- Bareed Mista3jil: True Stories (‘Express Mail: True Stories’, 2009). This is an anonymously published collection of autobiographical writings by queer Lebanese women (reference). It was produced by the organisation Meem and includes ‘true stories’ of forty-one individuals based on transcribed interviews with over 150 members of the organisation (reference). The stories shed light on experiences of being queer, such as cultural censure, social repression, and coping with shame (reference).
- Ṣibā al-Ḥarz (pseudonym, author unknown) – Al-Akharūn (2006, English trans. The Others, 2009). This novel is set in Saudi Arabia and depicts the memories of the anonymous author who grew up going to a girl’s school in the largely Shiite eastern province of al-Qatif in Saudi Arabia, where she is seduced by her senior, Ḍiyy, who introduces her to the secret world of lesbian love affairs (reference). The narrator of the novel is subsequently marginalized not only for being women in Saudi Arabia, but also for being a Shiite in a Sunni majority country and having homosexual desires in a patriarchal heteronormative society.
- Ṣunʿallāh Ibrāhīm (1937 – 2025, Egypt) – Bayrūt… Bayrūt (1988, English trans. Beirut, Beirut, 2011). Set in Beirut during the Civil War, the nameless Egyptian narrator of this novel looks for a publishing house for his book while describing the raging Civil War. It includes a marginal lesbian relationship between Lamiyyā, a young, feminine, wife of an absentee publishing house director, and Jamīla, an older woman described as butch and manly (reference). During their relationship Lamiyyā develops heterosexual relationships, leading to Jamīla’s jealousy (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Writing).
- ʿĀliyyah Mamdūḥ’s (1944-, Iraq) short story ‘Presence of the Absent Man’, which appeared in Under the Naked Sky: Short Stories from the Arab World translated by Denys Johnson-Davies (2000), depicts the physical lesbian relationship between two women who meet at a marketplace (reference). The focus of the story is on the bodily desire and it shows clearly that this is still compared to the heterosexual physical norm (reference).
- Ilhām Manṣūr (1944-, Lebanon) – Anā, Hiya, Anti (‘I, she, you’, 2000). Set in both Paris and Lebanon, the reader follows the Lebanese Sihām’s journey of self-discovery as she develops a relationship with her French female lover Klayr (reference). The novel depicts Sihām’s process of bringing the people around her, such as her mother, as well as herself to accept her identity while at the same time introducing the reader to a new way of thinking about, expressing, and experiencing same-sex relationships and female homoeroticism in Arab culture (reference).
- Nawāl al-Saʿadāwī (1931 – 2021, Egypt) – Jannāt wa-Iblīs (1992, English trans. The innocence of the Devil, 1994). This novel depicts many facets of Egyptian culture, with the main thrust being that “religion is the underlying cause of women’s oppression” (reference). The novel portrays six characters in a psychiatric hospital, a setting which allows for mixing reality and fantasy, while the novel makes many theological references. One of the characters is the lesbian Narjūs, who refuses to be defined by society-imposed heterosexuality and justifies her choice by referring to the Quran, where no mention is made to lesbianism (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Psychological Disorders: Psychiatric hospitals).
- Ḥanān al-Shaykh (1945-, Lebanon) – Misk al-Ghazāl (1988, English Translation Women of Sand and Myrrh, 1992). This novel, one of the first to include a lesbian/ bi-sexual voice, centers four women from different social classes and cultural backgrounds living in an unnamed conservative Gulf country (reference). The lesbian relationship between the educated Lebanese Suhā and Saudi Nūr evolves from the seclusion of the two, and their relationship is thus not portrayed as based on love. Other characters include Sūzān, who is captivated by the men of the Arab desert, and Tamr, who fights male dominance to get an education (reference). What all voices have in common is their struggle in the male-dominated society where sex, due to its constraints, becomes an obsession (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Gender Issues).
- Nihād Sīrīs (1950-, Syria) – Ḥālat Shaghaf (‘A case of infatuation’, 1998). This novel portrays the romantic relationships between famous female wedding singers of the 1930s Aleppo, and their young dancers and the elite women of Aleppo’s society. The stories of the Banāt al-ʿIshra, as the woman of these homoerotic relationships are called, are filled with jealousy, hunt, agony, sexual and spiritual intimacy, and even living together (reference). The novel does at times display stereotypical images of lesbian women such as them being manly and also in one case describes lesbianism as being socially constructed rather than a biological factor (also in C: Cities: Syria: Aleppo).
- Samar Yazbak (1970-, Syria) – Rāʾihat al-Qirfah (2008, Cinnamon, 2012). This novel focusses on the relationship between the extremely rich Damascene woman Ḥanān, and her poor maid ʿĀliyah who lives in the outskirts of the city (reference). The novel describes their childhood memories, reflecting on the social context they were brought up in, as well as their lesbian relationship of which the power dynamics are compared to violent and oppressive heterosexual relationships. The novel’s story is told backwards and starts with Ḥanān walking in on ʿĀliyah sleeping with her husband as a means of punishing her for her demeanour (also in C: Cities: Syria: Damascus).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Tarek el-Ariss. 2013. Trails of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political. p. 114
- Dina Georgis. 2013. “Thinking Past Pride: Queer Arab Shame in ‘Bareed Mista3jil’.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45: 233-251, p. 234, 241, 242
- Aḥmad Maḥmūd al-Qāsim. 2008. “Qirāʾah fī Riwāyah ‘al-Ākhirūn’.” www.diwanalarab.com, 23 June 2008, https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-14503 (last accessed 10 November 2023)
- Hanadi al-Samman. 2008. “Out of the Closet: Representation of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature.” JAL 39: 270-310, p. 301, 302, 303, 305
- Amīnah Ghaṣn. 2000. “Ilhām Manṣūr fī ‘Ana, Hiyyah, Anti’. Mā Jadwā Riwāyah Talhath Warāʾ al-Iftiʿāl wa al-Faḍīḥah?” www.sauress.com, 18 August 2000, https://www.sauress.com/alhayat/31055345 (last accessed 10 November 2023)
- Connie Lamb. 2000. “Nawal el Saadawi: The Innocence of the Devil, trans. Sherif Hetata (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 32(4), 547-549, p. 547
- Miriam Mounir El Batran. 2019. An Unsilenced Text: The Literature of the Female Voice in Hanan Al-Shaykh’s Women of Sand and Myrrh and Leila Abouzeid’s Year of the Elephant. (Master’s Thesis, the American University in Cairo. AUC Knowledge Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjjpr30tKKAAxVS2QIHHZptDE0QFnoECBUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Ffount.aucegypt.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1801%26context%3Detds&usg=AOvVaw0N4lNYj27YLfJ2ju-CyoT6&opi=89978449) p. 25, 47
- Anne-Marie McManus. 2014. “The Contemporary Syrian Novel in Translation.” Arab Studies Journal 22(1): 322-333, p. 326