19 February 2011

“HALFWAY OUT OF THE DARK”: ON BEING A GAY GIRL IN DAMASCUS

Almost every time I speak or write to other LGBT people outside the Middle East, they always seem to wonder what it’s like to be a lesbian here in Damascus. Well, I always find myself answering, it’s not as easy as I’d like it to be but it’s probably easier than you might think. And that, of course, opens up a whole endless stream of questions. To answer fully, I suppose, I almost have to give a little autobiographical detail.

I’m a dual-national and I grew up between Damascus, Syria and the American South, neither of which was exactly the easiest place to be struggling with what I considered inapporpriate desires. When I was fifteen, I realized I was gay and the thought absolutely terrified me. I was suicidal and self-destructive until, I thought, I found a way out of sinful desires; I became what might be described by some people as an ‘Islamic extremist’, by others as simply a devout Muslim. At the time, I certainly thought I was sincere and became as religious as I could be. No longer, I thought, did I need to worry about unlawful desire but, instead, I could be free. I began covering my hair (which on the day that I started was dyed a brilliant shade of blue) and suddenly found an easier reason to turn aside male attention; I was religious, not uninterested because of my orientation.

I joined an Islamic women’s devotional group and had an older girl as a mentor. I was crazy about her. When we travelled, we would share a bed and we’d walk hand in hand together. I was utterly devoted to her. I cried myself to sleep the day she told me she was getting married.

I got older and, one day, I was introduced to a suitable man and agreed to marry him; I still worried that there was something deeply wrong with me as I knew that I had never had desire for him or any man but, surely, marriage would ‘cure’ me. It didn’t and the marriage failed. And a few months later, I realized I was falling in love with a woman.

I came out just before my twenty-sixth birthday, first to myself, then to the woman I had fallen for. I was liberated at last from my fear. Yet, at that time, I was living as an Arab and a Muslim in the USA. I struggled slowly with coming out to friends and family; those who knew me best tended to be the least surprised. I was far less subtle than I had imagined.

And, after a few years, I decided to come back to Syria. I would try as hard as I could to be an out lesbian woman in a repressive Arab state. And it hasn’t been easy. Certainly, it isn’t easy to be out in a society where very few women are willing to identify themselves as gay … yet, we are here, just as we are everywhere.

I went into a hair salon one day and, not long after I arrived, I picked up on something between the women working there; I spoke around in circles and so did they … and finally learned that the women there were all gay. We relaxed, we talked; two of them were married to two men who are gay and live together in Saudi Arabia. They slip under the radar. Other women came in … and I realized I’d found an underground outpost of ‘our kind’. I found a café where women held hands …. Slowly, my eyes opened up … but so much was so much more furtive and repressed than in the USA or in Europe. I realized too how thick with repressed lesbianism that devotional group I had joined really was. We were. Literally, everywhere.

Ours is a funny country when it comes to women’s rights; our vice president is a woman, women sit in the cabinet, women here are far from chattel. We are not Saudi Arabia. Many of the lesbians I know here cover when they go out; it deters men after all; others are among the most adamant opponents of Islamic dress. All of us though want more freedom.

We tried just a little while ago to get a pro-democracy movement going; so far, we have failed. But we are prominent in the ranks of those striving for freedom. And, though it may sound crazy, I think things are changing. I chat with younger women online; more and more are comfortable in their sexuality far younger than I ever was. We are still a generation behind the west, but we are catching up; they no longer execute gays here, though men caught trysting in the parks are still jailed. We’re pre-Stonewall … but we are at least halfway out of the dark.

Our culture has historically been far more at ease with homoeroticism than most western cultures; I walk more easily hand in hand with a woman here than I ever would in the USA. Affection between women is normal – and sometimes almost preferred. I know that many of my own relatives are happier that I’m lesbian than if I were a sexually active unmarried heterosexual.

Our culture is changing; maybe not as fast as I’d like but I would expect within the decade that the first Pride march is held in Damascus and, not so long after that, that we gain full legal equality here.

Maybe I’m a dreamer but that is why I came back here; I want to be a part of the change that is coming.

4 comments:

Edgelight said...

Dear Amina,

Is a way to send you a message privately?

Thank you,
Alanna

LC said...

This is perhaps one of the most inspirational anything I have had the pleasure to hear/see/ experience in a long while. Sure, my comment might sound kinda corny, but thank you for reminding me of the importance of living the change.

likeayoyo said...

I too would like to speak to you..

amer said...

it's do great to hear about gay's fight in the arab world
hope Amina is OK
MY HEART is for the syrian people
hope you'll get the freedom you wishfor but you have to continue the fight to get it
blood hunger and sweat are worth it

yours
amer (palestinian gay)

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