In conversation with Affan
Transcribed and edited by Eliza Marks
Artworks by Mohammed Al Mohanna
This article is a supplement within the “Frenquencies” issue
In This Arab is Queer, launched in 2022, Elias Jahshan brings together a number of queer Arab authors from the region and diaspora to archive their stories. As a collection, it provides a patchwork of perspectives and experiences related to “Arabness” and “queerness” in a world that often asserts that these cannot coexist.
In the text that follows, Affan speaks with Elias about the book, and opens compelling conversations about the importance of such anthologies; the politics around their production in this contemporary social-political moment; and issues of language, translation, and diasporic positionality.
[The conversation was conducted in Summer 2023, and was edited for brevity.]
Affan: When you released This Arab is Queer in 2022, I was inspired by the various contributions from the region and diaspora, and your vision as the editor. Can you say a bit more about what motivated you to create this anthology and the intention behind it?
Elias: This project was a great opportunity to bridge multiple parts of myself, including my ambitions as a journalist and editor, and my ambitions to write a book. And, it was heavily influenced by a range of great anthologies that came out in 2019. Three especially influential ones were The Good Immigrant (eds. Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman); Our Women on the Ground (ed. Zahra Hankir); and Arab, Australian, Other (eds. Randa Abdel-Fattah and Sarah Saleh).
Contributing to Arab, Australian, Other gave me a taste of working with publishers, and I started brainstorming ideas for this project. I knew I wanted to do something around the Arab queer identity, and when I formulated the concept at the end of 2019, I approached Randa Abdel Fattah again. She generously gave me advice on the process – how to make an anthology worthwhile, how to find an agent and publisher, etc. – and I wrote the proposal in 2020. This was around the time that Sarah Hegazi passed, and the text became far more relevant and urgent.
I’d spent my 20s in Sydney and moved to the UK when I was 30. I’d worked in large queer media outlets and felt a growing need to pull in underrepresented parts of the community, not out of responsibility, but because I had the experience and platform to do so. But while in these mainstream queer spaces and events, I felt like people couldn’t compute that I was Palestinian and gay at the same time. And then, as part of the Arab Australian Council, I was pushed to hide my queer side. I got sick of being in places where I had to compartmentalize or hide half of myself to accommodate others.
This book was a way to bring these sides together and to celebrate both. It’s been a gift to create a platform for our voices. And, it was an opportunity to challenge gatekeeping around the types of queer Arab stories are disseminated in mainstream discourses, which often prioritizes “trauma porn.” This isn’t an attack on those who write these stories – power to them – but a critique of those who select and curate them. Why can’t we have stories about everyday life, or where our sexuality isn’t the focal point? Why is it that our sexuality is almost always discussed in respect to religious lenses, even though this is only part of our multifaceted identities?
But everyone’s experience, no matter where we live, is valid, and some of the experiences in diaspora are because of colonialism, in the end. It’s important to show that it doesn’t matter where we are; we are still Arab, we are still queer, and our experiences are valid. We all have our own stresses and challenges, just as we have our own joys, achievements, and celebrations.
I sought to bring together stories of queer Arabs in a more nuanced way. The project neither pandered to expectations of mainstream Western media or the white gaze, nor the restrictions of the Arab media and publishers that typically don’t hold space for us.
Affan: You chose to reach out to different authors and contributors rather than writing your own text, giving them the narrative freedom to write on any topic they chose pertaining to the spectrum of gender and sexuality. What was your process in approaching writers? Were you familiar with their voices before? What considerations played into this process?
Elias: I didn’t want to write a memoir because I wanted space for everyone. I was familiar with most of their work before I met them. Some I’d met in person, others I’d met randomly, and still others I knew from social media.
I would have liked to have more than 18 authors, if the budget and time allowed, including more trans and non-binary voices and a better gender balance. I also wanted space to talk about issues that we in the wider SWANA region don’t talk about. I’m happy that we had two pieces that touched on the subject of racism directly, for example, and there are many more topics we could have covered.
Affan: Absolutely. But, it’s not like you are claiming to represent the totality of perspectives on “Arab queerness” in this anthology. There are so many nuances and such a wide range of experiences, even for those born and raised in the same village or neighborhood. It’s a starting point in the English-language discourse of what it means to be queer and Arab, but it’s by no means a universal representation of it.
Elias: While there have been a number of fictional works written by queer Arab authors, there haven’t been many nonfiction pieces. And you’re right, this is a springboard for future projects. People have asked me whether there’ll be a second volume, and while I’m flattered to be asked this, I think someone else should be the editor if there is. They’d bring a different approach, set of experiences, and contacts, and be able to tap into other parts of the community.
Affan: Absolutely. And again, you’re not trying to take narrative ownership. You created a space, and that space can now flood into other places, contexts, and people. That leads me to the next question: How do you envision this conversation continuing in English and also in Arabic? Did any of the writers write in Arabic, originally? How did you navigate the linguistic aspect?
Elias: All the works were submitted in English, which is a language of privilege for the people in the Middle East. You’d likely have to be educated in English to be able to understand everything. I encouraged people who could write in Arabic to do so, but we didn’t get finalized pieces because of time constraints.
Having the whole book translated into Arabic would be a dream and the next logical step, but I’d have to speak to every contributor before doing that. Though it would make the text more accessible, linguistically, translation could also make it more vulnerable to censorship and potentially put the writers at risk. Authorities would have an aneurysm over it, because suddenly, their statements about queerness being a Western import would be disrupted. We’ve seen this happen recently [in summer 2023] in Lebanon, with Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah giving a weird speech in Arabic that called for the criminalization of homosexuality, and in Jordan, with the witch hunt by one random ex-MP. The last thing I’d want is to compromise the safety of the writers or make it unable for them to go back to their countries.
Another risk of translating the text is that Arabic is such a poetic and complex language: the root words, the contextual variation, the way that a small change of an accent could completely change a word’s meaning. Though I understand some, I wouldn’t say I’m fluent, and I wouldn’t be able to assess whether a translation is accurate or not. It’s not just the words; it’s also the tone and how meaning is conveyed. We express ourselves differently in particularly languages; even my hand gestures, mannerisms, and intonation differ between when I’m speaking English or Arabic.
Affan: Translation is also such a political thing, both in itself and thinking about the speaker and audience. When there’s an intermediary trying to change it for a different audience, a lot of the like efficacy and significance of the words becomes lost.
I’d find it similarly challenging to decided which language to work in if I curated a similar anthology on Turkey. Would we be working in English, or whether it would be in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, Laz, Kurmanji, Greek …? These are all the languages that form the local constellation of identity in Turkey, which is such a settler colonial country that you have no idea who speaks what. And, queer people in Turkey have our own language, lubunya (about 400 words), and we even call ourselves lubunya rather than queer.
It seems like, in the context of This Arab is Queer, you were also concerned with showing that there are both diasporic and regional productions of queerness that exist within Arab identities. What role did this play as you were conceptualizing the text and collaborating with writers?
Elias: I told writers, “I don’t want you thinking about who you’re writing for in this book, just write your chapter as if you’re writing for yourself” and “imagine that you have a microphone and this is your chance to say something you’ve never had a chance to tall about.” I think that when you focus on what you want to share, you create a better piece of writing. Each of these writers are writing to themselves; they’re writing for the person that they wish they could have shared the story with five years ago, 10 years ago, or to a community or maybe to someone in their community. But more than anything, they were all such personal pieces.
Artworks by Mohammed Al Mohanna
Affan: Another interesting element of this collection is that you have writers who are public and famous, like Saleem Haddad and Mona Eltahawy, and others who are using a pen name and writing anonymously. It shows, especially in English-speaking and Western readership, that both those who have “come out” and those who haven’t can speak validly to their queer experiences. It also challenges this very Eurocentric practice of authorship, that the author always has to be known and has their hardship attached to their identity. Once visible, this authorship and the queerness both become something to be consumed…
Elias: I think that this label of identity connects in another way. One of the biggest criticism that’s been leveled at me or the book that just over half of the contributors don’t live in the Arab world anymore – they live in the West or stuck in the diaspora. I feel like it’s a really reductive way of talking about our identities, and it also enforces this weird hierarchy about how “Arab” one can be and who has authority to share their stories. While some people like me were born and raised in a diaspora (like me, I can’t return to Palestine and will never be able to take Lebanese citizenship from my mother), you have other people (like Mona) who left in their late 20s/early 30s and still others (like Saleem) who constantly go back and forth. There are also writers who are still in the region, and some who have left but wish they didn’t have to leave.
I think, when you’re in the diaspora, it’s not that simple. It’s very easy to say, “Oh, we can just mislead experiences because they’re not there anymore.” But everyone’s experience, no matter where we live, is valid, and some of the experiences in diaspora are because of colonialism, in the end. It’s important to show that it doesn’t matter where we are; we are still Arab, we are still queer, and our experiences are valid. We all have our own stresses and challenges, just as we have our own joys, achievements, and celebrations.
Affan: I can also understand where that criticism comes from. I think the issue is when it becomes reductive, when those experiences are compared to each other to determine which one is better and which one is worse. Fundamentally, it comes down to the “Can the Subaltern Speak?”1 conversation: Can the diaspora or region speak, and at whose expense is the diaspora or region speaking? As people in the diaspora, we have a privilege and responsibility – we can produce things like this, we can edit texts, we can curate things.
It’s important to remember and say that we’re only representing ourselves, and to understand that others are doing the same. You did this in this text. Those people are criticizing the fact that English-speaking readers might think this is the fundamental or universal documentation of Arab experience, even though you’ve clearly stated your position and intention.
Before the February 2023 earthquakes, I was very conscious of the space that I took up as a queer person from Turkey. I always knew that I had the power dynamic of being more privileged because I have a British passport and accent, was raised in London, was educated at a British university, etc. But I’m also an ethno-religious minority – I’m indigenous and from a religious minority – and my city and my province have been destroyed by an earthquake. So, why should I be quiet? Who is that going to benefit?
Elias: Yeah, it’s about acknowledging that you’re not representing the whole community – no one should ever be the sole torchbearer or anyone, because to do so just be egotistical. I’m very careful, but I’ve made mistakes in the past; I keep trying to learn from these.
I agree that we have a responsibility, and we need to use that responsibility very carefully. I’ve had so many media requests from people coming up to me and asking like “What is it like for a Palestinian to be gay?” I’m like, guys, I don’t know why you’re asking me this – I would never say that I represent all queers in Palestine, it just does not make sense to me. But as somebody in the diaspora, I do have the privilege and platform to speak about it. I choose to use this platform to hold space for people to share, rather than police who can or cannot.
The biggest chunk of criticism since the book came out has been from white people who can’t wrap their head around the “concept” of being gay and Arab at the same time, and who think it’s only possible to be openly gay in a Western country. I don’t want people thinking this is “the end” of homophobia, but surprisingly, of the positive feedback that I’ve had, most of the positive feedback has come from people who have reported to be straight and from the Arab community. It proves that there’s diversity and that there are progressive people in our community, and we do have allies in our community.