Gay Bashing
Prisoners of Sex - New York Times
The New York Times has an article on an Arab crackdown on homosexual activity. Primarily dealing with Egypt, although Morocco is mentioned, the article argues that denunciation of homosexuality is perceived as an easy way to attack Western values. For the trope of the West imposing homosexuality on the Arab world, the author cites Mohammed Choukri:
There is a searing scene in the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri’s 1973 novel “For Bread Alone” in which a desperate young man, having recently moved from the country to the city in colonial Morocco, sells himself to an elderly Spaniard. The scene is explicit (they have oral sex in a car), and the novel, which has been banned or caused controversy in many Arab countries, serves as a stunning condemnation of the power disparities engendered by colonialism. Symbolism like Choukri’s is common in Arabic literature and cinema, providing for what the British writer Brian Whitaker has referred to as a “reverse Orientalism,” in which sex, and specifically homosexual sex, is presented as a foreign incursion, a tool of colonial domination.
The efforts of human rights organizations to condemn torture have damped down active persecution at the moment, but the article argues that militant Islam has given rise to a resurgence of anti-homosexual feeling that could result in renewed violent repression at any moment.
Matthew Shepard, of course, might remind us that such attitudes are not unique to the Arab world.
"They have oral sex in a car" would be better described as "the older Spaniard sucks him off, and pays him for it." And the very same novel describes a scene where a teenage Choukri forces himself on a younger Moroccan boy in a fit of desire -- also a scene where he chooses to sleep in a stable (and is pissed on by the horse) to escape older Moroccan pedophiles who want to fondle him -- so the article really shouldn't be using Choukri to make the point that Arab culture likes to consider homosexuality a "foreign import." Moreover, in Choukri's own life the influence of foreign homosexuals was rather benign, considering that he was befriended by Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams, and Paul Bowles was the English translator of For Bread Alone -- without which our Times reporter would probably never have heard of it. Why are mainstream media reports so often glibly simplified and half-informed?
Laila Lalami mentioned a while back that For Bread Alone was in print again in the U.K., but I still have not picked up a copy. I guess I am overdue.
My mother has it here on her reading table -- I read in in Tahar Benjelloun's French translation, but Bowles' translation also seems faithful, although a bit freer -- he didn't know literary Arabic and had to have Choukri walk him through the text in French and Derija! So the sense and rhythm are the same, but the language not exact.