Queer Arab Glossary: Forew. By Rabih Alameddine - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marwan Kaabour is a multidisciplinary graphic designer and artist, and founder of Takweer – a platform that archives queer narratives in Arab popular culture. Kaabour set up his own design practice in 2020 and has workedwith some of the world’s most exciting cultural institutions, artists and publishers including the V&A Museum, Art Basel, The National Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, Hayward Gallery, Somerset House and Banksy. He designed the much-celebrated Rihanna book, which was a Time magazine Best Photo Book of 2019. His work and words have featured in the New York Times, Gay Times, Evening Standard and L’Orient-Le Jour, among others.

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A groundbreaking survey of the language used around queerness in the Arab world, with contributions by leading Arab queer writers, thinkers and activists

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Foreword: The Book of Shibboleths

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During the first days of the Lebanese Civil

War, an apocryphal rumour swept the country,

sometimes told as a warning, sometimes as

a joke. It went like this: since the fighting at

the time occurred between the Lebanese

Kataeb Party (Phalanges) and the Palestinian

Liberation Organisation, one or the other

would set up a checkpoint, stopping cars –

but instead of asking for IDs, someone would

take out a tomato and ask you what it was.

How you pronounced the name of the fruit

would determine whether you were shot or

spared. The Lebanese called it banadoura, and

Palestinians said bandora.

Fail the shibboleth and, bang –

Allah yerhamak.

A shibboleth is defined as a custom, principle

or belief distinguishing a particular class or

group of people. In the Bible (Judges 12:6),

shibboleth was a test of speech applied by the

men of Gilead to the Ephraimites who wished

to cross the Jordan after being defeated. If

they pronounced the word ‘sibboleth’, their

dialectic variety of speech betrayed them.

One of the first things any group does when

forming an identity is play with language.

Whether the group consists of members of

a police department, of university students,

residents of a city, British expats in Cairo, or

African Americans in the US South, they will

change dialects, invent new words, introduce

new meanings to them. Sometimes the change

is to simplify communication: as an example,

police having number codes for different

crimes, doctors for procedures. Sometimes it’s

to stop others from understanding what you’re

saying – think spy codes, or a quarterback

calling out plays in American football.

For the most part, however, groups create

a new language to consolidate identities by

increasing what the members of said group

have in common and, just as importantly, by

excluding others who do not belong. These

shibboleths are the glue that bind. They make

members feel at home within that identity.

?

I was surprised by my father’s reaction when

I first came out to him some forty years ago.

He was hurt, but not terribly so. Let’s just say

that he had some inkling that I was not quite

straight a while before I told him. I don’t think

he had too much of a problem with what I

did sexually, so long as I did it in private. His

concern was that I was choosing to live as a

queer man. Why couldn’t I just get married

like everyone else, give him grandchildren,

and do whatever I want in my private life –

fuck on the side, so to speak? Forget the

moral aspect of what he wanted for a moment

(he grew up in a patriarchal culture where

a husband’s cheating was not only accepted

but expected). He was asking why I would

choose to give up a dominant identity – say,

Lebanese, heterosexual, etc. – and openly take

on an oppressed, even despised one.

That question, in various guises, would follow

me for quite a while. I started a gay soccer

team in San Francisco in 1982, even though

I’d also played on several straight teams most

of my life. I was regularly asked by nonqueers

why I needed a ‘special’ team to play

with. My response was always the same: that

the fact that they couldn’t see why I needed it

was why I did. I wanted community. I needed

friends who would get my jokes, and, true, I

had gay friends, but queer players understood

both my gay and soccer quips.

And, of course, we developed our own

language, verbal and non.

?

I left Lebanon as a teenager at the beginning

of the war. My first sexual encounters were

outside the country. The first community I

tried to belong to was in San Francisco. In

the early days I kept my two lives, my two

identities, separate. Though I returned to

Beirut once or twice a year, even during the

war, I never thought about meeting queers

in the city while I was there, never thought

of having sex either (didn’t know what I was

missing!). I spent most of my time with family.

I was a queer boy in San Francisco and an

Alameddine in Beirut. I was totally out and all

that, just never thought about my queerness

in Lebanon. That changed in the late nineties,

when my first novel came out, and a number

of Lebanese gay men and lesbians reached out.

When I attended my first Lebanese gay party

in Beirut, I was flabbergasted. Not that there

were so many gay Lebanese in one place –

I knew of the gay bars, the dance clubs, the

hammams. No, I was shocked because, at

times during the party, I couldn’t understand

what they were saying. Our language and

dialect were the same, but their use of certain

words and phrases made no sense to me. I

was an outsider among this group of gay men.

A handsome young man, wearing a

turtleneck, leaned against a corridor wall.

Another young man walked by, suddenly

halted in pretend shock. His eyes travelled

the entire length of the sweater, contorted

his face in horror, and in a low, sibilant voice,

he said, ‘Yii, shou ?an’a!’ I was familiar with

everything that came before the words. The

mock disgust at fashion disasters is a gay rite

of passage that crossed all cultures. But the

insult, ‘What a maid,’ was foreign to me. I did

not miss the racist or classist connotations,

yet I felt exhilarated. If I wanted to belong,

I needed to learn this new language.

The first time I had sex with a Lebanese man

in Beirut was both the sweetest encounter

and a disaster. We’d be fucking, and he’d say

something romantic, and I’d ask him where

that phrase came from (what can I say? I’m a

writer). Worse, he’d say something sexual, and

I would begin to giggle. We ended up spending

the night in each other’s arms, going over the

various speech permutations of the Lebanese

language of queers.

?

What you have in your hands is a lexicography

of the language of queers across the Arab

countries, a book of shibboleths.