how much they honk their car horns, which reminded him of his Iranians.

Sporting dark shades, a white scarf and a large indigo ring, he appeared to feel at home in Tel Aviv as he confidently walked through the city center, greeting passers-by.

Israel’s economic and cultural hub, Tel Aviv is a popular gay-friendly destination. Israel accepts gays serving openly in its military, but homosexuality is shunned among the country’s conservative ultra-Orthodox community. This year, an extremist ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed a 15-year-old girl to death at a Jerusalem Pride parade.

Homosexuality is a taboo topic in Iran, where gays and lesbians can face lashings or death sentences if convicted. Human rights groups estimate that over 4,000 gays have been executed since the Islamic Revolution. Famously, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tolda crowd at New York’s Columbia University in 2007 that “in Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

Feili was reluctant to talk about the threats against him back home, but said they began after the publication in Iran of a heavily censored version of his first book, a collection of poetry titled “The Sun’s Platform,” in 2005. Feili was blacklisted and has been banned from publishing in Iran since.

According to the PEN American Center, a writers’ group advocating for freedom of expression, Feili’s email account was hacked and he was locked out of his online blog.

He was arrested three times over four years, most recently in February 2014 after he agreed to have his work published in Hebrew in Israel, according to PEN. The group said