This graffiti can be found in Alexandria, Egypt, and was drawn in light of the recent crackdown against queer youths by the cruelly authoritarian military regime. Since November 2012, 80 LGBT people have been arrested by police officials. In this month alone, a dozen have been arrested in Cairo. The detainees have been subjected to brutal physical and verbal abuse, anal probe tests and full identity exposure by Egyptian media. Heavy sentences are being issued as well.
Here’s an extract from a poem written by Abu Nawas, the Muslim world’s first gay poet. The Persian wunderkind was constantly suffocated by the Beduin lifestyle for it completely rejected social progressivism, an ideal he was a notable disciple of, and frowned upon the pleasures of the mind and flesh, into which he would immerse himself on a constant basis. The passage still echoes with the daily, sorrowful struggles of queer arabs.
Critic, relent!
Your hope for repentance
Will meet with disapppointment.
For this is the life,
Not desert tents,
Not camel’s milk!
You, mad to expect repentance,
Tear your robe all you want;
I will never repent!
– Diwan, 11/12
Naqyyd 