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RABAT (Reuters Life!) – Just 200 copies of North Africa’s first gay interest magazine have been sold in Morocco since April, but Islamists are already warning of a threat to traditional family values.

Homosexuality is taboo in the Arab world and Moroccan law punishes “lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex” with jail terms of up to three years and a fine.

The owners of the magazine Mithly (an Arabic word meaning “the same as me” which has come to mean gay) were prepared for a backlash and already had a back-up plan — a Web version which will carry its second edition this week.

The paper edition circulated informally because it lacked a distribution license from the government, said Samir Bargachi, general coordinator of Kif-Kif, Morocco’s only gay rights group and the magazine’s publisher.

But he said Mithly’s appearance is a sign of progress on homosexual rights in the conservative north African country, where most gay men and lesbians tend to keep their sexuality a secret for fear of rejection by family and friends.

“Many in Kif-Kif have had no problems with their families… Others have been thrown out of home, had problems at university or at work,” said Barghachi by phone from Madrid where he lives.

Kif-Kif — a north African expression that translates roughly as “all the same” — is based in Spain, has not been legally recognized in Morocco and cannot campaign openly. Most of Mithly’s writers live in Morocco but keep a low profile.

HOMOSEXUALITY “A THREAT”

“What happens in the private lives (of homosexuals) is their concern,” said Mustapha Khelfi, editor of Attajdid, a newspaper close to the main Islamist opposition party PJD. “Propagation and encouragement of homosexuality represents a threat.”

He said Mithly’s publishers should follow the law governing the legal distribution of newspapers because “without respect for the law, we can’t predict how society will sometimes react”.

Mithly’s themes include controversy over Elton John playing at a music festival in Morocco, a study of suicide among gay Moroccans and a book by an Algerian transsexual named Randa.

The European Union sees Morocco’s defense of individual freedoms as key to talks on deeper trade and investment ties.

“It seems that something is happening in Morocco that does not exist elsewhere in the Arab world,” said Abdellah Taia, a gay Moroccan author who lives in Paris. “A new generation … has achieved a certain freedom of expression thanks to the Internet, and this magazine is a result of that freedom.”

Convictions for homosexual acts are rare in Morocco, but in late 2007 four men were jailed after a video appeared on You Tube showing what some said was a gay wedding.

The men denied this but the house where the celebration took place was attacked by an angry mob, prompting 150 public figures including intellectuals, politicians and artists to issue a manifesto warning of a “climate of hatred and inquisition”.

Some human rights activists say homosexuality has always existed in Moroccan society, and references to it can even be found in traditional “Al Malhoun” songs, some of which tell of love affairs between men.

“Moroccans have always been tolerant toward homosexuals — they were never persecuted,” said rights campaigner Khadija Rouissi. “Why today are we not tolerant toward them? Because some people would like to import a fanatical brand of Islam.”

For Bargachi, public awareness of homosexual rights has improved in Morocco in the last few years even though the conservative press whips up popular prejudices.

“We have organized a conference in Morocco called ‘Reality Against Myths’,” he said. “Lots of people still think homosexuals all carry AIDS or they are pedophiles.”

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Moroccan+magazine+causes+concern+among+Islamists/3047701/story.html#ixzz0oTdFe8ik

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This whole situation was totally unbelievable. I couldn’t even begin to
count the number of slaves and free men that had graced my bed. I had never taken a slave that I had personally selected while he was a free man, and seldom a freeman, Salem being the main exception, so why had I with this little urchin who was not even going to be any good for sex. Too young, too skinny and a tiny penis.

Salem, Michel and Shaka had been gone for years. On very rare occasions I
was able to make love to Salem again when he passed through the kingdom, or I was in London at a different time to Justin, Salem’s true love, and there
lay the problem.

Salem had been eighteen when I had first seen him and taken him as a lover,
not a slave. He only looked about fourteen apart from the fact that he had
a substantial penis that pleased me. He was Eurasian. Michel and Shaka were
slaves, Michel, particularly was a stunning Tunisian boy but Shaka was a
very handsome young African man with the most incredible appendage. Salem
had become my lover for years and we still had great affection for one
another, but I realised I wanted another boy to love, not necessarily I
realised to make love to. Age creeping up on me I guess, well being in my
forties was getting on a bit.

My name is Mohammed and I am the finance minister for a small Arab Emirate,
I am also a boy lover and for years Salem furnished all the loving I
needed.

I had been in Tripoli for business and during a break from meetings I had
wandered into the souk, (the Arab market). While I was sat enjoying a
coffee I noticed a young boy begging, across the street from where I
sat. He was skinny and unkempt and very definitely not a very good
beggar. When I finished my coffee I walked across to talk to him.

“Hello boy, what’s your name?”

He lifted his head to look at me and in a very quiet voice said, “I am
called Jean, Sir”

In the time that he took to say it I knew he was going to come with me. The
eyes they say are a mirror to the soul. This boy had a soul that cried out
for love. I could see it.

“Do you have any family Jean?”

“No Sir,” was his unemotional reply. “I can’t remember ever having any
family Sir.”

“Would you like to come and live with me and be part of my family?”

The beautiful innocent eyes suddenly became wary.

“Why would you want to do that Sir?”

“I think we might have a need for each other very much.”

He looked bemused.

“I have a great deal of love to give, and no one to give it to. I think you
might be the same.”

He stood up then and I could see him better. He was probably eleven or
twelve, definitely undernourished, of course dirty and unkempt.

“Why don’t you come to my hotel with me? You can bathe, eat and we’ll get
you some proper clothes to wear.”

I guessed that wasn’t a first and that he probably wasn’t a virgin, but
bathing, eating and having new clothes must have been a big plus when you
were dirty, hungry and dressed in rags.

His clothes were quite obviously vermin ridden so he was more than a little
surprised when I asked a porter at the hotel to come with us and bring a
rubbish bag, as I collected my key. At the door to my suite I took hold of
Jeans djelaba and pulled it over his head, deposited it in the bag the
porter held and ushered him into my suite and straight through to the
bathroom. He was naked, the djelaba had been his only attire

It all happened so unexpectedly and quickly that Jean was stood in the
shower before he had time to say anything. I turned on the water, pointed
out to Jean how to control the temperature and told him to soak for a
while, I would be back soon.

I called down to a men’s store in the hotel lobby, told them what I wanted
and went back to join Jean in the shower. He was surprised to see me naked
but was soon relaxed as we played, soaping and washing each other. He smelt
and looked so much better when we were dried and standing facing each other
afterwards, still naked of course. I slipped on a pair of boxers, then
trousers and a Polo.

“Wait here Jean, I will be back with some clothes for you.”

My guess had obviously been good. Boxers, trousers with elasticated waist
band, shirt and shoes, all fitted him fine. However, before I let him dress
I scoped him out thoroughly. He was about five feet tall, very skinny so
that almost all his bones showed. He wasn’t classically beautiful but he
did have good bone structure so I guessed he would be handsome when we had
built him up a little. Like so many of my race, he had long eye lashes and
very dark eyes that in his case were deep pools and so very expressive. The
whole was topped by a mass of black hair. I had no idea how it would look
when cut because there was just so much of it. He had a bony arse and tiny
genitals. I guessed he had not reached puberty, not just because of his age
but also his life style. Half starved, I would guess him to be a late
developer.

“Now young man, would you like some food?”

His eyes lit up and he gushed out an, “Oh yes please Sir.”

I knew I had made the right decision by the time we returned to my
suite. We had ordered food he could eat with his fingers because I didn’t
want to embarrass him in the dining room if he had problems with cutlery.

“Jean, if you come back to my home with me it will have to be as a slave,
but I will not treat you like one. I will look after you and educate you,
when you are an adult you can make your own decision about what you want to
do.”

He wasn’t stupid. He knew about slavery, it couldn’t be worse than his
present life, so he shrugged and agreed to come with me.

“Will I have to have sex with you Sir?”

I looked at this little stick insect I had gathered up and laughed. I took
him in my arms and just cuddled him as we sat in the lounge of my suite.

“No Jean, you will never have sex with me but I think I would like you to
sleep with me at night for cuddles.”

He obviously thought that would be ok but I could still see the wary look
so I knew he didn’t believe me. It didn’t matter, time would solve that
problem and I had the feeling we would have a lot of that.

My sleep that night was as good as any I had since Salem left. I felt
totally refreshed the next morning and ordered breakfast for two to be sent
to my suite. Jean was delightful to watch. Fingers had patently been his
main utensils when eating so he had problems with all the proper cutlery. I
couldn’t let his embarrassment continue so I helped him and talked while I
did so.

“This is all very confusing Jean, isn’t it?”

He looked sheepishly at me and nodded.

“Please don’t worry. When we get back to my palace I will ask my Major Domo
to start teaching you how to handle this new way of life.”

With eyes as wide as saucers he said, “You really live in a palace, Sir?”

“Yes Jean and so will you from now on.”

That piece of information had to be digested slowly. Nothing in his
existence could even begin to make this appear possible.

“We are going home tomorrow but because you have no papers and therefore no
passport you will not be able to travel openly with me. You will go to
sleep here tomorrow night and when you wake up you will be in my palace in
the Kingdom.”

His eyes were so wide open they appeared to take up most of his face. I
laughed and took him into my arms for another cuddle. I thought that this
could become a very regular habit.

There were no suitable shops for me to buy more clothes for him so I left
him to watch TV in my suite while I attended the last of my meetings giving
careful instructions to one of my staff to make sure Jean was looked after.

I wasn’t able to return to the suite until a few hours before we had
planned to fly home. When I did Jean was quite agitated wondering if I had
deserted him. He threw himself into my arms and cried. Through his sobbing
I gathered that he was worried for me. I calmed him down, got him a drink
that I had doctored with a strong sleeping draft and when he fell asleep in
my arms I placed him carefully in the box I had had prepared and delivered,
closed it and locked it before organising my packing and the delivery of my
cases and the box to my aircraft. Diplomatic privilege meant that the box
was put aboard without problems.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————
When Jean was led into the main dining room of the palace the next morning
to join me for breakfast the look on his face made me want to cry with the
pleasure it gave me. I remembered Salem when this happened to him, but with
Jean it was even more wondrous because he was younger and far more deprived
than Salem had been.

“Good morning Jean, did you sleep well?”

“Oh yes Sir, and when I woke up I was in a huge bed with these two men
stood at the end.”

Jean pointed to the two slaves I had detailed to look after him. They were
beautiful young men clad in just the loincloths that my slaves wore.

He blushed then and continued.

“They bathed me before dressing me. I was very ashamed when they touched my
private parts but they are so big and strong and I am so skinny and small
so I had to let them.”

I tried not to laugh.

“You don’t need to be ashamed Jean. They are your body servants and will be
looking after you. I would like you to sleep with me most nights but you
will have your own quarters and these two boys will look after you and
them.”

I gave him time to absorb that while we ate breakfast. Lots of fresh fruit
mainly. Jean’s skin was beautifully soft but I was going to ensure that his
diet would make improvements even on that. When we had finished I told him
I was going to town to work and that he would be in the charge of my Major
Domo for the day.

“I want you to pay attention to what he tells you Jean.”

I left it at that, kissed him gently on the lips before leaving and told
him I would be back for supper.

The transformation when I returned was marvellous. He had been given a
complete makeover, his hair, body, nails, everything, so that he looked
like a young prince clad in the new clothes that had been brought out from
town for him.

We sat down for supper after I had bathed and changed.

“Have you enjoyed your day, Jean?”

Eyes like saucers again.

“Oh yes, Sir, and I have practised using knives and forks.”

He was showing me how quickly he could learn by using the utensils very
efficiently.

“I have also met my tutor who is going to teach me to read and write and to
speak English and French.”

He was talking and acting so self assured already I was amazed. I wondered
what amazing changes I would see in the first few months. I suppose a
little street urchin has no expectations so he was taking everything as it
came quite calmly.

That night he curled up with me and I think he was still quite surprised
that I did not want sex with him despite the fact that we were both
naked. I had him spooned into me and it felt so incredibly comfortable
having this little body so close. I told him the next morning, jokingly,
that he was my cuddle cushion because he was so soft. He told Salem that on
his next visit which made me blush, it was such an intimate thing I
thought, just between the two of us. I would have to be careful what I said
to him and remember he was only twelve.

I decided that as part of his training he would spend some time clad in a
loincloth and be treated like a slave, particularly when I had quests.

Jean’s progress in etiquette and education amazed me. His tutor was English
educated so that language was spoken in an almost total immersion
environment. Jean had listened to French for so much of his life that he
picked that up very quickly as well. Learning to read and write Arabic was
more difficult for him despite it being his mother tongue.

I watched him with so much pleasure as he developed into a very graceful
and self assured young man. When he was clothed properly he very soon took
on the air of the young prince he was destined to become.

When I wanted sex I would take a mature slave to bed and on those nights
Jean would sleep in his own suite, very much in the way that Salem had. It
hardly seemed possible that had started nearly twenty years before.

I was so proud of Jean when Salem arrived for a visit bringing Shaka and
Michel with him. That first night I took Salem to bed with me to renew our
sexual bonding. He was as exquisite as ever despite being in his
thirties. Jean slept with Shaka and Michel in a sandwich. At breakfast the
next morning Jean, in wide eyed wonder told me about the size of Shaka’s
penis.

“I am so pleased I am not a proper slave, Sir, if Shaka used his penis on
me I am sure he would split me in two.”

What a wonderful jolly breakfast that turned out to be. Salem kept looking
at me and Jean, noticing my eyes which I guess gave me away.

I suppose Salem’s unspoken words said more to me than the ones he uttered
because soon after they left I spoke to the ruler and was allowed to set
aside Jean’s slave status and adopt him as my son. The transformation was
amazing. Salem had got a little above himself at times as my companion but
Jean never did even as my son. He was I realised a total delight. There
were few nights he did not sleep with me as my sexual libido decreased.

On his fourteenth birthday I took him to Paris. Time to start building his
culture, Museums and Galleries, Architecture and Theatre. From Paris to
Italy and some of the great Italian Operas at venues like La Scala, we saw
them all.

I didn’t want to overload him so we went home after that.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
I watched him with some of my guests at a very formal dinner one night when
he was approaching sixteen. There were heads of state from other Emirates,
Ambassadors from major world nations and a few minor Princes. Jean was the
consummate host, summoning waiters where needed to replenish drinks if he
saw a guest with an empty glass. At dinner he sat between the wife of the
French Ambassador and an English Government Minister’s wife. He was
switching to English and French with practised ease as he talked to each
one and translated for each in turn if their language failed them. The
praise heaped on him after dinner by these two ladies made me realise I had
now accomplished what I had set out to do with him when I picked him out of
the gutter of Tripoli.

The next stage of his education was going to devastate me I knew but I
thought it was necessary

“Jean, I think it would be a very good idea for you to sit the English
education certificate exams and then go to school in England for two years
to obtain your advance certificates.”

I had bitten the bullet and that was how I approached it at breakfast a few
mornings after his greatest success.

He looked shattered.

“Are you fed up with me then, Father.”

I just got out of my chair, walked round the table and knelt beside him. I
kissed him quite passionately and said.

“No my Son, this decision is breaking my heart but I think completing your
education is important.”

“Can’t I complete it here with tutors the same as I have been doing?”

“Yes Jean, you could, but the main reason for sending you away is so that
you can mix with, and interact with boys of your own age and disposition.”

His arguments lasted over several days until in frustration I forbade him
bringing up the subject again. When we went to England to enrol him in his
new school I realised I had been with this boy for four years and that he
was the dearest human being in my life.

He wouldn’t cry when I left him but I am sure he did later.

The reports I got weekly were all very positive, despite having no peers to
base his development on he had absorbed his new culture and was a popular
student. For some reason totally bemusing me he had taken to hockey and was
an aggressive and effective attacking forward responsible for many of his
team’s successes.

His first half term and he was hot foot for the kingdom and a week with
me. It was marvellous to have him home. I spoilt him of course taking him
to Dubai for a couple of days and spending far too much money on him. We
tried the new Ski slope there and Jean loved it.

“Oh Papa this is fantastic. Can we go Skiing at Christmas? I know some of
my class mates are going, perhaps we can stay in the same resort as them.”

I bit the bullet then to see how far apart we had become in just seven
short weeks.

“I don’t think it is my thing Jean, but we can get you booked in and let
one of your friend’s parents take responsibility for you.”

His shoulders slumped a little but he straightened them up again when he
spoke to me.

“No, it isn’t important. I would sooner be with you than anywhere else in
the world.”

I grinned at him.

“I’m sorry my Son, that was wicked of me. I just wanted to see if you had
got fed up with me. Of course we can go. Get as many details as you can
from your friends and we’ll book a chalet for the holidays. We can learn
together.”

He forgot where we were and threw himself into my arms to give me a very
passionate kiss. I laughed and told him he would get us arrested if he did
that very often. He looked round and blushed as he realised how many people
were looking at us.

“I’m sorry Papa.”

People that heard his comment applauded us and with both of us grinning we
both bowed to our audience.

An expatriate father and son were stood near us and the father said to me.

“I wish my son showed as much affection to me as yours does to you.”

The boy was similar age to Jean, who looked at him and said.

“My father loves me to show affection to him and I love him so much it is
easy to do after the first time.”

The boy blushed scarlet but went up to his father, kissed him gently on the
lips and said, “I do love you Dad, thank you for everything.”

That was it, we had company for dinner that night and it looked likely the
same company during our ski holiday.

I suppose this was something else I had to thank Salem for. He had always
been a very affectionate companion and lover.

My life was suddenly taking many new avenues that were strange to me but I
had to admit they were keeping me young. Salem had commented how happy and
obviously in love I was when he had last seen me at the palace looking at
Jean and that I guess was what this was all about. I was a gay man enjoying
fatherhood. I started to wonder about Jean’s sexuality. He had certainly
grown into a very handsome young man. I was so proud of the way he carried
himself and behaved. He was everything I could wish for but he had never
shown any interest in the male slaves in the palace, some of whom were
stunningly handsome and I had never noticed him showing particular interest
in any of the females that crossed our path. I knew there was nothing wrong
with his machinery because he had regular medicals at my insistence. The
doctor told me that Jean had a very high sperm count so he would make
babies very easily. Father/son talk had emphasised that fact to him so that
he would always practice safe sex.

He went back to school and I went back to work making sure I cleared
everything before the holidays so that I could enjoy two weeks of skiing
with Jean. It was there that his sexuality showed, and shocked me. He not
very subtly made a play for one of his friend’s father. It was embarrassing
for both of us but I had to say something. We had a beautiful chalet close
to the town and the ski lifts and I had invited the father and son we met
at the Dubai ski slope. I took Jean to our room after skiing one afternoon
and sat him down on the bed.

“You have done nothing but make me proud of you Jean from the day I picked
you up in Tripoli so this embarrasses me. You are making it far too obvious
that you would like Michael’s father to take you to bed. If you are going
after older men you must be much more subtle about it and find out if they
have any interest in you sexually. I can tell you, Allan is a straight man,
you will get nothing from this flirtation except heartache and
embarrassment.”

Jean looked down and when he could look at me again I noticed he was
blushing and was fighting to hold back the tears.

“I’m sorry Papa, I have known the love of the most wonderful man in the
world for almost five years. I feel that I am ready for a sexual
relationship now but the only person I really want to make love to me is
out of my reach so I suppose I am trying for a substitute.”

I staggered and sat down hard. The boy that I had said I would never have
sex with was making it very clear that he wanted to. We still went to bed
together, always naked and always with Jean spooning into me. I had seen
him with an erection, and he me but I don’t think I had ever thought about
sex in his presence and I had never noticed his eyes telling me what his
words just had, so, it was a total shock.

I got up, moved across the room and sat next to him on the bed. I took him
in my arms and gently kissed him all over his face.

“My beautiful Son, I love you so much, but this. I don’t know what to
say. How long have you known?”

“I think for a long time but it was while I was fooling around with Toy in
the pool while you and Salem sat watching us that our conversation made me
realise. Toy told me how much Salem loved and respected you for all the
wonderful years he had been your lover but he said he was never jealous
because Salem loved him so much and showed him often. I realised then that
I wanted you to love me like that.”

What on earth was I going to do? I remembered Salem’s comment when he saw
how much I loved Jean and told him about our relationship.

“I can see that Mohammed, I knew you didn’t want him for sex, he is much
too small”, and we had laughed, but now Jean was not too small. Quite the
reverse, he was a very well endowed young man, but he was my son, not by
blood but by choice which made our relationship even more precious. How
could I possibly turn our relationship on its head and make love to him? I
was lost, whatever decision I made would change our relationship. I didn’t
think I wanted carnal knowledge of this boy, but if I did how would that
change the way we perceived each other. For me it was a monumental problem.
It wasn’t solved that holiday, but we did have long talks some evenings if
we excused ourselves early. I openly discussed gay sex with Jean. I told
him how I used to make love to Salem and some of the incredible orgies I
had organised with Salem, Michel and Shaka. I always emphasised the loving
ones, not any where I had been a bit evil. It was quite obvious by the time
I returned him to school in England and left for the kingdom that I would
have to do some serious heart searching and make a decision on our future
conduct by the time he came home for his next half term.

Jean telephoned me several times a week and wrote long letters to me as
well. The tone between the two of us gradually became less father and son
and more good friends. I realised he had engineered a lot of this with the
intention of making it easier for us to change our previous roles. I was
still very unsure of taking this huge step. Age wise he was perfect for me,
I loved boys in their late teens, I always had. Salem had lasted so long as
my lover because even now, in his late thirties he still looked like a much
younger man. I was amazed really because his terrible ordeal in India
should have destroyed his beautiful skin.

It was while thinking about Salem that the idea hit me. Talk to him. He had
grown wise and still loved me so he would look at it more dispassionately
than me but with the knowledge of my character and love for Jean.

His advice was short and to the point.

“It is a huge step to take Mohammed, but if Jean loves you so much that he
wants it to become sexual I think you should try it. The alternative may
well be that he makes desperate attempts to secure a mature lover that ends
up getting him into trouble and will at best only be a substitute for what
he really wants.”

I hadn’t thought of that but Salem had so much experience guiding members
of his inner circle. Pierre was a huge credit to his guidance, Toy was so
relaxed and comfortable around him and the whole of Michel’s family
appeared to worship him so he had to be doing something right.

With great trepidation I awaited the return of my son.

The beautiful relationship gets even better in the second part.

Muslim movie at gay festival (The Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival)

(..)
For example, Indian-born Parvez Sharma’s A Jihad for Love is a documentary about the harsh, closeted lives of gay men and lesbians in Muslim culture. Sharma analyses the Koranic texts on homo-sexuality, assessing rhier meaning and contrasting the words with the reality of being gay in a traditional Islamic culture. The film moves from the relatively tolerant world of Turkey to Egypt to document the exile of a man who was one of 52 guests arrested after attending a gay wedding on a floating disco boat. He was severely beaten and jailed for a year. When he was released he was warned that he could face another jail term and fled into exile in Paris. A Jihad for Love is politically speaking, the most controversial film of the festival. Its screening will be preceded by an address by Sandi DuBowski, who directed a previous festival hit, Trembling – Before G’d which looked at the enclosed lives of gay men in the Jewish Hasidic community.
A Jewish filmmaker, DuBowski, introducing a Muslim film on the same subject, underscores the festival’s fundamental purpose of challenging and exposing acts of prejudice and ignorance.
(..)

Sunday Time October 28
South Africa

http://www.maroc.nl/forums/showthread.php?t=233397

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I’ll never forget the first sight I had of Morocco as I approached on a ferry from Spain early in 1969. I was in Africa! The smells, the sounds and the sights all hit me at once, and I fell in love with it– even though I wasn’t really in Morocco yet, but approaching Spain’s last toehold in Africa, Ceuta.

Funny how I’ve been back to Morocco a dozen times since then, but never to Ceuta again. Even the first time I got there, I left almost immediately, anxious to get to “real Morocco,” hightailing it out for Tetouan and then on to Ketama in the Rif Mountains with its infamous kif (a kind of hash) fields; never been back to that part of the country either. I always gravitate to the south: Fez, Marrakech, Essaoura, Taroudant.

Earlier this year I read about the life of Moroccan ex-pat writer Abdellah Taïa in Out. Taïa’s from Salé in the north; he’s one of Morocco’s best-known writers, and he lives in Paris. He’s openly gay, and living in Morocco would be uncomfortable.

Last year, when Morocco’s interior ministry announced a crackdown on writing and books “seeking to attack the moral and religious values” of Moroccan society– code for supporting gay rights– Taïa responded with an open letter, “Homosexuality Explained to My Mother.” “There is a generation of Moroccan people trying to express itself, and the government’s response is aggression,” he says. “I knew I couldn’t write to a minister– he wouldn’t respond because they don’t recognize people like us– but I could write to someone related to me.”

Taïa’s campaign goes beyond gay rights. After two young brothers died in a suicide attack outside the U.S. consulate in Casablanca in 2007, he wrote an editorial for Le Monde titled “We Have to Save Moroccan Youth,” in which he addressed the exploitation of teen disaffection by Islamic extremists. “But I realized I had to go further than that,” he says. “I had to break the isolation of young Moroccans.” Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet– a series of 10 letters written to a young man entering the German military– Taïa approached artists and writers of his generation to contribute essays for an update. Eighteen responded, including Tahar Ben Jelloun, one of Morocco’s most famous writers– a measure of Taïa’s success in transcending knee-jerk prejudice. “Books have given me a legitimacy that I might not have had without them,” Taïa says. “That a homosexual writer– the one who is demonized, criminalized– can unite these forces behind him is amazing to me.”

Letters to a Young Moroccan was published last August, but Taïa didn’t stop there. Aware that his target audience could not afford books, he approached millionaire philanthropist Pierre Bergé, who had owned a home in Marrakech with his lifelong partner, Yves Saint Laurent. Bergé agreed to fund the printing and distribution of 90,000 copies of the book in French and Arabic– the kind of bold gesture Taïa himself would never be able to make if he still lived in Morocco. “They would say I’m crazy, and who do I think I am– a political leader? Life is when you can think of something and make it happen.” He pauses and shrugs. “But maybe I’m talking too heroically.”

His newest book, a kind of autobiography, is Salvation Army, his first book to be translated into English. “Taïa has defied Moroccan society’s don’t-ask, don’t-tell attitude toward homosexuality– and prison sentences that are still on the books in the North African kingdom– to write five autobiographical novels about growing up poor and gay in the northern coastal city of Salé.”

The novels, peppered with sexually explicit passages, have catapulted him to fame in his native country and made him the de-facto poster child of its budding gay rights movement.

His work has sparked harsh criticism. Taïa said some outraged critics have called on him to renounce Moroccan citizenship so as “not to bring shame” on the country.

It’s also alienated him from his parents and eight siblings, who figure extensively in the books and complain that Taïa has publicly humiliated them.

But the 35-year-old author insists he’s never been cowed by fallout from his work.

“When I write, I feel a sense of urgency, as if my life depended on it,” Taïa said in an interview in Paris, where he has lived for almost a decade. “When I first started writing, it never occurred to me to invent some fictional character and talk about made-up things.”

His latest novel, L’armee du Salut, or Salvation Army, focuses on his decision to move to Europe. An English translation recently came out in the United States, with an introduction by author Edmund White.

Though Taïa immigrated legally– he was awarded a scholarship to study in Switzerland– his experiences in Geneva paralleled those of thousands Moroccans living in Europe without papers.

After his older Swiss lover who was supposed to pick him up at the Geneva airport never shows up, a penniless Taïa seeks refuge at the Salvation Army, where he lives among illegal immigrants from throughout the developing world.

…Like nearly all Arab countries, Morocco considers homosexual relations a crime, punishable by fines and prison sentences of six months to three years. Such penalties are rarely applied, though, and in practice Morocco has a long history of leniency toward homosexuality and other practices forbidden by Islam.

Last week my friend Danny, knowing of my affinity for Morocco, sent me an article from Carnal Nation, First Arabic-Language Gay Magazine Scandalizes Morocco. The name Mithly has a double-meaning in Arabic: “homo” and “like me.” It was published this month– in Rabat… and in secret. “The editors and publishers of this bold new publication emphasize that Mithly is first and foremost a forum for those suffering under Islamic laws that criminalize homosexuality. Indeed, the appearance of the magazine has so incensed conservative officials that some have called upon the government to hunt down “sleeper cells” of homosexuals like terrorists.

A couple of years after my first visit to Morocco, I found another country I fell in love with and have returned to many times, Nepal. It’s more remote and, in many ways, even more foreign. But very live-and-let-live, at least in practice, and not homophobic, at least not for foreigners. It’s a Buddhist kingdom that is mostly Hindu and now– as of 2008– a republic. And now live-and-let-live has turned into a gay-oriented marketing theme as tourist-promoting Nepal looks for gay dollars by offering same sex-weddings… on Mount Everest. I sure hope the grooms don’t have to trek to the base camp the way I did in 1971.

“We’re completely changing this country. It’s a newborn republic– and we want to showcase this change,” Sharat Singh Bhandari, the Tourism Minister, told The Times. “We also want to re-establish tourism as a major industry.” He aims to attract one million tourists in 2011, more than double the number last year.

He kicked off the marketing campaign in October with a written message to the International Conference on Gay & Lesbian Tourism in Boston– an unprecedented gesture for an Asian minister. “As the world knows, Nepal is the land of Mount Everest, world’s highest peak and the birth place of Lord Buddha, light of Asia,” the message said. “I, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to invite and welcome all the sexual and gender minorities from around the world.” …The tourism board is already talking about same-sex weddings on Everest, elephant safaris for gay honeymooners and other specialist activities.

So all the above was originally written for my travel blog but I decided to crosspost it here because of some discussion I’ve been having with friends about Threshold, Thom Hartmann’s newest book, a unifying principle of which is an updated Mathusian concept that overpopulation is the root of our problems. And religion is a big stumbling block in coping with that one.

It can be argued that if the biggest problem facing us– the one driving all the other problems ranging from climate change to energy shortages to famine to pollution– is overpopulation, and the single most powerful solution to that problem is the empowerment of women.

Interestingly, in some religions this is clearly happening, and happening rapidly. Numerous Protestant denominations and Jewish synagogues, have ordained women, and many are also blessing the marriage of women to each other (as well as men to each other, the oppression of gay men, historically having been culturally associated with the oppression of women). Italy– historic home of the Vatican– has one of the highest rates of birth control use in the world (behind highly Catholic Spain).

…The question of whether culture is driving change in religion or vice versa is one that probably tilts in the direction of the former, but regardless of the process, the outcome is that both culture and religion are changing in ways that give more power to women.

The problem is that not enough of the world’s religions and cultures are changing this way, and the ones that are changing aren’t doing so fast enough. The catholic Church, for example, no longer functionally punishes its members for divorce (at least not in the First World), although it still maintains the forms and functions that would appear to… And many largely Islamic nations have taken on largely secular governments.

…Fifty-one million unintended pregnancies every year worldwide is not the driver of a billion people being added to the planet every decade and a half. While it’s true that there’s a worldwide crisis associated with a widespread lack of modern family planning, it’s the intended pregnancies that are driving the population explosion. Looking again at wealthy Middle Eastern countries, where birth control is widely available, we still see huge families.

It turns out that there is one single variable that consistently– from country to country, culture to culture, for tens of thousands of years of culture and history– determines whether a culture’s population will explode or be stable. That variable is the empowerment of women.

As Sadia Chowdhury, senior reproductive and child health specialist at the World Bank, noted, “Promoting girls’ and women’’s education is just as important as reducing birthrates in the long run as promoting contraception and family planning.” Education, said Chowdhury, “gives a woman the power to say how many children she wants and when. And these are enduring qualities she will hand down to her daughters as well.”

The worldwide movement to educate and empower girls and women is the most important part of cultural transformation necessary to bring us through the current crisis and into a stable and sustainable future.

caption id="attachment_29040" align="alignnone" width="204" caption="Full Speed - Arab Gay Movie"/caption

Synopsis:

This wonderful and ambitious film examines issues of race, art and romance both gay and straight in modern France through a quartet of very diverse young friends united by a common factor: their unrequited love for one another.

Independent Review:

“Love: Four Divertimenti”

Gaël Morel co-wrote (with Catherine Corsini) and directed this very French exploration of the manifestations of love in a style that feels more like eavesdropping on private encounters than on a linear drama. The plot is actually tightly woven around each of the four characters, at the same time giving the effect of four characters’ viewpoints on love.

Samir (Mezziane Bardadi) is a French Arab from Algeria who opens the film in a tender frolic with his ‘blood brother’ and quickly witnesses the accidental death of the man he loves. He travels to a small town in France, lonely, needy, feeling like an outsider (remember the history of the French Algerian conflict) and encounters a young novelist Quentin (Pascal Cervo) celebrating the publication of his first novel with his best friend Jimmy (Stéphane Rideau) and his girlfriend Julie (Élodie Bouchez) in a dance bar. Samir and Quentin make eye contact and soon a brief assignation outside the club leads to a kiss that the vulnerable Samir views as a sign of love but that Quentin views as strange but as possible content for his next novel.

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Quentin loves Julie, Julie loves Quentin, but has an eye on Quentin’s best friend Jimmy, a lad faithful to his friendship with Quentin to the point of fending off Julie’s enamourment. But when Quentin and Samir begin spending extended periods of time together (Samir longing for a physical relationship, Quentin refusing but intent on gathering information for his novel), affinities are tested. Quentin departs for Paris to write, Jimmy and Julie begin a lusty affair, and Samir feels again deserted by a lover. Samir is attacked by gay bashers and defended by Quentin who in the course of the fight sustains a head injury, an injury at first easily resolved but one that later leads to tragedy. Quentin returns from Paris to discover Julie has found love with Jimmy and while Samir’s obsession with Quentin races at the new availability of Quentin as a partner, Quentin is disgusted and returns to his career as a writer in Paris and the story comes to a protracted ending with a series of sad incidents: Quentin, the core of each of the love stories remains aloof, dedicated to his growing fame as a writer and gleaning the events as fodder for his assent to literary fame.

The stories are bound with threads of same-gender love, homophobia, human frailty and need. The actors are all beautiful for the eye and render tender performances. The countryside of France is exquisitely captured by cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie and director Gaël Morel manages to weave these little stories in a conversational, simple manner that appeal to the heart and the eye. For some the film may seem rambling and disconnected and unfairly compared to ‘The Wild Reeds’, but Morel has a sensitive, gentle manner in setting a mood that allows it to flow like a stroll through the flowering woods of young passions. Recommended.
~ Grady Harp (Los Angels, CA, United States)

Independent Review:

” Wild Reeds Reunited”

Full Speed A toute vitesse reunites three of the best young stars to come out of France in a long time: Stephane Rideau and Elodie Bouchez, directed by Wild Reeds co-star Gael Morel. The viewing experience of some films is enhanced by watching another one first. This is the case here. Before you watch this movie, watch The Wild Reeds Les roseaux sauvages. Full Speed is fine by itself, no question, but you’ll enjoy it a lot more if you watch The Wild Reeds first. It was made by André Téchiné two years before. For those who don’t know, André Téchiné is a wonderful French director who has a certain knack for beautifully-filmed movies. Even from watching one of his movies you can pick up on his techniques. Well, Gaël Morel, the director of this movie and one of the stars of Reeds picked up so much from Téchiné that he decided to make movies himself. After several shorts made-for-tv, some starring Rideau, this is his first major motion picture. Unless you knew for sure that Téchiné was not the director you’d swear he made Full Speed. All his little trademark techniques are there.

Morel starred in Reeds with Rideau and Bouchez, and one of the plot elements was the Algerian war in the 60’s. In Speed, Morel has Rideau and Bouchez together again, with the Algerian war as a plot element, retrospectively though, as At Full Speed is set in contemporary France.. Further, these actors, Rideau and Bouchez, both wonderfully talented in their own right, went on to star together in several other movies, and Morel directed them in a few of those. Kind of like a French brat pack. Stéphane Rideau is one of these French sex-symbols, and any film he’s in is worth watching. He’s been compared to a modern-day James Dean.

Set in a Paris suburb, in Full Speed we see Rideau (Jimmy) as a rebellious but sensitive young man dealing with his best friend Cervo’s sudden fame as a young author. Bouchez has the same trouble in her relationship with Cervo. The distance between them all increases when a young gay Algerian with a story to tell steps in. Rideau and Bouchez hook up, and Cervo doesn’t seem to care about them anymore: he has the young Algerian to write about. He wrote about Rideau, published his story, and now he’s moving on. This all goes on against a background of a modern French ethnic suburb. A variety of emotional set-tos take place amongst the four characters illustrating betrayal, isolation, loneliness, and introspective conflicts, all ending tragically.

Critics claimed that Full Speed was sometimes disjointed, with scenes that seem to have nothing to do with what’s going on, or an ending that makes no sense at all (as is sometimes the case in French movies, you’re left wondering what happened). But in this movie, while the continuity may not be as didactic as some mainstream blockbuster moviegoers might like, the connectivity is apparent if the viewer pays attention and listens to what’s going on, something sorely lacking in North American audiences. Whether this is possible by simply reading sub-titles is unclear, so try to follow the dialogue if you can understand French. This movie is a fine first major effort on the part of Morel, and most of the credit for its success goes to Rideau and Bouchez. And André Téchiné too for sure. And Morel knows it. A must-see for both Rideau fans and for fans of French dramas featuring attractive young men and women.

“Sadj” is the colloquial Arabic word for “gay” in most countries of the Middle East. While a more appropriate adjective “mithli” (“like me, similar, same-(sex)”) has found its way into the elite academic vernacular of contemporary Arab society, “sadj” is the term I heard most during my travels in the Middle East. Meaning, roughly, “peculiar” or “strange,” sadj is the easy way to classify a homosexual in the Arab world. The concept of homosexuality, of intimate and romantic same-sex relations, is still so taboo, that there is no need to delve farther than that one word. Forget butch or fem or any other adjectives you’ve come to appreciate as descriptive markers in Western gay society: sadj pretty much covers all the bases. More a result of culture than of religion (but now, unfortunately, reinforced by the three dominant monotheistic religions of the region), homosexuality in the Middle East nowadays is something people don’t particularly care to talk about. In some more progressive parts of the region, people understand and recognize that these “sadjeeyeen” exist, but there is no need to discuss them. Morocco is one of these places.

If you juxtapose Morocco (Maroc, in French) against many other countries in the Arab world, such as Sudan or Iraq, the sliver of North Africa looks likes a calm oasis for Middle Eastern gays and lesbians. While sporadic acts of violence against homosexuals is definitely a threat, they pale in comparison to the recent violence that has flared in post-invasion Iraq. And while many Moroccans are just as torn on the issue as most Arabs across the Middle East, Morocco tends to be a more lenient society overall than other North African countries. Morocco itself is a patchwork of cultures and languages, ranging from Berber to Spanish, Portuguese to Arab, and French to Senegalese and sub-saharan African. Most Moroccans are descendants of the Berbers, the original inhabitants of the the “maghreb” region of North Africa, including the current Moroccan ruler, King Mohammed VI. Throw in there a mix of all the ethnicities listed above and you have a country steeped in cultural diversity and plurality. In my opinion, this kind of melting pot of cultures, minorities, languages, and religions is the ideal environment for the acceptance of homosexuals. Look at the United States or Britain: two countries with relatively accepting social policies with historically large immigrant populations. Currently Morocco has the potential to reach the level of acceptance needed for an open society that embraces homosexuals, but with the rising threat of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism, as well as a cultural revival aiming to bring Morocco back to the seventh century and the time of the Prophet Muhammad, homosexuals (at least Moroccan homosexuals) continue to be looked at, thankfully in a mostly nonviolent manner, as taboo: as “sadj.”

This doesn’t mean that Morocco is anti-gay. On the contrary, the country has come a long way under the auspices of the current royal regime. In 2005, King Muhammad VI endorsed a grand, sweeping reform of the mudawana, or Moroccan family code, that extended much needed basic human rights to Morocco’s women and children, much to the chagrin of many fundamentalists. In addition to the family law reforms, King Muhammad VI has expanded (if only by a small measure) the power of Morocco’s parliament and has endorsed the idea of more powerful multiparty political system. While Morocco’s monarchy is not going anywhere anytime soon (the king is considered a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad), many in Morocco are becoming more and more impatient with the royal house. And while most homes and shops are equipped with portraits of their youthful king, it is common to find many Moroccans who would rather see the throne abolished, to be replaced by a more democratic system or an Islamist-led regime. New rumors about the king emerge everyday and can result in a strict response from the Moroccan government if leaked to the press or published online. The most entertaining, and personally interesting, rumor I stumbled across during my time in Morocco is that the king himself may be homosexual. Young, in his forties, and an avid water sportsman, many street vendors sell smiling photos of the king on vacation jet skiing in the south of France. Very rarely do you see pictures of the Moroccan ruler with his young wife or child. One of the juiciest rumors came this past summer, when it became known that the Moroccan king had decided to take a vacation to a private chateau outside of Paris, sans his wife or child, and, presumably, in the company of men. Could the Moroccan king be gay? For most traditional Moroccans, this would result in a blasphemy so intense it could threaten the throne itself. The idea of a gay member of the Prophet Mohammad’s lineage would be disastrous for the royal family and Morocco’s system of constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately, we may never know. Any questioning the king’s sexuality would almost certainly result in a swift backlash by the royal house and the Moroccan authorities. It is important to note that this type of response by the Moroccan government is not reserved for questioning their ruler’s personal life alone, almost any publicized opinion of the king can result in imprisonment or trial.

The king aside, Moroccan society, especially urban communities, are becoming slightly more open to homosexuals in their presence, if not the accepting of the actual concept itself. Marrakech, for example, is the largest city in southern Morocco and the tourist hub of the country. Known for its pink hued buildings, winding “souks” (markets) and djemma el-fnaa, or Square of the Dead, once used to display the executions of prisoners but now used for outdoor food stalls and entertainment, Marrakech is the Morocco many think of when considering the country for a vacation. With the desert to one side and the looming High Atlas mountains to the other, Marrakech is truly a magical city. This is made more so by its recent transition into a more decadent venue. Bars and clubs are springing up across the new city, inviting Moroccans to sit back, sip a beer (another taboo across much of the Middle East) and socialize with singles outside of the home and immediate community. Across town, in the old city, gay Europeans are coming in droves to buy up expensive real estate to renovate traditional Moroccan riads, or courtyard homes, into summer homes. Many rural Moroccan gays are leaving their villages and farms to settle into apartments and homes in Morocco’s new flashy vacation city. Walking through the djemma el-fnaa one evening, I met several gay Moroccan men, all out enjoying themselves and their new found urban freedom. This new liberalism has even resulted in the publication of a “Hedonists Guide to Marrakech”, part of a series of tour books usually reserved for larger, more European destinations. Agadir, Casablanca, and Fez, three other Moroccan cities, are also working to catch up with Marrakech’s success, expanding their new cities and allowing the construction of discotheques, bars, and other places that encourage mingling amongst the Moroccan youth.

In short, Morocco is no France or Spain. To be openly homosexual is still dangerous, if more to one’s reputation and family honor than to one’s physical safety as in other Middle Eastern countries. While the king still calls all the shots and the press is heavily censured, the diverse history of the Moroccan people is creating a moderate atmosphere in a conservative neighborhood of the world. More and more Moroccan gays are finding it easier to meet each other and live their lives, especially in cities such as Marrakech. Gay travelers are finding an option in the Middle East to experience Arab culture and not fear for their safety, although modesty is absolutely required when in public. And while the Moroccan dialect still uses words such as “sadj” to describe homosexuals, many are finding themselves apathetic and, in some rare cases, open to same-sex relations. After returning home from living in Morocco, I called my host brother to tell him that I am gay. I was almost more nervous than when I came out to my parents. I expected immediate rejection from my host family, a crumbling of cross cultural relations I had nurtured over the past year. To my surprise my host brother and other Moroccan friends completely embraced my sexuality. “Who cares?” my host brother exclaimed, “You are my brother, and I love you for who you are.”

I only hope that this feeling of acceptance and openness will become more and more widespread in Morocco in the years to come.

A crackdown in Egypt destroyed a vibrant gay community and sparked a worldwide protest.

For “security reasons,” New York police ordered the crowd of 30 or so demonstrators to move away from the steps in front of the gray, concrete building where the Egyptian consulate is housed. On that early May weekend the New York demonstrators in Washington, London, Toronto, Montreal, Paris, and Berlin were marching in front of Egyptian consulates and embassies. The protests, organized by Amnesty International and Al Fatiha, a gay and lesbian Muslim organization, marked the second anniversary of an Egyptian police raid on a floating disco on the Nile, the Queen Boat, frequented by gay men. The May 11, 2001 early morning raid resulted in the arrest and subsequent trial of 52 men suspected of being gay.

The Queen Boat incident won international attention, thanks to outside pressure, including that of Amnesty International activists. Even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak took note.

Less well known, however, is that ever since the Queen Boat affair, Egyptian authorities have mounted a sustained attack against gay men and what was once an emerging gay community. “The raid marked the beginning of a two-year public campaign of harassment, intimidation, and detention of those perceived to be gay,” said Michael Heflin, director of AIUSA’s OUTfront Program. “Beyond those originally arrested, scores have faced police surveillance, entrapment, drawn out trials, and long periods of detention. Some were rejected by their friends and family, lost their jobs, or were tortured. All were subjected to profound public humiliation, often in the Egyptian media.”

Just back from Egypt, where he spent three months documenting the abuse of gay men, Scott Long of Human Rights Watch took the megaphone and told a chilling story of how the police tortured and killed one young gay man and then, in a transparent attempt to make the death look like a suicide, threw his body off a building.

There are no hard figures, but Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch estimate that in the past two years, police have arrested up to 200 men for “debauchery,” the official codeword for homosexuality. Not all meet such a horrible ending as torture and death, but it is fair to say that most of their lives are shredded by the stigma of being gay in Egypt.

At the rally, I picked up a sign in red, hand-drawn letters, saying “Stop Torture.” The group walked in a circle as a woman with a pink triangle on her black T-shirt led us in chants she shouted through a megaphone. I used both hands to direct my sign toward the men in suits and women in head scarves who peered from the consulate offices on the second and third floors of the consulate.

As I walked, I thought of “Ahmad,” one of many young gay Egyptian men I met while on assignment in Egypt for three weeks last December.

Ahmad worked at his family business on the outskirts of Cairo, hauling and selling coal. He came from a very conservative family. His mother and three sisters cover their heads with the traditional Muslim scarves. His brother studied at Cairo’s premier Muslim university. Ahmad himself prays five times a day.

And yet he was not torn between his religion and his sexuality. He had found a way, as many spiritual people of any faith do, to bridge the gap between the teachings of his religion and his sexual identity. What Ahmad struggled with was not religion, but loneliness and fear.

There was a time, he told me, when he had been able to escape the strict bounds of his family life and go into Cairo to be in the company of men like himself. He recalled visiting the Queen Boat, before it was raided. It was “incredible” he said, as was the sense of community. There were private parties so large “you would have thought all of Cairo was gay.”

These were havens for Ahmad not because, as Egyptian authorities have said, they featured public sex and devil-worshiping. These were havens because gay men could come together and meet and socialize and even talk about building their own movement, making their own place in Egyptian society—something that the government might well have found more threatening than devil-worship.

But in the past two years, all of that has essentially vanished.

Today, Ahmad lives in near-isolation from other gay men, fearing that if he is found out, he will be arrested, his family shamed, and his life ruined. He is lonely enough that he risks the occasional walk along segments of the Nile where gay men still dare to venture in hope of finding one another.

But, he told me, he feels gay life is over in Egypt. He has no hopes of ever finding anyone to love. He dreams of leaving the country, but cannot afford it. And so he is stuck in Egypt and trapped by fear and loneliness.

That is why I went to the New York rally, and that is why it is so important that we tell the Egyptian government that what it is doing is intolerable. It is especially important for Americans to speak out because Cairo receives Washington’s second largest foreign aid package. We need to tell our own representatives that it is unacceptable to continue to support a government that practices such blatant human rights violations against gay men. But there is more we as Americans, and as gay people, can and must do. Many of my fellow gay Arabs come to this country specifically for the freedom to be gay, something they would never have at home. Yet I know that many of my fellow gay Arabs have been made unwelcome by gay Americans since September 11 cast suspicion on all Arabs. That must stop.

I know also that this is a difficult time for every Arab in the United States. We’ve all lived in fear and under suspicion since Sept. 11. But my fellow Arabs must stop trying to tell gay and lesbian members of our community that this is not the time for gay issues. Now more than ever is the time for fair-minded Arabs in America to embrace their gay and lesbian members and to stop forcing us into a lie of invisibility.

And we in America who are gay and who are Arab have a responsibility to speak up and to counter the worst of all lies spread by our enemies both here and abroad: that we as gay Arabs do not exist.

This romantic-kitsch story goes from Paris to Marseille, from Amsterdam to Morocco via Jean Genet’s grave in Larache, and on to Tangiers. The movie tells the story of an Algerian-French heterosexual young man beginning a sociology study of gay islamic homosexualities and discovering gay love with a young French steward.

User Reviews:

I saw this film last night as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Film Festival 2004. It is an extraordinary thesis on islamic homosexuality and a love story. The story concerns a heterosexual french algerian muslim student, Karim, who after seeing a story on television about gay men in Egypt decides to do a video thesis on homosexuality and islam. In the process he discovers his sexuality and falls in love with a gay arab man (Farid) that is one of his interviewees. The movie is about an issue rarely explored in any great detail in cinema and the movie covers and explores many sensitive topics with such skill.It is also a movie full of sensuality and tenderness. When Karim goes to Morocco with Farid we see a part of the country and culture rarely seen. And through Karim, Farid and all his interviewees in ‘Tarik El Hob’, a sensitive and powerful masculinity and culture rarely explored in cinema. For this avid moviegoer this film was groundbreaking. A must see.

ROAD TO LOVE is an obviously very low budget independent French film that introduces the audience to the theme of homosexuality as it is manifested among Islamic/Arab men. Writers Rémi Lange and Antoine Parlebas have created a script so natural, so sensitively real that at moments the film feels like a documentary (each of the young actors in the story bear their own names, the technique of storytelling is basically video interviews), but the impact of the move is quietly profound, without a trace of the saccharine or the gush of Hollywood films dealing with gay subject matter.

French Algerian Karim (Karim Tarek) is a student in Paris and spends his time with his girlfriend Sihem (Sihem Benamoune). He happens to view a television program about the gay life in Egypt in the 20th century, a life that allowed gay relationships and even marriages so along as the men gave up the lifestyle when they eventually married women. His interest in the subject results in a sociology project of interviewing gay Arab men to explore contemporary gay lifestyles. After a few aborted attempts (Karim is not sufficiently comfortable with the subject matter to gain the trust of his interviewees) Karim encounters Farid (Farid Tali), a gay, well-adjusted, quietly seductive handsome Algerian lad who not only agrees to be interviewed, but also finds ways to assist Karim with his project. Chemistry develops and the two depart Paris to visit Marseilles and Morocco and Karim discovers why the subject of choice fascinates him so! The beauty of this film lies in the honesty in which it is written, directed, acted, and edited. Not only are we allowed to explore a subject matter few of us knew (Islamic homosexuality history and social mores), we are also presented with one of the more tender love stories on film – tender because it is not overt but rather because it is so naturally evolved. The actors are excellent and though they feel as though they are first time, off the street recruits, they find the core of the script and make the story beautiful. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.

beautiful, rich, you really laugh and have tears well up and so forth. heartbreakingly sweet acting. saw it a couple of days ago and am still processing it lots to think about. really interesting in it’s relation to genet and how fictional the film is, very I think… I mean the whole story is I think related to that “you look like your sister in this light boy I could go for your sister right now” thing. only reappropriated by romance lol romantic beyond all possibility. I felt so sad after I saw it but then I met a guy at a gas station breaking several months of being fed up with the menfolk. a weird coincidence anyway this is really a magical movie. and I met the director too and he’s really sweet. I want to buy the DVD and read the screenplay.

oh maybe I should mention the actors are all so hot without looking plastic in the least. Je fais le freak out par que ce film est si formidable.

it occurs to me this could be the most deliriously romantic movie I’ve ever seen. meaning like more potent, worse, if you will, than any hollywood movie. and you can’t do anything but just lap it up…

I liked this movie, if for no other reason than its pure exoticism. The story of a Algerian student making a documentary as a University sociology class assignment frames the familiar story of a young male discovering his attraction to men. It’s a slender premise, but adequate for the story to be told.

It was interesting to me that the student, Karim, sees homosexuality as a kind of surrender. There is a lot of anxiety about who is active and who is passive, as if there is no middle ground, or as if gay men sodomize and exclude all other sex acts. I suppose this is because Karim’s interest is piqued when he learns of the pre-1940 same sex marriages in his culture. He seems only to be able to accept his gayness in this context of faux heterosexuality.

I liked the video-cinema-verite style–it added to the immediacy of the story. I liked watching the relationship develop between Karim and his admirer. And I liked the introduction to Algerian culture. As another reviewer mentions, the actors are attractive and real: there are no bronzed pecs and abs here. That alone makes this gay-themed film exotic . . . .

Moroccan Slave

He monopolizes me.

I gave him control of my daily life. We live in monotony. The monotony of love. The monotony
of him and me at his place: a Parisian apartment.

I am with him, I love him, I have no choice. I exist in France only because of him, only because
he cares for me. I am his boy, his love, his lover. He is my master.

I adore his name: Marlon! Like Marlon Brando. I love calling out: “Marlon, Marlon, Marlon,
come to me… Marlon Marlon Marlon take me with you… in you…”

He is American. From New York.

I am Moroccan, from Rabat, the capital. I don’t speak English very well, I make mistakes all the
time. In my country I have learnt French as a foreign language. I came to Paris to finish my
Doctorat in French literature at the Sorbonne. But then I met Marlon. Everything changed. I am
not me.

Now I learn English, alone, everyday. I want to tell Marlon everything about me, my feelings, my
country, my home town, my body, my skin… I want to be capable to understand all his words. He
is from another world- a world far away. I was prepared to live only in the Arab and French
worlds. I have never dreamt of myself in America. America came to me, two weeks before I left
Morocco.

I was at the Oudaya Castle in Rabat. Alone. Sad. I was drinking tea with mint at the famous Café
Maure. I was thinking of my mother M’Barka: she didn’t want me to leave Morocco. She had her
plans about my future life, about my job, my house, and even about my wife and my children. I
love M’Barka. I read somewhere that to be an adult one must be far as possible from one’s
mother. I always thought of myself as a child. Somebody else’s child. First M’Barka’s. And now
Marlon’s.

I am Marlon’s child. I like to repeat this to convince myself that it’s true. The repetition keeps me
feeling secure. Marlon loves me and protects me. He swore that he would never leave me. He
took the first step in my direction. He simply asked me: “At what time will the café Maure
close?” I looked at him: a man, a real man, big, so big, giant, white, bleu eyes, black hair, no
moustache. I looked at him for a long moment. He asked me again: “At what time will this café
close? Do you speak English?” I understood the second part of his question. I had the answer, a
little one. “No!”

“Et le francais? Tu parles le francais?”

Thank God! He could speak French, not fluently but with a charming and virile accent.

“I am American. I have lived in Paris since last year. It’s my first time in Morocco, in Rabat. I
like this town. Can I join you?”

Little sentences told with a big and warm voice. I was completely fascinated with him. He spoke
to me naturally. He expressed what he wanted easily. He liked me, but he didn’t say it with
words. His eyes, his hands, his head approaching mine did.

“ – Yes, you can join me… with pleasure!
- Are you from Rabat?
- Yes, I am… Do you want mint tea like me?
- Yes. Why don’t you speak English?
- Oh! I have learnt it at the Lycee, but I have forgotten everything… everything. Now I am
concentrating my whole energy only on French… because I am going to Paris.
- Good! In Paris you should start learning English again… seriously… you’ll need it, I’m
sure!
- With who?
- With me… only with me!”

He seemed serious. Somehow I was already in love with him.

He liked the Moroccan tea.

“ – You know, I suppose, how to prepare this kind of tea?
- No.
- You should ask your mother how to make it, because I really like it and I want you to
prepare it for me… in Paris.
- I will ask her before my coming to Paris… I promise…
- Good boy! A great future is waiting for you in Paris.
- With you?
- Yes, with me! Only…
- … with you!”

Two years later, here I am in Paris, la Ville des Lumieres. The apartment of Marlon is typically
bourgeois-parisien. It is at Saint-Germain, near a lot of well-known publishing houses, le Seuil,
Actes Sud, Stock… Every time he enters this apartment, he finds me waiting for him, my heart
and my head pounding as the first time I saw him. I run to him, saying always, like Nina
Simone, the same phrase: “ Hi you! I’m here for you… I’m completely yours!’

I do all I have to do before his return at 7:00 pm. I prepare his favorite tagines and arrange
everything in the apartment. Everything clean, in its place. He is happier that way. So we can
eat Moroccan food, drink mint tea and make love for a long time in peace. No clouds on the
horizon. I don’t like him angry: I’m scared when he gives me a bad look sometimes, I don’t
know what to do, what to say, I forget even the few English words I could use to defend myself.
But I won’t. I want him happy, satisfied, in love with me all the time.

Yes, Nina Simone, I am completely his thing. You are the only person with whom I can speak
clearly about my love, without shame, without regrets. I am his slave in the name of love. Your
songs, Nina, talk about this, you understand me, that’s why I love you. One day, when I can
read English easily, I will buy your autobiography, I PUT A SPELL ON YOU. I don’t want to
read it n French. I prefer to meet your life with your own words, own rhythm, inspiration and
voice. Marlon offered me your records soon after I moved in. He said, I still remember his
words exactly: “This Grande Dame is for you, one day you’ll understand why…” He was right.
He gave me his love and a confident, you, in the same time. Very generous, wasn’t it? “Tell me
more, and more and then some” was the first song of yours we heard together, in the bedroom,
our bodies joined, inseparable, after lovemaking.

“ – Tell me… you… your life in America!
- Me?
- Yes, you, like Nina Simone singing her days, her story, her History.
- It will take much more time than you think…
- I have all my life just to hear you, to discover your American Life.”

It’s always like this: romantic! I want it to stay romantic. No war between us, no disagreements,
just love. Just him and me in Paris.

He told me about his life. It was brief. I didn’t understand all his words.

Born in Boston. A Political Science Major from NYU. Job in The United Nations, in NYC too.
No brothers, no sisters. Mother and father dead. Alone in the world, as he says when he is sad.
One big love affair with… a woman: he was 26 years old, they have lived together for 10 years.
Now he is 40 and I am his first gay love. He has always liked sport, jazz and cinema. He didn’t
have a lot of friends in New York (same situation in Paris!). He could live anywhere, no
problem for him, even, one day, in Morocco. He is not gay. He is in love with a boy. There is a
difference, of course.

That’s all I know about Marlon. He is very mysterious. Maybe he is a spy, a dangerous double
agent. He laughed at me when I told him about these bad ideas. He laughed from the bottom of
his heart. He is irresistible… Big… So present in my eyes… He filled a void inside me. I met
him in Rabat. In my mind we are still there drinking our first Moroccan tea, discovering each
other and looking for a cheap hotel in the old city, the Medina, where we could make love
intensely, a place where to offer myself to him, my body, my soul and to go completely naked
inside him.

Yesterday he surprised me again.

“I want you to teach me Arabic… I want to hear your voice in Arabic…”

A great proof of his love! I accepted, I will be his professor.

We start today September 11. The first lesson.

ABDELLAH TAIA

Hey friends,

I teach International Politics at a university in Istanbul. Just to make it clear: the Turkish government is the most secular one in the middle east. It is true that the recent one, namely AKP party is somehow conservative in terms of its focus on keeping Turkish traditions alive and keeping good reliations with the rest of Islamic World.

However naming them as a fundemantalist or an Islamist party would be too unfair when you look at their strong efforts to unify Turkey with EU, liberal management of internal affairs – alcohol is totally free, night clubs are full of young people, there is no intervention to gay life, women and men are free to walk together, kiss each other on the streets etc.

Modern life in big cities like Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir is not less liberal than London or Paris: women wear short skirts, go swimming with bikinis etc. Some women wear scarves but this shows the other way of being tolerant and liberal, am I wrong?

In the rural areas though, people are more traditional and you can see more women covering their heads but that is perfectly understandable: When you go to the country sides in all Europe, people become more traditional too.

The gay community in Istanbul will surprise you there. Being a gay is completely legal in Turkey. There are 4 gay organizations working actively on gay rights. There are many local gay social web sites too.

Because of the traditions, gays do not want to show their gay sides openly in the public but Turkish men like very much having sex with gays. Having sex with same sex is not perceived by them as being gay if it is kept intimate. One of my Turkish friend had told me that having same sex relation has been very wide spread for hundreds of years in this society.

You can meet so many very attractive men there but they wouldn’t do it for money. They simply liked being with men. You can meet many gay people over there too, they can easily flirt with so many nice men whenever they want. For example go to a 4 stores gay club, packed with hundreds of gays and good looking men, everything is so free: people kissing, licking and believe me even having sex on the sofas. Those horny men try to romance with you. In Istanbul, there are at least 20 gay night clubs where you can find anything for your taste and all of them are full of young horny men aging between 18-28.

I am not sure whether Istanbul is the gay capital in 2010 but there are many very nice stuff to discover if you go there with no prejudice of course.

Take care…

Original thread here

Hey friends,

I teach International Politics at a university in Britain. Just to make it clear: the Turkish government is the most secular one in the middle east. It is true that the recent one, namely AKP party is somehow conservative in terms of its focus on keeping Turkish traditions alive and keeping good reliations with the rest of Islamic World.

However naming them as a fundemantalist or an Islamist party would be too unfair when you look at their strong efforts to unify Turkey with EU, liberal management of internal affairs – alcohol is totally free, night clubs are full of young people, there is no intervention to gay life, women and men are free to walk together, kiss each other on the streets etc.

I have been to Turkey several times and modern life in big cities like Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir is not less liberal than London or Paris: women wear short skirts, go swimming with bikinis etc. Some women wear scarves but this shows the other way of being tolerant and liberal, am I wrong?

In the rural areas though, people are more traditional and you can see more women covering their heads but that is perfectly understandable: When you go to the country sides in Britain, people become more traditional too.

I was suprised by the gay community there. Being a gay is completely legal in Turkey. There are 4 gay organizations working actively on gay rights. There are many local gay social web sites too.

Because of the traditions, gays do not want to show their gay sides openly in the public but Turkish men like very much having sex with gays. Having sex with same sex is not perceived by them as being gay if it is kept intimate. One of my Turkish friend had told me that having same sex relation has been very wide spread for hundreds of years in this society.

My experience over there supports this too: I met so many very attractive men there (believe me if they came to Blackpool, they could earn several hundred pounds every night) but they wouldn’t do it for money. They simply
liked being with men. I met some gay people over there too and I am jealous of them because they can easily flirt with so many nice men whenever they want. I went to a 4 stores gay club for instance, packed with hundreds of gays and good looking men, everything was so free: people kissing, licking and believe me even having sex on the sofas. Those horny men were trying to romance with me and at the end of the night I found myself sleeping with four of them in one gay friend’s apartment. In Istanbul, there are at least 20 gay night clubs where you can find anything for your taste and all of them are full of young horny men aging between 18-28.

There are many very nice stuff to discover if you go there with no prejudice of course.

Take care…

http://gayspeak.com/forum/chit-chat/4678-when-i-istanbul.html

A Muslim football team who initially refused to play against a gay team and then appeared to back down have been kicked out of their league.

Bebel, a team from the Parisian suburb of Creteil, were excluded from the Leisure Football Commission for making discriminatory comments and refusing a match, the commission’s website said today.

After calling off a match the night before it was due to be played, the Muslim side was accused of homophobia by gay team Paris Foot Gay (PFG). Bebel then said there had been a misunderstanding.

Bebel director Zahir Belgharbi told AFP at the weekend: “We had rejected playing this match not on the grounds of homophobia, as we have been accused of doing, but simply because the name of the club did not seem to us to reflect our vision of sport.”

The club has now apparently refused to play against the gay team again.

According to PFG president Pascal Brethes, the original email from Bebel said the match was “against their principles”.

Brethes said the email added: “Sorry, but because of the name of your team and in keeping with the principles of the team, which is a team of practising Muslims, we cannot play against you.

“Our convictions are stronger than a game of football. Sorry to have informed you so late.”

PFG said the communication was homophobic and that they were considering pressing charges.

Tahar Rahim, its talented star, describes how he turned a murderous gangster into a positive role model for French Arabs

It’s that one unforgettable and deeply disquieting moment, early in the movie, where the award-winning prison drama A Prophet suddenly shows its teeth. Here, an impressionable Arab convict called Malik, played by the 28-year-old French actor Tahar Rahim, is forced to commit murder. Thrust into the cell of a gay Arab informant called Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) and armed only with a razorblade nestled treacherously along his gumline, Malik must cut the throat of the only man to have shown him a hint of kindness. If he doesn’t, he will face certain death at the hands of the Corsican mobsters who run the prison from the inside.

The ensuing to and fro between Malik and Reyeb, at first conversational and then terrifyingly physical, is a squirm-inducing opening climax that lets you know that A Prophet is going to be more than a powerful arthouse prison movie — it is, in fact, going to be one of the greatest movies of the year.

“That scene was harder for me to do than any of the others,” Rahim says. A relative newcomer to the world of acting, he can nonetheless boast a Best Actor trophy from the recent European Film Awards and was announced as a Rising Star nominee for this year’s Baftas. Plus he is currently bathing in A Prophet’s inevitable pre-Oscar glow (it is hotly tipped to return from the ceremony in March with at least one gold statuette).

In person, he has the fine-boned androgynous beauty of a style mag cover boy. When not apologising profusely for the blue haze of French cigarette smoke that hangs in the air of his London hotel room, he will jitter busily from leg to leg, from cushion to cushion, tackling all answers with a fevered intensity.

Of seeing the film for the first time, for instance, he coos: “I saw it two weeks before Cannes in an editing suite. I was shaking after it, it was so good.” Concerning his newfound ‘It’ boy status, he says: “It’s crazy that I’m recognised on the street. But it also means that now I can read scripts and people listen to me.”

For now, though, he remembers the razor scene. It was filmed by the director Jacques Audiard (Read My Lips) during the first two weeks of the movie’s 79-day shoot in late summer 2008, on the outskirts of Paris and in a purpose-built prison set. “All the tension in that scene is in Malik’s head,” Rahim continues. “He definitely doesn’t want to kill, but if he doesn’t kill he dies. So before we do the scene I’m thinking and thinking. I’m smoking. I’m listening to music. I’m walking. Walking and smoking and thinking. And then, boom! I’m in the moment!”

The moment, for Malik, takes him slowly through the prison ranks in a genuinely epic Godfather-style saga of slow-burning criminal endeavour. Under the protection of the Corsican mob boss Cesar (Niels Arestrup), Malik absorbs the rules of life on the inside while eventually, through occasional day releases, establishing his own Arab-run fraternity of drug-dealers and gangsters on the outside. And yet all the while Malik remains an intensely sympathetic character. He has little dialogue, expressing everything through busy eyes that are either quietly observing, deflecting pain or controlling rage — and sometimes all three at once. “It’s hard when you don’t have the words to cling to,” Rahim admits. “But it’s also exciting. When you get it right without words, it feels so good inside.”

His performance, which anchors the entire film, has been relentlessly validated by awestruck festival juries (A Prophet won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year) and industry heavyweights alike. Last month at the European Film Awards, held in Bochum in Germany, Rahim was approached over the course of the evening by Ken Loach, Danny Boyle and Wim Wenders and congratulated for his pivotal part in the movie’s success. “Can you imagine that?” Rahim says, opening out his hands, palms forward, as if to say, “Why me?”

And what did Rahim say in return? “I said, ‘Thank you,’” he says, shrugging. Not “Give us a job”? “Oh, no!” he says, aghast. “You never say that.”

His performance is noteworthy for other, more subtle, reasons. As a French Arab of Algerian descent he has created in Malik a truly modern movie hero that inverts completely the stereotypical image of screen Arabs. Audiard claims that this inversion was deliberate. “In French cinema you see Arabs in one of two contexts,” the director says. “Either naturalistically, in a social realist context, or in a genre fiction playing a terrorist. We didn’t want that. We wanted our Arabs to be heroes.”

Rahim, who grew up in the small north eastern town of Belfort, admits that the positive portrayal of Malik is encouraging. “I think the French-Arab communities have been touched by the fact that you can now see a lead character, a hero, from this minority in the cinema.”

But he is keener still to move the entire discussion onwards, to a post-racial debate. “This movie is not talking about changing the way we see the Arabs,” he says, shifting in his seat, visibly agitated. “It’s about taking a man who is homeless, who has no origin, and showing you that he is just a person first, before being Arab, or Corsican, or whatever. This man just wants to eat, sleep and drink. He is writing his own life. So the movie doesn’t have to change the way we see Arabs because here, in this film, it’s already happened. It’s already changed.”

His own life, he says, with a perplexed shake of the head, has little in common with that of Malik. His childhood was marked, not by racial tension, but by boredom. As the youngest son in a selfdescribed “working-class family” (his father worked in a factory), he says that he found refuge from the boredom of Belfort in cinema. “I was watching three or four movies a week, every week,” he says. “And after a while I was unselfconscious enough and pretentious enough to think that, yes, I could be up there on the screen too. That could be me.”

He studied cinema at Montpellier University and moved to Paris, where he worked in a nightclub on weekends and in a factory during the week (“I was just arms and a body on a construction line, putting information booklets together”). These were tough times, he says, and the only acting work he secured was a two-line part as a luckless policeman in the gory Béatrice Dalle horror film Inside.

At that time, however, he noticed a short précis of Audiard’s future project, A Prophet, in a movie magazine. “I read it and joked to my friend: ‘Hey, that could me! I could do that role.’”

The very next part he snagged was that of an ambitious young Arab living in the troubled banlieues of Paris in the French TV mini series La Commune, which was written by Abdel Raouf Dafri, one of the original screenwriters of A Prophet.

“Everything moved very fast after that,” Rahim says. He met Audiard through Dafri, but had to fight through three months and eight auditions before the director finally gave him the part. He spent four months of pre-production deep in research, studying prison documentaries and meeting ex-convicts before he realised that he was wasting his own time. “I was trying to do heavy research, because I wanted to be all Method about it, but I eventually realised that all I was doing was building a mishmash of different parts that already existed,” he explains. “That was wrong, because Malik is new to the prison system, so that’s what I had to be. In the end I didn’t even visit the set, or look at pictures of it, until the first day of shooting.”

He says that life since A Prophet has changed completely. In his next movie, The Eagle of the Ninth, a Roman-era blockbuster directed by Kevin Macdonald (State of Play), he will play a warrior prince, a role for which he didn’t even audition. “Kevin saw the trailer for A Prophet, called me the next day and said: ‘Right, let’s work together,’” Rahim says, half-laughing with incredulity. He adds, though, “He finally saw the full film a few days ago, and texted me his congratulations.”

His private life, too, is getting a revamp, and he plans to spend much of early 2010 moving, with his girlfriend (“She’s not an actress, she’s my girlfriend”), from Paris’s pretty but tourist plagued 18th arrondissement to the more cosmopolitan 19th or 20th, “where I can get to live in a very quiet place, away from it all”.

Of the Oscars, he says that he’d like to go to the awards ceremony, if only for the experience — A Prophet is France’s official entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category, but many pundits are predicting that the movie, like La Vie En Rose before it, will break out also into the “mainstream” categories (Best Actor, Best Director etc). “Awards are nice. They make you happy because it means that people loved your movie,” Rahim says. “But we won’t know anything until the beginning of February, when the nominations are announced.”

Until then, he says that he wants people to refocus attention away from him and his career and back on to the film itself, to acknowledge how extraordinary it is in its entirety. “What we’re talking about is a great director, a great script, great characters and a great production team. Everybody involved in this film was the best at what they did. When you live in a Utopia for four months, people feel the results. And the results here are perfection.”