order has yet to take effect because it has been challenged in court.
“It’s going to put a lot of lives in danger,” Hrebid told the Blade. “He (Trump) thinks people just come through, walk in to the United States. Btoo is one example. It took four years just for vetting and a background check.”
Hrebid and Allami have begun to help other refugees resettle — at first in the U.S., but now Canada because of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“We could just shut our door and just live our lives without anyone knowing, but this is not why we are here,” said Hrebid. “We are here to let people know about what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening to those who are LGBTQ.”
Allami agreed, noting Seattle is “my home now” and it is “amazing.”
“We made our dreams come true,” he told the Blade.
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
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Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
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Introducing the Torchbearers Awards honoring queer, trans women and nonbinary people
Meet the Legends and Illuminators lighting new paths
The Torchbearers Awards are more than recognition—they are a continuation of legacy. They honor the quiet architects of progress in our community: those who organize, advocate, build, and protect, often without fanfare but always with purpose. Rooted in a belief in intentional recognition, this honor names those who carry our movements forward—those who make room for others, who remind us that change is both generational and generative. In a time marked by uncertainty and challenge, these leaders push forward with courage, clarity, and an unwavering commitment to expanding opportunity and equity.
This year’s honorees reflect the full breadth of our community, spanning generations, backgrounds, identities, and industries. From Legends, with decades of leadership and having created pathways for others, to Illuminators, who are lighting new paths with creativity and innovation, each Torchbearer represents the power of intergenerational leadership and the strength found in our diversity. They are organizers, advocates, artists, policy leaders, healers, and changemakers whose lived experiences shape a shared vision for equity and liberation.
This award is our love letter to queer and trans women and nonbinary people who carry the flame when it would be easier to let it dim. To those who consistently show up, who use their voice and visibility and stand firm, often without recognition, so that others may live more freely and fully. The Torchbearers Awards celebrates not just what has been done, but the enduring spirit, responsibility, and collective care that ensure the work continues, and that the flame is always passed forward.
Co-Creators of the Torchbearers Awards: Shannon Alston, June Crenshaw, Heidi Ellis
Torchbearers Awards Advisory Board: Aditi Hardikar, Lesley Bryant, Jasmine Wilson-Bryant, Stephen Rutgers
ILLUMINATOR AWARDEES
- Representative Sharice Davids (she/her), (D, KS-03)
— U.S. House of Representatives - Greisa Martinez Rosas (she/her/ella)
— Executive Director, United We Dream - Paola Ramos (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Meagan A. Fitzgerald (she/her)
— Journalist & Correspondent - Jessica L. Lewis (she/her)
— Founder / Producer, Play Play DC - Savannah Wade (she/her)
— Founder, OAR Agency - Suhad Babaa (she/her)
— Filmmaker/ Former Executive Director of Just Vision - Ashlee Davis (she/her)
— Global Head of Inclusive Outcomes, Ancestry - Jazmine Hughes (she/her)
— Journalist and Former Editor at New York Times Magazine - Queen Adesuyi (they/she)
— Policy Advisor & Organizer, ReFrame Health & Justice - Michele Rayner, Esq. (she/her)
— Civil Rights Attorney, State Representative (Florida House of Representatives) - Gaby Vincent (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Jenny Nguyen (she/her)
— Founder & Owner, The Sports Bra - Denice Frohman (she/her)
— Independent Artist, Poet / Performer - Vida Rangel (she/her)
— Founder, Our Trans Capital - Roxanne Anderson (they/them)
— Executive Director, Our Space - Ann Marie Gothard (she/her)
— Co-Founder & President, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Diana Rodriquez (she/her)
— Co-Founder & CEO, Pride Live (Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center) - Wendi Cooper (she/her)
— Founder / Executive Director, Transcending Women - Toya Matthews (she/her)
— City of San Antonio, Texas - Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones (she/her)
— Sports/Cultural Commentator and Community Leader - Charity Blackwell (she/her)
— Poet, LGBTQ Advocate & Community Leader - Wilhelmina Indermaur (she/her)
— Director of Communications, Tyler Clementi Foundation - Em Chadwick (she/her)
— CMO, For Them & Autostraddle - Kylo Freeman (they/he)
— CEO, For Them & Autostraddle
LEGEND AWARDEES
- Sheila Alexander-Reid (she/her)
— Executive Director, PHL Diversity, Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau - Cassandra Cantave Burton (she/her)
— Interim Director of Thought Leadership & Senior Research Advisor, AARP - leigh h. mosley (she/her)
— Photographer / Educator, PhotoFlo Photography - Jenn M. Jackson, PhD (they/them)
— Assistant Professor of Political Science; Author & Columnist, Syracuse University - Jordyn White (she/her)
— COO, Washington Prodigy / VP of Leadership Development & Research, HRC Foundation - AJ Hikes (they/them)
— Deputy Executive Director, ACLU - RaeShanda Lias (she/her)
— Digital Creator, RL Lockhart - Donna Payne-Hardy (she/her)
— Educator, EEO Specialist, Founder of NBJC, Former Leader at the Human Rights Campaign - Courtney R. Snowden (she/her)
— Principal, Blueprint Strategy Group - Gaye Adegbalola (she/her)
— Musician & Activist, Musician / Inductee of the Blues Hall of Fame - Cheryl A. Head (she/her)
— Independent Author, Novelist (Crime Fiction) - Letitia Gomez (she/her)
— The American LGBTQ+ Museum, Board Chair - Lynne Brown (she/her)
— Publisher, Washington Blade - Shay Franco-Clausen (She/Her/Ella/Queen)
— Political Strategist and Organizer - Melissa L. Bradley (she/her)
— Founder & Managing Partner, New Majority Ventures - Meghann Burke (she/her)
— Executive Director, NWSL Players Association - Victoria Kirby York, MPA (she/they)
— Director of Public Policy & Programs, National Black Justice Collective - Joli Angel Robinson (she/her)
— CEO, Center on Halsted - Jeannine Frisby LaRue (she/her)
— CEO, Moxie Strategies - Alice Wu (she/her)
— Film Director (Saving Face, The Half of It) / Screenwriter - Storme Webber (she/her)
— Interdisciplinary Artist / Educator, University of Washington - Kim Stone
— CEO of the Washington Spirit, Washington Spirit - Mickalene Thomas
— American Visual Artist, Mickalene Thomas Studio - Erika Lorshbough (any/they/she)
— Executive Director, interACT - J. Gia Loving (she/ella)
— Co-Executive Director, GSA Network
A Sondheim masterpiece ‘Merrily’ rolls onto Netflix
ROSENSTEIN: Vote McDuffie for mayor of D.C.
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
Report: Grenell wants Russian ambassadorship
