Prologue
It is no small trial to attempt to write in such calamitous context. In such anguish and grief.
I remember reading in one of the prefaces of Jane Austen's novels how many criticized her for her complete lack of engagement with the momentous events taking place in Europe during her lifetime. While she wrote about the martial aspirations of her provincial, helplessly intelligent heroines, the continent was going through one of its profound transformations. One that changed the landscape of Europe forever.
It is exactly like writing about a peasant family in Upper Egypt during the British Occupation and make no mention of the 1919 revolution.
But Austen was true to her islander nature, her novels were insular, her outlook never went beyond the hedges of her grounds and despite a prodigious insight into the human psyche and character, not once in any of her novels do we see a hint of the French Revolution or the Napoleonic Wars.
She remotely deals with the notions of colonialism and destruction of indigenous people's ways of life and civilization (Mansfield Park 1814), but in the end its the British gentry and their claustrophobic, misogynistic attitudes that colour her worldview and page after page of everything she wrote.
To have a splinter of her insight or talent would be a blessing too much for gratitude, but without her talent and too much of her shortcomings, it is a sure recipe for disaster.
I borrow liberally from Austen and from others (Woolf, whose final novel was written in between air raids, mental fits and breakdowns, is ironically and prophetically called 'Between the Acts' 1941, in between the 'acts' of survival and of writing), seduced by their generosity and magnanimity, I squeeze myself in, deluding myself that I can glide between ingenious lines and majestic phrases and arrive at something wonderful and inspiring in those moments of extreme despair and anguish.
I can talk endlessly about a very similar claustrophobic, bigoted atmosphere that Austen described so vividly in her work, the gay scene in Cairo is hardly any different.
And the war waged outside on the people of Cairo by the army is enough reason for anyone to have a mental fit or a breakdown.
But like Austen and Woolf, in between wars, and national catastrophes, the "gay gentry" still manages to hold parties and dances and all kinds of charades, right there, in between.
And in a condition of scarcity, of distress, of hope and despair, lines get blurred.
The first Act is the Act of Lines Blurred:
Its a universally acknowledged fact that the gay scene in Cairo is rigidly stratified along the lines of class, education, occupation, degree of attractiveness, fashionableness of dress, ...etc. Something very akin to the Indian caste system. You are born into one caste and you can only escape it in a next life, that is if you do good deeds and accumulate good Karma. Otherwise you are doomed to be reincarnated in even lower forms of life (femmes, girly,...etc)
So members of one caste can not socialise with members of other castes or they forever bring shame onto their fellow members.
And after a long dry spell where parties were a forgotten pleasure and now a most coveted luxury, at the remote chance of a party, everyone jumped on board.
All castes.
Even the Untouchables (i.e. fats, Asians, femmes, girly, shalaf,....etc).
And over a barely functional air conditioner, we gathered, coalesced into one miserable group of hyperventilating flesh and socially incongruent individuals and each made a feast of pointing out the inadequacies of the other.
The accomplished were snobs, the fats were lazy and poorly dressed, the femmes were the bane of the gay community, the muscle marys were antisocial and fictitious and so on.
Divides that ran deep and could only be redeemed by unhealthy consumption of alcohol and hallucinogenic plants.
Not everyone had the patience and the discipline to subject their bodies and their minds to the transgressive effects of intoxication and psychotic agents.
Some flee like caged birds, flying back to the safety of their nests. Others linger, hoping to witness this moments when alcohol depresses the CNS (Central Nervous System) and effectively kills the mechanisms of judgement and discrimination in the upper castes. When finally, thanks to poison, we are all united in the brotherhood of a sexually repressed, morally bankrupt minority.
And to she who waits, comes eventual success.
A gentleman belonging to the upper castes (the ones with accomplished professions, hypertrophic muscles,...etc) generously offered his beautiful abode to the remaining guests to "continue" the festivities.
Off we go, half-way intoxicated, looking forward to more numbing of our senses and dulling of our judgement.
And in a space occupied by such disparate individuals, the young, the hung, the femmes, the fats, the has-beens, the wannabees, the gym rats, and every possible taxonomic classification anyone can think of, we stood looking at each other, and reinforced status symbols and privileges and at loss in trying to find ways to humanize the "others". The higher castes imposed their own tastes, everything was amplified, masculinised, even the music sounded as if it was on steroids.
And I, at once loud, campy, uber feminine, eccentric, choreographically challenged (for who could ever dance to house music without being completely drugged?), was acutely aware of every single judgement passed against me.
'Your gaze hits the side of my face', as Barbara Kruger once said.
And this was not only a gaze, it was rather daggers, outright pouring of hostility that I consciously chose to ignore but that did not only hit the side of my face, it struck my very being, fell on my skin, seeped through my ears, penetrated my eyes, swam through my brain and found its way to the multitude of chambers and compartments of my brain.
I represented everything the higher castes resented. And for my offence, I deserved to be excommunicated, to be shunned from all good society. And of course by good society, its the society of hypertrophic muscled marys, who thanks to unabashed use of illegal substance can sustain such muscle mass and dance to such psychedelic music.
I shrugged it off. The more hostility, the louder the laughs.
Like everyone else, I pretended that alcohol can fix any social awkwardness and somehow makes everyone less hostile.
And in a moment, in between, when we are drugged, our bodies weak with poison, our vision less discerning, our selves liberated from social dogmas, lines get blurred. And castes collide.
One gentleman went as far as to open his heart and release inner demons that plagued him so. Suddenly there was the anxiety of self-image, the fear of being objectified, and the sorrow of being seen in one light rather than the other. Suddenly appearances were deceiving, confining, reductive and even went as far as to impose a certain feeling of being disconnected. Of loneliness.
I was moved by such display of vulnerability. And as Nezar once beautifully said, و نسيت حقدي كله، من قال أني قد حقدت عليه؟
Another went as far to kiss me and actually express desire at the dismay and disapproval of his companions and clout. And it shocked me to no end. There I was cornered and being viciously kissed by the last man I could ever think would want to kiss me. I attributed this to age and illegal levels of alcohol consumption.
What was hilarious though, was the snickering and the snide comments that were flying over my head from his coteries, some went as far as to congratulate me.
Seriously.
Another gentleman praised my intellect and realised he discovered a side he did not "see" before. And I was amazed that he never heard of the term "intellectual queen" before.
In my head, my laugh was getting louder and louder. I was still the same. Nothing about me changed. I didn't grow 10 kgms of muscle in 10 seconds like Captain America (I despise Chris Evans, but he definitely had me scratching the screen), I did not have a testosterone rush and acquire more secondary sex characteristics, nor did my IQ jump 10 points in 5 minutes.
The only difference is my brethren were enfeebled by the amount of poison they had consumed.
The poison of alcohol, the poison of vanity, the poison of pride, the poison of gluttony and the unbearable weight of constantly pretending, of performativity.
They allowed themselves to see beyond appearance, beyond prejudice, beyond despicable social norms, beyond their neurosis, beyond the stereotype.
In between acts of masculinity, acts of class, acts of superiority, acts of sexual primacy, lines get blurred.
And you might you even get kissed!
Act II: Act of Lines Crossed
To cross the line, to pass the equator and undergo a series of re-enactments for archaic rituals to appease sea deities and former gods. The usual fear espoused with uncharted waters and the intrinsic desire of mankind to give offering to tempestuous deities of the unknown and in turn "control" those unforeseen forces, trick them one more time.
The equator was the age limit of 21 and the re-enactments were adolescent hormonal discharges that is gestural and pre-linguistic.
The ferocious deities, were gay music and 80s sense of fashion style.
It is not fun to be the oldest person in a party where the average age is 15 (just kidding, 17 is actually more like it) and where people mistake you for 21.
It can hardly be denied - what self-respecting intellectual queen would deny being infinitely flattered by such naive judgement - that I was very gratified and grateful to the dim lights and the few working genes that my parents passed me. But I couldn't help but feel completely out of place.
I could not help the fact that I was slowly moving away from my third decade, as they say in Arabic, and not so slowly approaching 30 or in gay speak, 'old age'.
I had two years to live, in gay years that is, after which I am officially senile (as such I am expected to plan my own exile, gracefully).
And I stood there, listening to heavily synthesized music, watching the post-post-post-modern outfits and it gave me a moment to reflect on my "gay career" which was about to end in a few gay moments.
And I was genuinely impressed by the notion of 'gay time'. The gays finally did it, they overhauled the dimensionality of time, and added a whole new dimension or rather dimensions of their own.
So depending on your mass (i.e. physique), your position in space (socialite, fashionista, intellectual queen,... etc), time (age in gay years) your existence is defined.
The gays were the first to embrace new laws of physics -whoever said the gay are averse to scientific thinking?- coining such expressions like 'She is so boring, time literally stops', or 'I don't care how old she is, she looks 50', 'She is so fat, she has her own black hole', all alluding to philosophy of relativity. Your position in space and the speed (speed here is defined by the sum of certain individual attributes: physical looks, sense of style, social aptitude,..etc) defines your relation to time and those around you and how it comes to be.
And one party after the other, I was confronted with this unmistakable perception of time or burgeoning homosexuals start calling me 'mother'.
A reference not only to my maternal instincts and the way I embrace my effeminacy but also to my status and role. 'Bitch you have aged and now its time to pass your wisdom'.
I crossed a line, and now I am a single mother of three.
But what wisdom do I pass? And what if I don't want to have children?
What if at some point along the way after being jilted and thrown around by abusive men, my maternal instincts transformed and in a very Medea moment I would rather kill my children than endure living with them while resenting them?
What if all the wisdom I have is be wary of queens for they are ruthless, unforgiving creatures who would stand at nothing to humiliate you and laugh at your expense?
What if all I know is that Egyptian men do not believe in relationships and you are better off leaving the country if you truly want to have a meaningful and long-term relationship?
What if all I have to show are years and years of trying and trying to adapt to the harsh realities of an oppressed and pernicious minority who left too many scars in my psyche that I don't care to count or remember?
What if, like everyone else, I am utterly helpless and lost about ageing in a narcissistic, juvenile subculture that affords little chance or opportunity for guidance, emotional and psychological growth?
What if I am completely exhausted by Cairo, Egypt and its inhabitants that will never accept or embrace the notion of a sexual minority (at least in the near future)?
What if it breaks my heart every time I think that I never had any meaningful relationship with an Egyptian man? In the span of 13 years?
What if I resent the notions of self-imposed exile (the only way to have a balanced, well-adjusted existence is to leave Cairo), the constant rite of departure (witnessing one friend leave after the other) and the habitual rehabilitation of Egyptian homosexuals back into society (I want to have a family, a real family, so I will get married and have fun on the side)?
What if I am terrified in facing all these truths and realities, just like everyone else, and am reluctant to sail, cross, pass this line and traverse those treacherous waters and uncharted territories?
The eccentric morbid queen is not your mother, does not want to have children and like everyone else is completely baffled by the process of ageing and the complete absence of any guidance or support in the 13th circuit of Hell that is Cairo.
