Hamid Zaher is the first openly and activist Afghanistani gay. He was born to a rustic family in 1974 in the Parwan province of Afghanistan. He graduated from the pharmacy faculty of Kabul University in 1999. He left his country in 2001 because of being discriminated against as a homosexual. After seven years of residing in Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey, he came to his current home of Canada in March of 2008.