Sex and the Citadel (44 page)

If you want proof, says Bahgat, just look at the emerging landscape of sexual activism in the Arab world. “If we do a mapping of
who is working on these issues in the region, you will find maybe seven or eight projects looking at MSM [men who have sex with men]/LGBT, and maybe one or two actors working on sexuality broadly defined,” Bahgat noted. “Give me the name of the organization that works on the sexuality of heterosexual women, adolescent sexuality, or sexual education.… You will find very few compared with budgets allocated for LGBT.”

When it comes to change, Bahgat is firmly in the camp arguing that now is not the time to open a public debate on the rights of those who cross the heterosexual line. Bahgat fears that will only feed what he calls an “artificial identity battle,” in which defending or denying “gay rights” becomes part of making a claim for Egypt as an Islamic or a secular state, when what’s really at stake transcends these divisions. For all his liberal credentials, Bahgat is not asking to put religion aside. He envisages a constitution that rests on many pillars: the “principles of Islam” as well as the personal freedoms he advocates.

Key to this balance is enforcing the right to privacy—a core principle in Islam. The Qur’an reminds Muslims, time and again, to mind their own business. “Believers, avoid making too many assumptions—some assumptions are sinful—and do not spy on one another or speak ill of people behind their backs” is a recurrent theme.
⁷⁰
My grandmother exhorted the family to do the same, ramming home her wisdom with pointed sayings like the one that starts this chapter. These rules worked their way into a famous story about one of the Prophet’s companions, ‘Umar bin al-Khattab, who became caliph, or leader, of the expanding Muslim community after the Prophet’s death. ‘Umar was walking through Medina one night, so the story goes, when he heard a noise. He peered over a wall and saw a forbidden act—drinking or some other dark deed, depending on the account. ‘Umar started to upbraid the man in question, admonishing him with God’s wrath. But the man gave as good as he got, noting that if he sinned once, ‘Umar trebled the offense, God having forbidden him to spy, skip into people’s homes through the back door, and approach someone without greeting them first.
⁷¹

Generally speaking—and there are of course exceptions, as Munir can clearly attest—sexually diverse populations in Egypt and across the region are getting on with their lives, with the understanding that they keep their sexual behavior quiet; when their lives spill into the public domain, then authorities swoop. What’s at stake here is not so much “coming out”—which holds little appeal for most of the men and women I know living in the region—but rather the freedom to stay in and do as they choose. This drive to keep private matters private is not unique to homosexual men and women; it covers all sexual behavior—and presents a delicate balancing act for democratic freedoms of expression, association, and assembly.

The right to privacy was enshrined in the old (that is, pre-2011 uprising) constitution and Egyptian law—but it is enforcement that’s the problem. The primacy of privacy, as well as protection from violence, stigma, and discrimination, is emerging as a point of agreement in discussions between activists and religious leaders. There are moves afoot in Egypt to realize these rights on an individual basis—small-scale efforts to train lawyers to defend those who are arrested and self-help circles, modeled on the movement in Beirut, to help men and women to talk through their issues and to understand their rights, such as they are. Many of the men and women I know working at the socially acceptable coalface of sexual rights in Egypt—youth sexual education and sexual harassment, for example—as well as those staffing feminist groups, human rights organizations, and new political movements, are themselves LGBT; when the time is right, they will be well-placed to weave their message into the broader tapestry of social and political change.

For all these welcome steps, neither Munir nor Nasim is optimistic about his short-term prospects. For Munir, personal security is a prime concern. “We are afraid of each other now, not just of the government. For instance, I am afraid to walk at two a.m. in the street; someone can show his weapon. This is not just about me being gay, it is about me being Egyptian.” As one of millions who is in and out of work, Munir sees the problem as mainly economic, splitting men and women into classes and putting them at odds, another tension
in a society full of fractures. “In the revolution, rich and poor [were] together, more than you can imagine,” he recalled. “Now there is a gap, when I find someone in the streets for twenty-four hours selling himself to eat and drink, whereas another gay is living the life of a king. So when social and economic circumstances improve, there will be no problem, there will be no people going with a rich man to kill him and take his money. When I find to eat and drink and have a productive life, why should I kill? Why should I steal?”

As a double minority—gay and Christian—Nasim is focused on the rising voice, and political power, of Islamic conservatives. “Before [the revolution] was a bad time … the reign of stealing and corruption. It was awful for LGBT; it was awful for everyone,” he said. Right after the uprising, there was room to breathe, but Nasim was steeling himself for a crackdown once Islamists settled into power. Ever the optimist, though, he reckons this will be a passing phase of reactionary politics. “It will be [for] five, ten, twenty years, we will have Muslim rule, Islamic power. And when people live under this rule and feel they are fucked of their rights, there will be another revolution to reach a moderate Islam and secular state.”

In the longer term, both are confident of better times. Nasim, who once thought of emigrating, has decided to stay put. His contact with students gives him hope that a younger generation, with better education and opportunities, will one day help to realize his aspirations for change: “First, that people are not frightened to come out. That your private life is your private life, not a selection criterion in relationships of friendship or professional relationships. Attacking someone on the basis of their private life would be a criminal offense. [And] religion would come to build bridges between people, to establish peace for those who are homosexual. To give this image, ‘Okay, you are like that—we love you anyway.’ ”

But this is the work of decades. “I don’t look at history in my short life. Maybe I won’t live to see that [change].” Nasim sighed. Munir is similarly banking on the long haul. Given all that he has suffered, he has every reason to want a break with the past. But for Munir, that change means walking away from a Western path of gay liberation. “I want my rights, but only within the framework
of Egyptian and Eastern society and Islam. The limits are that I should not understand democracy or freedom in a wrong way. Go and kiss a man in the street? No, this is an Islamic country,” he stressed. “I, as a gay, I don’t want to see this. I want change but only within the limits of being Muslims and Egyptians and conservatives. If I go for this gay pride, what will I really ask for?”

Munir spoke for many now working toward an equal footing for sexual minorities in Egypt and beyond. “I want respect—that’s all I ask for. Respect for me as a human, not because I am a gay.” But in that one small word—respect—lies a long wish list: the right to privacy; freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture; the right to a fair trial; freedom of expression, association, and assembly; and freedom from discrimination. If Munir and his peers can play a part in achieving such change—for everyone—then we really are talking about a revolution.

7
Come the Revolution

Safety is in slowness; regret is in haste
.

—My grandmother, on evolution over revolution

“Citadel! Citadel!” my taxi driver shouted in Arabic, our eyes locking in the rearview mirror. “Take off your clothes!”

I was on my way to one of Cairo’s famous landmarks: the Citadel, a massive fortress built by Salah al-Din, the famous crusader-crusher, almost a millennium ago. We were traveling in a tin-pot Panda, one of Cairo’s aging fleet of black-and-white taxis, an endangered species now that sleek white sedans with all mod cons (including working meters and windows that slide, rather than fall, down) roam the land. Given my experience of sexual harassment in the city, I should have been outraged by my driver’s suggestion, or at the very least relieved that he didn’t reach over with a helping hand. But I was, in fact, grateful. “You are right.” I laughed. “A thousands thanks,” I added, for what was less a proposition and more a lesson in pronunciation.

“Citadel” is what we call this bastion in English; in Arabic, however, the word is Qal’a, something of a mouthful the way Egyptians say it. I kept stumbling over the letters until my driver, in exasperation, tried to help by drawing my attention to a familiar word with a similar pronunciation—Egyptian Arabic for “undressing.” As the day was heating up, and sweat poured down my back, I was inclined to put this lesson into practice. By then, however, we had reached our destination.

The Citadel sits on a promontory to the east of Cairo. Until TV towers and concrete apartment blocks started sprouting in the 1960s and ’70s, it dominated the city’s skyline, crowned by the
Mosque of Muhammad Ali, built by the ruler who set Egypt on its path to industrialization in the nineteenth century and founded a dynasty that lasted until the revolution of 1952. Beyond the mosque’s vast domes and soaring minarets is a terrace with commanding views. On a clear day—admittedly rare, what with Cairo’s pollution—you can see right across the city: straight down, along the twisting alleys of Khan al-Khalili, the souk that was once the trading heart of the city, to gleaming skyscrapers in the north, its twenty-first-century successors; across the Nile, to pyramids in the distance, ringed by luxury housing compounds with names like Dreamland and Beverly Hills; to a glance over the shoulder at a tumbledown, off-the-grid
‘ashwa’iyya
, Cairo’s answer to the favela. From the Citadel, you begin to appreciate how difficult it is to ever really know a culture at its most intimate: so many people, so much diversity, such a tumultuous time. No wonder the great writers of Arabic erotica called on God’s blessing before embarking on their labors.

When it comes to sexuality, the Arab world can seem like a citadel, an impregnable fortress whose outer face repels any perceived assault on the bastion of heterosexual marriage and family. But the reality, as I have found through my travels, is that there are plenty of openings—not just innovators who are working for change on a larger political, social, and cultural canvas but ordinary people trying to find happiness in the miniature of their own lives. Not once, in all my travels, was I ever rebuffed when I broached questions of sex; in fact, the poorer and less educated the people, the more open I found them to a frank, and often very funny, exchange of views.

This was especially true of wives, who were generally more articulate on these matters than their husbands, partly because of their greater ease at talking with someone of the same sex and partly because of the heavier burden they carry; when among female friends, they were happy to let their hair down, in all respects. People opened up to me in remarkable ways, even men I knew would never bring up such issues with their wives or sisters, mothers or daughters. Such candor came, in part, I think, from a relief in finding someone from a place where sex was something that could be
discussed without judgment or censure but who also had a grounding in their own culture. I was both an insider and an outsider, which could have been the worst but turned out to be the best of both worlds.

This willingness to talk, and to listen, to those who don’t necessarily share your point of view will be crucial for Egypt moving forward. The drive to conformity and consensus is a feature of authoritarian regimes; democracy needs a respect for disagreement and competition. The uprising, and subsequent political developments, have accentuated a split in Egyptian society—between a minority who espouse liberalism and a majority who adhere to conservative values. Such differences were steamrolled under the old regime, but are springing up in the new landscape. How these groups manage to coexist will be a huge challenge for Egypt’s emerging political, social, economic, and cultural order.

When they had little political clout, Islamic conservatives frequently seized on sex as an easy way to attack the regime; less often did they criticize the immorality of torture, economic injustice, or corruption. It is to be hoped that new political powers, of all stripes, will devote more time to fixing these and other fundamental failings of the past sixty years than to arresting men who have sex with men, or banning movies and censoring the Internet, or repealing laws that empower women, the cornerstone of social change. Realistically, though, sex will continue to raise its tantalizing head in running battles between liberals and conservatives in the years to come.

How Egypt comes to terms with the sexual issues discussed in this book has implications beyond its borders. Although its society has been powerfully influenced by neighboring countries, notably those in the Gulf, Egypt in turn has tremendous soft power in the region; through media and migration of millions of workers, Egypt spreads its culture across the Arab world. Egypt is uniquely placed to adopt outside lessons, adapt them to a local context, and broadcast them to others in the region. Through the United Nations, its influence extends even farther. For almost two decades, civil society and governments around the world have struggled to get sexual
rights enshrined in international agreements, a move that helps those on the ground fighting for change; but with almost every such push, Egypt has pushed right back. In these battles, Egypt and its Arab neighbors are not alone. Muslim-majority countries, collected under the umbrella of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), hold the party line, joined by the Vatican, which has plenty of leverage to dissuade any move that the Holy See views as undermining its definition of family values. Conservative Christian NGOs from America and Europe have also tried get into bed with their Arab and Muslim counterparts, in what must be an uneasy arrangement, given the suspicion with which many right-wing ideologues view Islam. Further “unholy alliances,” as sexual rights advocates describe them, have formed in recent years between governments in sub-Saharan Africa and those in the Arab region to take a stance against same-sex relations.