"In the rewriting of Arab sexual history over the past century or so, homosexuality has been buried -- to the point that today's intolerance is now seen as the authentic voice of tradition when it is (as in so many other parts of the Global South) arguably more of an echo of the region's European colonial masters and is certainly less forgiving, in practice, than at other times in its history." p.224
A former Economist reporter and co-vice chair of the UN's Global Commission on HIV and Law, Shereen El Feki devotes a meaty 60-page chapter of her book out this week, Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World
[Kindle], to profiles of gay men in the Middle East, especially Egypt. No surprise, their experiences differ drastically by class. Nasim "an immensely charming and cultured man in his forties" is careful, disapproves of excess camp in his friends, and says "When the police see me, they see my social identity, so they don't arrest me. It's about power." Working class Munir "a small and gentle man, with Nefertiti cheekbones, large, lquid eyes, and the sort of eyelashes mascara marketers dream of" has been jailed for "habitual debauchery." He says "We are not safe. We are afraid to go to this place, or that place. I will never linger in any place where there are many gays. It is very dangerous. Most of the gays, they are young, they are still hyper, they are not very safe."
Other men "felt constrained by the term gay... To [married, father] Hisham, 'gay' implies a full-time occupation, with sex at the center of things, whereas he sees his relations with other men as 'a small corner of our lives, something we can go to or not go to, but it is not obsessing... Look at me--I have a mustasche, I'm masculine.'" The author summarizes, "for him, these are useful compartments, not unwanted closets."
One quasi surprise in the heavly mustached, masculine culture is that when a guy comes out to his father, the man's response is "Okay, but you must never tell your mother." Another half-surprise is they are aware of the gay love in the 9th century Baghdad poet Abu Nuwas
but not of the queer doings in Ahmad ibn Yusuf al-Tifashi's The Delight of Hearts: Or What You Will Not Find in Any Book
replete with happy same-sex couplings and the stray bad tricks who beat or rob their pickups.
Depressingly, today's literature is more narrow. Nasim recounts going to see the movie of Alaa al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building
with its cliched gay newspaper editor who is murdered by a lover, "much to the delight of audiences." Nasim says at every screening, audiences cheered the murder.
For more, follow Gay Middle East or get Michael Luongo's Gay Travels in the Muslim World.
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