The Beauty of Being Gay in the Middle East

(Saleem Haddad)

Saleem Haddad’s Guapa, out March 8, tells a gay love story set in the Middle East, a far cry from the privileges of western narratives. Over the course of a single day, protagonist Rasa works as an interpreter for an American journalist, bails out a friend who was arrested at an underground drag bar, and attempts to win over his soon-to-be-married lover—all under the heel of governmental tyranny.

By turns politically nuanced and romantically tender, Guapa reflects the complexities of being gay and Arab in the 21st century. Despite the region’s religious piety, Haddad, who was born in Kuwait and currently resides in London, describes the gay scene there “as incredibly diverse—from large clubs with pounding music and drugs, to intimate private parties, discreet coffee shops, and cruising areas in cinemas, bathhouses, and even in ancient Roman ruins,” all of which operate by word of mouth, and, more recently, via Grindr. “Very few spaces, if any, openly advertise themselves as gay,” he clarifies. The drag bar that Rasa frequents is actually modeled after a real place, “but I prefer to keep that a secret.”

Equally mysterious is the book’s setting in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. “I wanted the story to take on a metaphorical nature,” says Haddad, an advisor for state-society relations in the Middle East. It’s also a way of mimicking the disorientation of Rasa’s life while reflecting the rich diversity of queer Arab experiences. “A reader may one minute feel they were walking down a street in Cairo, the next instant feel they were drinking in a bar in Beirut.”