In a region where at least 15 nations criminalize homosexuality and those that don’t, a culture of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” queer Arab communities would possibly have sunk into the shadows, but it is undeniable that they exist.
That’s why Tuesday’s American debut of This Arab is Queer, a new anthology edited by Elias Jahshan, a Palestinian-Lebanese Australian journalist living in London, is so groundbreaking. Jahshan asked 18 writers born or raised in the Arab or diaspora region for this intersection of their identity.
“I wanted to show that we are strong and that we can tell our stories in our own way. We don’t want other people talking to us all the time,” Jahshan says.
His decision to offer gay Arab reporting was triggered after his stint as editor of Star Observer, Australia’s longest-running LGBTQ media outlet, from 2013 to 2016. During his tenure, Jahshan said the Western media landscape ruled through atrocities committed by the Islamic State. through Iraq and Syria.
Jahshan, who grew up in a Christian home, said he discovered “a lot of Islamophobia and racism underlying” in reports of how those perceived as gay were thrown from rooftops and stoned for engaging in what the extremist organization called “sexual deviance. “”. Not only are the reports unnuanced, Jahshan says, but horrific murders have been weaponized as a misguided stereotype of the Arab queer experience. “Why don’t you check that you are gay [there] and see if Hamas throws you off the roof?” said Jahshan.
In 2019, he reached out to participants from the region and across the diaspora to set the record straight.
Next, TIME talks to some of those brave contributors.
In his essay, “My Kali – Digitizing a Queer Arab Future,” Khalid Abdel-Hadi, a Jordanian artist and founder of a pan-Arab queer magazine My Kali, tells a harrowing account of being portrayed as gay through national media in 2007. , when he 16.
As a teenager, full of exuberance and curiosity, Abdel-Hadi posed shirtless for the first canopy of the virtual magazine, which was intended only for the eyes of his underground community; the magazine stored as a PDF record on a CD and delivered to event attendees, in a virtual form typical of the 2000s.
Abdel-Hadi says the symbol was hijacked through a Jordanian media outlet with a sectarian agenda. Many other publications followed suit with negative headlines and erroneous reports, he said in the essay, making him the face of an oppressed network and a simple target.
“I identified my orientation early on and was very frank about communicating with my family, especially my mother. But then I had to deal with the public,” Abdel-Hadi recalls.
While five nations in the Arab region ban the death penalty for same-sex relationships, homosexuality is criminalized in Jordan. Despite this, he remains stigmatized and hidden in conservative Jordanian society, Abdel-Hadi says.
“I didn’t like the fact that they were looking to bring me back into the closet or dishonor me, or to use me as a bogeyman towards other members of the LGBTQ network,” Abdel-Hadi said of media policy over time. He adds that the “horrible” experience has made him even more determined to move forward with his virtual magazine, which has now built a network of more than 17,300 fans on Instagram.
Jahshan is determined to show the full extent of Arab identity, which is why the e-book asks queer black Arabs to share their experiences. “It was vital to show the full diversity of the LGBTQ community,” he says.
One of the voices belongs to Toronto resident Amna Ali, born and raised in the United Arab Emirates to a Somali father and Yemeni mother. In his essay, “My Intersectionality Was My Biggest Tyrant,” Ali reflects on his formative years as black, queer, and Arab in a region that can be as homophobic as it is anti-black.
The essay begins with a brilliant description of Ali being beaten by her brother at the age of 16, which she says is not a remote incident. .
“I cried a lot [when] I write, but it’s very therapeutic. I’m in a position where I can stand while I feel the pain,” Ali says of his artistic process. She adds that she didn’t tell anyone about the abuse for years because she felt forced to maintain her family’s position in the community.
Read more: I once hid my Middle Eastern identity. Being thrown into the musical The group replaced that
In her essay, Ali recalled that her mother detained her after the beating, but told her because she disapproved of Amna’s homosexuality.
Ali never saw her mother as a victim of patriarchy, calling her a “proud bearer of the flame of oppression” in the essay, but says her thinking has changed lately: “My father was a knowledgeable guy who made money who made sure she needed it. . . And my mother was a virtually illiterate Yemeni woguy whose father wouldn’t allow her to go to school after the fourth grade.
When Ali moved to Canada in late December 2021, a country that is doing relatively well globally when it comes to LGBTQ rights, she says she felt safe regarding, despite everything, she felt safe and began purging her emotions. Angry. I screamed a lot, cried and hit my pillow,” she says, adding that she has now learned to be her own protector.
Another rare and forceful voice in the anthology is by Zeyn Joukhadar, a Syrian-American trans songwriter with semi-professional songwriting experience. Her essay, “Catching the Light: Reclaiming Opera as a Trans Arab,” explores the beautiful adventure she embarked on to rediscover opera by doing a song as a bass, rather than a soprano, when her voice changed.
“Music is a way to have an interaction with my body that is joyful yet difficult,” Joukhadar recalls. “Hearing my own voice when I’m a soprano is shocking. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t understand why. “
As she struggled to exist in the framework and learned more about her gender identity, Joukhadar says she felt a sense known as dissociation, which she says is familiar to many trans people. He describes this state of being as a cessation of emotions, whether physical and emotional – in reaction to pain.
“It’s hard to have human relationships when you’re so far away from your own feelings, from your own body and you feel so detached from others,” she says, adding that it was your transition that broke the dissociation. That’s why she advocates for trans people to get life-saving medical care, adding gender-affirming surgery.
Joukhadar says that being trans and Arab are the same for him: “Both exist in my framework at the same time, I can’t separate them. “But she adds that being trans and racialized is a very different delight than being trans and white. ; Jukhadar learned to find comfort in communities with other trans people of color.
If Jahshan’s anthology succeeds in anything in particular, it’s that it highlights parts of the Arab world and its diaspora that are less talked about. Says.