| Ahmad
was walking back and forth uneasily along
the paved pathway of the Nile that ran in
front of the Nile Hilton hotel.
It was after midnight,
and Cairo’s downtown streets were
still noisy with the cacophony of the traffic’s
incessant horn-blowing that is as much a
part of the cultural landscape as the call
for prayer and the sight of old men in corner
shops smoking water pipes and drinking tiny
demi tasses of strong Arabic coffee.
Gaggles of young men
crowded the streets along the river, walking
with their arms around one another, smoking
Marlboros, and eating shawarma
(sandwiches of lamb and sesame seed sauce),
or cracking between their teeth the sunflower
seeds they picked out of paper cones, or
drinking small glasses of hot, sweet mint
tea, all bought from street vendors who
set up tiny carts along the river’s
edge.
I had come here because
I knew it was a cruising spot for men who
have sex with men. Ahmad had come here for
the same reason, and it took only a few
moments to spot him. But it took half an
hour or so before we would speak.
Ahmad was hesitant for good reason.
Historically, Egypt
has been one of the more tolerant Arab countries
for men who have sex with men. It’s
not that Egyptian society has necessarily
accepted the practice, but, for the most
part, it conveniently looked the other way.
Accordingly, a substantial underground of
gay life had emerged, including bars where
men would gather on Thursday and Friday
nights (Egypt’s weekend) to dance
and cruise and drink and meet.
That came to a crashing
halt, however, in May, 2001, when the police
raided the Queen Boat, a floating disco
on the Nile known as a gay hangout. That
night, 52 men were jailed and charged with
“debauchery,” a term that has
become code now for a charge of practicing
homosexuality, which is not technically
illegal in Egypt.
Since the Queen Boat
raid, the government has cracked down even
harder on men seeking sex with other men,
including entrapping men through Internet
raids, tapping phones, and busting private
parties. According to Human Rights Watch,
which has monitored the situation ever since
the Queen Boat crackdown, more than 200
more men have been arrested since the boat
raid.
Before the mass arrests,
one of the hottest spots in this capitol
city used to be The Taverne, one of the
bars in the lobby of the Nile Hilton. Today,
while it gets a few stragglers still willing
to brave a drink in the British pub-style
watering hole, the bar is mostly empty except
for foreign guests staying at the hotel.
Egyptian men looking
for encounters with other men, however,
haven’t moved that far away: The strip
of the river in front of the hotel remains
a known cruisy area.
With the backdrop of
arrests, however, it was understandable
why Ahmad moved slowly and cautiously.
I knew I’d have
to let him make the first move, or he’d
might get spooked and run away. So I bought
myself a hot cup of sweet tea, and sat on
a bench waiting for his approach, shooing
away the men who walked up from the river’s
edge who were trying to get me to rent a
ride on an old-fashioned sailboat, called
a falucca. |
 |
When
Ahmad did finally say good evening, I could
tell he was relieved that my Arabic had
an accent. Foreigners were not only less
likely to be undercover cops, they were
also less likely to be arrested by the police.
I could see in his face that Ahmad relaxed
a little. After we spoke a few minutes,
he agreed to tell me his story as we strolled
along the Nile.
The first thing he wanted
me to know was that he was married. Though
Ahmad was not educated beyond a high school
diploma, he was informed enough about life
in the West to know there was a thing called
gay culture. He was clear that he was not
part of it. He liked both men and women,
he said, and they played vastly different
roles in his life.
Like many marriages
in Arab countries, particularly among the
working classes, Ahmad’s wedding had
been an arranged one. He did not pledge
that he loved his wife, though he insisted
he liked her. Ahmad, who was 28, had been
married only two years, and he and his wife
had not yet had children. But it was inevitable
that they would, and Ahmad looked forward
to it.
“In Egypt, everything
is about family,” he said. “You
are nothing without family. It gives you
stature and a place in society and a meaning
to life beyond your own, for the future,”
he said. “Why would I not want a wife
and children—a family? I cannot imagine
it otherwise.”
At the same time, he
enjoyed the company of men. He denied that
his relationships with men were solely about
sex, though that was clearly an important
component.
“Men understand
men,” he said. “And you can
do things with a man you wouldn’t
do with your wife.”
While Egyptian men often
had sex with younger men as a sort of rite
of passage, he said, he did not know if
there were many relationships between men
that lasted long periods of time. “This
is a very conservative country and we do
not talk about any kind of sex,” he
said. But he suspected that married men
having sex with other married men was not
an uncommon practice.
But such behavior “should
never be known” by his family or friends,
he said, because “the shame would
ruin me.” He refused to speculate
what might happen if his penchant for men
was discovered.
Ahmad was also insistent
that in any sexual relationship he had with
other males, he played the role of “the
man.” In the machismo of Arab culture,
being the top is important in preserving
manhood.
But Ahmad did not ridicule
the men he had sex with, or appear to feel
superior to them. What he hoped for, he
said, was that he might meet a man with
whom he could form a long-lasting bond and
friendship, that went beyond the sex. Naturally,
he added, this man would have a family—a
wife and kids—of his own, as well.
He drew the index fingers
of his two hands together, as if making
a union. “He would be like my wife,”
he said.
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