- ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī (1957-, Egypt) – ʿImārat Yaʿqūbiyān (2002, English trans. The Yacoubian Building, 2004). Describing the life of the inhabitants of one Cairene building, this novel covers in detail Cairo’s underground subculture. One of its protagonists is Ḥātim, is an intelligent and accomplished homosexual journalist who is not flamboyant or effeminate but identifies homosexuality with mainstream masculinity (reference). He cruises Cairo nightlife looking for one-night stands with men, behaviour the novel explains originated with sexual abuse and parental neglect during his childhood (reference) (also in C: Cities: Egypt: Cairo and 1954 Nasser comes to power in Egypt).
- Hudā Barakāt (1952-, Lebanon) – Ḥajar al-Ḍaḥk (1990, English trans. Stone of Laughter, 1995) and Sayyidī wa Ḥabībī (‘My Master and Lover’, 2004, English version: Hoda Barakat’s Sayyidi wa Habibi: The Authorized Abridged Edition for Students of Arabic, 2013). Both these novels fall in the category of homosexual representation that aims to portray homosexuals’ true emotions and deals with homoerotic desire.
Ḥajar al-Ḍaḥk is set during the Lebanese Civil War and portrays the homosexual Khalīl, who’s feminine non-conformity does not resonate with the war’s patriarchal definitions of masculinity dominated by aggression and violence. Therefore, he pretends it does not exist, separating the war-dominated public sphere from his little apartment which he obsessively keeps neat and tidy (reference). However, this all changes when he loses two of his lovers. He undergoes a transformation joining the Lebanese warlords and becoming a stereotypical man: to avoid being the victim he must be the aggressor. Hate becomes Khalīl’s credo and drives him to preforming the ultimate act of male sexual violence: rape (reference) (also in 1975 – 1988 Lebanese Civil War).
Sayyidī wa Ḥabībī is also set during the Civil War. Its narrator-protagonist, Wadiʿ, is attracted to his master and although he does not claim to be homosexual, the pull of this attraction contradicts his heterosexual orientation and pushes his need for its reaffirmation (reference).
- Rachid Boudjedra (written elsewhere as Rashīd Būjdirah, 1941-, Algeria) – Timimoun (‘Timimoun’, 1994). Narrator of this novel, a tour operator who is obsessed by fundamentalist terror and haunted by the suicide of his brother, takes a group to the southern Algerian desert in his bus. The novel is set in the period preceding the Algerian Civil War, and as the protagonist tours with the group, he reflects on his history (reference). At the same time, he is provoked by his obsession of a female passenger, Sarah, which turns into a confrontation with his own homosexual desires and violent impulses that seem to “underscore a message of collective responsibility for the FIS” (Front Islamique du Salut) (reference) (also in 1991 – 2002 Algerian Civil War).
- Alīkandrā Shrītiḥ (1987-, Lebanon) – ʿAlī wa ummuhu al-Rūsiyya (2010, English trans. Ali and His Russian Mother, 2015). Following the Israeli invasion of 2006 an unnamed female character and ʿAlī, both of Russian mothers and Lebanese fathers, join Russian nationals on an evacuation journey organized by the Russian Embassy (reference). The novel describes how ʿAlī struggles with the death and destruction of the war, his homosexuality, his mixed ethnicity, and his Jewish heritage. He is described by the unnamed character (an old classmate), who due to this ambiguity at times feels attracted to him (reference) (also in R: Religion and Sectarianism: Judaism and the Arab-Jew relationships and 2006 Lebanon War).
- Yūsuf Idrīs’ (1927- 1991, Egypt) short story ‘Abū al-Rijāl’ (‘Father of all men’, 1987), which was published in the Egyptian magazine Uktūbr, portrays the latent homosexuality of a strong, intelligent, powerful self-made man, Sulṭān, who has an exaggerated sense of masculine pride (reference). Sulṭān discovers in his early fifties that his life is a sham and his masculine attitude is a façade, after which he forces himself to come to terms with his passive homosexuality, especially when he develops desires to have sex with a young handsome man who works for him. Sulṭān wonders what is wrong with being a homosexual, a daring question considering the religious climate Egypt lived in at the time (reference). Both the Arabic and the English version of the short story can be found in the bilingual collection titled A Leader of Men (1988).
- Ḥamdī Abū Julayyil (1967 – 2023, Egypt) – Luṣūṣ Mutaqaidun (2002, English trans. Thieves in Retirement, 2006). This novel is about a homosexual man named Sayf who lives in Cairo. Sayf’s sexuality is oppressed by his family who beats him, tries to kill him, incarcerates him in an asylum and finally marries him off (reference).
- Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Nabī (1977-, Egypt) – Fī Ghurfat al-ʿAnkabūt (2016, English trans. In the Spider’s Room, 2018). When a young man is released from prison after doing time for having a homosexual relationship, he follows his therapists’ advice and attempts to write down his experiences. However, he encounters a writer’s block and is distracted by a spider who is the only other living creature ever to be found in his room. He furthermore starts to remember episodes from his earlier life such as a young man who sexually harassed him when he was a child, his earlier marriage to cover up his homosexuality and the birth of his daughter. The events in the novel are based on the arrests following a gay party on the Queen Boat in Cairo (reference) (also in G: Dysfunctional Governance: Prison literature and Torture).
- Rachid O. (pseudonym for Abdellah Oubaid 1970-, Morocco) writes about the conflicts of being both a homosexual and a Muslim. Two examples of novels include Chocolat chaud (‘Hot chocolate’, 1998) and Analphabètes (‘The illiterates’, 2013).
Chocolat chaud is an autofiction set in France describing a Moroccan adolescent exploring his sexual identity through his obsession with his nanny’s previous charge, a French boy.
Analphabètes, depicts the life of Rachid, who after living in France for several years to study, returns to Morocco for a trip. While staying in a hotel in Marrakech he meets another young male guest. While at first keeping his distance, the two men slowly develop a bond (reference). At the same time the narrator is confronted with a sombre and violent society in which he and other gay men are constantly confronted with degrading public insults (reference). Analphabètes won the Moroccan prize for literature awarded by la Mamounia in 2013.
- Ghādah al-Sammān (1942-, Syria) – Bayrūt ’75 (1975, English trans. Beirut ’75, 1995). This novel depicts the lives of several characters, among others the relationship between the Syrian aspiring clerk from a low economical class, Faraḥ, who moves to Beirut in pursuit of a singing career, and his Lebanese patron Nīshān. This later promises Faraḥ success if he is obedient to his sexual desires, which results is a violent dehumanisation of Faraḥ (reference). The novel is also and exploration of the socio-political realities of Lebanon on the outset of the Lebanese Civil War (reference).
- Ḥanān al-Shaykh (1945-, Lebanon) – Innaha Lundun yā ʿAzīzī (2000, English trans. Only in London, 2002). Four strangers traveling from Lebanon to London meet on the plane. Two of them, Lāmis, a 30-year-old divorcee, and Nikūlās, an English expert on Islamic art, fall in love, and the third, Amīr, reinvents herself as a princess. The fourth character is, Samīr, a closeted homosexual who struggled in Lebanon where his family sent him to a mental institution because of his effeminate behaviour and cross-dressing. Soon, Samīr, finds himself exiled to London where he can reclaim his sexual agency despite social marginalization (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab world: Europe: England).
- Abdellah Taïa (1973-, Morocco) – Le Rouge du tarbouche (‘The red of the fez / yarboush’, 2005). This novel is one of the first critical investigations of sex tourism from a North African perspective (reference). The young narrator of this novel fantasizes about Ali, the son of his mother’s cousin, during a family reunion.
- Saʿd Allah Wannūs’ (1941 – 1997, Syria) play Ṭuqūs al-Ishārāt wa al-Taḥawwulāt (1994, English trans. Rituals of Signs and Transformations, 1997). This play is set in nineteenth-century Damascus amid a rivalry over power between the Mufti of Damascus and the city’s leading notables, which leads to this former’s arrest in the company of a courtesan. During the play the characters change in ways that challenge the socially dominant model of masculinity. One of them, al-ʿAfsa, the mufti’s henchman, openly claims his homosexual desire and his love for the ultra-macho ʿAbbās (reference). ʿAbbās agrees to sexual intercourse on the condition that he exclusively has the penetrative role, for his sexual attraction to al-ʿAfsa stems from a desire to dominate a male body that is culturally inscribed with masculine qualities (reference). Al-ʿAfsa’s desire is associated with a ‘true’ feminine softness and passivity.
- ʿAbād Yaḥyā (1980-, Palestine) – Jarīmah fī Rāmallāh (‘Crime in Ramallah’, 2016). This novel portrays three young people in Palestine after the Second Intifada (2000 – 2005), whose life changes after a young woman was murdered in the streets of Ramallah in front of a bar (reference). An employer of the bar is arrested and although he is cleared of charges, when the police realize he is a homosexual, they torture and humiliate him. The novel, which was banned in Palestine, also portrays the turmoil, and search a Palestinian identity of the youth after the Second Intifada in an age of globalisation (reference) (also in 2000 – 2005 Second Intifada).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Khalid Hadeed. 2013. “Homosexuality and Epistemic Closure in Modern Arabic Literature.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 45: 271-291, p. 278, 280
- Hanadi al-Samman. 2008. “Out of the Closet: Representation of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature.” JAL 39: 270-310, p. 280 295, 296
- Khalid Hadeed. 2013. “Homosexuality and Epistemic Closure in Modern Arabic Literature.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 45: 271-291, p. 281
- John Culbert. 2003. “On the Trace of the Other: Memory, Melancholia, and Repression in Rachid Boudjera’s ‘Timimoun’.” L’Esprit Créateur 43(1): 69-80, p. 70, 77
- Nadine Sinno. 2017. “Crushing the Bones of the Other: Disability, Ethnicity, and Homosexuality in Rashid al-Daif’s ‘Sikirida’s Cat’ and Alexandra Chreiteh’s ‘Ali and his Russian Mother’.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 58(3): 258-275, p. 259, 267
- Saad Elkhadem. 1990. “Youssef Idris and His Gay ‘Leader of Men’.” The International Fiction Review 17(1): 25-28, p. 25, 27
- Tarek el- Ariss. 2013. Trails of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political. Fordham University Press, New York, p. 132
- Badiʿa Zaydān. 2017. “‘Fī Ghurfat al-ʿAnkabūt’ li-Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Nabī: ‘al-Mithliyah al-Jinsiyah’ fī Tanāwul baʿīd ʿan al-ʾIsfāf.” www.al-ayyam.ps, 7 March 2017 https://www.al-ayyam.ps/ar_page.php?id=11e87728y300447528Y11e87728 (last accessed 24 November 2021)
- Alessandro Badin. 2016. “Between men: Homosocial Desire and the Dynamics of Masculinity in the Novels of Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20(1): 111-120, p. 116
- Gibson Ncube. 2016. “Sexual/textual politics: rethinking gender and sexuality in gay Moroccan literature.” In Writers and Social Thought in Africa. Eds. Wale Adebani. Routledge: Oxon/ New York, p. 64- 79, 71
- Kim Jensen. 1999. “Ghada Samman’s ‘Beirut ‘75’ Unmasks Gender and Class in Post-Colonial Society.” Al Jadid Magazine 5(26), retrieved through https://www.aljadid.com/content/ghada-sammans-beirut-75-unmasks-gender-and-class-post-colonial-society (last accessed 10 November 2023)
- Mohamed Bataoui. 2022. “Narrating Homosexuality across Borders and Beyond Boundaries in Hanan Al-Shaykh’s Only in London.” International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 4(3): 1-13, p. 4, 10, 11
- Mehammed Mack. 2013. “Sexualized Collaborations and the Politics of Ghostwriting in Franco-Arab Literature: From Paul Bowles to Tout le monde aime Mohamed.” JAL 44: 121-144, p. 140
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