Gay Girl in Damascus: A Viral Kidnapping And An Internet Fantasy

Chameleon

Audiochuck | Campside Media

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary, Tv & Film

4.6 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story of a Syrian-American blogger whose posts during the Arab Spring captured hearts around the world—including a woman in Montreal who believed she was falling in love. But Amina Arraf, the author of Gay Girl in Damascus, wasn’t real. She was a hoax. So how did so many people, including news organizations and governments, fall for it? And at what cost?

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's a campsite media.
0:05.0	Hello?
0:06.0	What is, so, what do you want me to say?
0:08.0	Oh, it's just my...
0:10.0	Camelian.
0:11.0	Camelian Weekly.
0:13.0	Oh.
0:14.0	It's a warm night in Syria's ancient capital in May of 2011.
0:26.6	Damascus is still known as the city of Jasmine, and tonight, richly assented air drifts through the tight, winding alleyways of the old city.
0:29.6	Amina Arraf, a 35-year-old Syrian-American woman, is fast asleep in her family home.
0:35.6	There's a knock on the door of her family's compound,
0:40.9	because they don't just have a house or an apartment.
0:43.9	They have a medieval mansion.
0:47.0	And because it's an ancient family that traces its roots
0:50.5	all the way back to the Caliph who conquered Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire.
0:58.5	This is the historian Andrew Orr, who teaches military history at Kansas State University, and who knows
1:05.4	this story very well.
1:08.5	The secret police have shown up.
1:12.1	Her father is hauled out of bed to face them, and they demand he turn his daughter
1:18.1	Amina over.
1:20.5	Her father is surprised.
1:23.2	Amina less so.
	...

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