>> KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE - There I found it in one of the books.
Homosexuality or in the arabic - shezouze abhorration.
There was a passage about how it made God angry and he'd prefer men copulate with stones
before then did it with each other.
A story about Lot and Sodom followed.
As did suggestions for how to overcome homosexuality and punishment who embraced it.
Celibacy, Constant prayer, and reading of the Koran constituted remedies.
Stoning, flogging, death threats.
Not much by way of options for a naïve 13 year old that I was.
I tried the Koran and prayer reading combo for a few weeks.
But out of fear part hoping that my sisters might offer me guidance in sexual matters
I quickly abandoned that hope.
When by chance, the subject of homosexuality was alluded to during a casual conversation
between my sister and one of the many house guests from Aden who for some reason always
landed in our Cairo apartment.
I don't remember the context of that conversation but it ended with my sister telling her guest
that should there mutual friend ever brag about her life or show off in here annoying
way, they should remind her that her husband was a scum bag who liked to bugger young boys.
The lowest of the low.
The image of the older man who prayed on boys was by far the most prevalent representation
of homosexuality in contemporary Arab culture.
Followed closely by the defeat decorator of florist that I mentioned earlier.
Although that didn't necessarily put me off homosexuality, it made talking openly about
it to anybody in my family next to impossible.
I stuck it out with the relationship for a few weeks it didn't make me feel any better
or answer any questions about sexuality.
But it was something.
Until Sopé came into the picture the same year.
Sopé was the man in the apartment build where we lived.
A working-class Egyptian about 21 or 22 at the time and everybit the sex symbol for me.
He lifted weights and was into wrestling.
To me that was manliness.
He always looked after me and tazzled my hair on my way to and from school.
Sometimes making sarcastic remarks about being the spoiled youngest child and sometimes just
smirking.
One day in September, 1977 Sopé and I were sharing an elevator ride when he pushed the
stop button between floors.
He unzipped his trousers and started playing with his penis and encouraged me to take out
mine.
It was my first sexual experience and frankly I was confused because I assumed that Sopé
was the kind of straight guy who would beat up effeminate men on the streets.
As he asked me to put my hands around his penis we heard other tenants shouting to know
if everything was okay with the elevator.
Sopé pushed the go button and we went up one floor took the stairs to the level between
the penthouse and the roof, where rarely anyone dropped by.
He jerked off explaining how much fun it was and left it at that.
So it turned out that ejaculation was a natural bodily function and masturbation not my own
private sin.
I wasn't being punished by Allah after all.
Everybody does it, Sopé assured me.
I never told Sopé this but and I don't even know if he is still alive but he changed my
life if in that one afternoon encounter.
Not only did I feel somehow liberated from the shackles of religious ignorance but if
manly men like him like same-sex encounters then I shouldn't complicate my life.
I was ecstatic, I'd had a sexual encounter that my friends would envy me for if Sopé
was a girl.
I still trace the roots of my gay identity in a social and political sense to that day.�