"I am very afraid, but I just want people to know that we do exist," Shahd says about her decision to speak out about life as a transgender woman. Like the other person in this article, we have changed Shahd's name to protect her.

We have been messaging her over an encrypted app for her safety, and she travels away from her home to video call us in secret from a darkened room.

Shahd shows us her hair which she was forced to cut into a masculine style, but does not reveal by whom.

She then unbuttons her shirt to show us wounds on top of her chest.

Shahd says the wounds are the consequence of being arrested for "impersonating a woman". Authorities told her to remove breast tissue that had formed since she started taking oestrogen, which she got without prescription from another country.

"I lost my job and my friends," she says.

"I was arrested and interrogated several times because of my identity. I lost everything." detailed the arrests of LGBT people in Qatar, and found several trans people were among them, based solely on expressing their gender through clothes, hair or make-up.

Shahd avoids crowded places at busy times of the day, because she feels people stare at her and might report her to the police.

She says she has been arrested for "imitating a woman" while wearing make-up, and describes the government's preventive security department - a branch of Qatari law enforcement - as like a "gang".

"They capture you and prevent you from telling anyone where you are. The prison is underground where they treat you like a criminal," she says.

"You will be handcuffed," she said, laughing dryly as she added, "this is to protect society from us."

We were unable to independently verify Shahd's account of being arrested, because she received no official record of being detained.