On a humid Friday evening in May, Ana Masreya rushe d from her job at a talent agency in Midtown East to her Bedford - Stuyvesant apartment. She only had two hours to prepare before hosting her second show.

Onstage, Ana, whose drag name means “I’m an Egyptian woman” in Arabic, can easily nail cartwheels in six-inch heels and always has a trick up her sleeve — or thigh-high boot, from which she may pull a glitter-drenched fan. But her performances belie the fact that her drag queen persona is only one year old.

Growing up in Cairo, where openly gay people continue to be persecuted, Ana, who identifies as male and uses both male and female pronouns , lived closeted and strove to be “macho” like so many of the men around her. That prevented her from coming to terms with her sexuality. “I believed for a very long time that I was going to hell and that the devil was inside me,” she said.