9.22.2005
Go Boys
I had a flash back at work today to when I was in Washington D.C 4 years ago visiting an uncle who worked at the Saudi Embassy as a security supervisor. One Friday night, he decided that I needed a little change of scenery and took me to what I would describe as an underground Saudi nightclub. Disguised as an apartment in a two story building, it was a hush-hush hang out to a selected few. Some were as young as college freshmen, but the majority were older businessmen in their 40’s and 50’s. It was a place for that weird and almost rebelliously liberated spectrum to overindulge in booze, tobacco, and of course Hashish.
Viva La Reforme!
I recalled what at the time seemed to me as nothing more than a group of uprooted Saudis hanging loose. The more I remembered about the experience, the more I grasped how naïve I was at the time.
One thing you should know about the Saudis and their culture is that they do not take religion or family values to as an extreme degree of seriousness as they do to sustaining a virtuous reputation and keeping the family name, not the family, wholesome. It is – by far– the only virtue that gets passed from Saudi generation to generation seamlessly. Pride in social status is embedded so far deep in the psyche of the people, it would take nothing less than a Napoleon style colonization to reduce its significance.
But how? And why this place?
To describe it loosely, the space was transformed into a Saudi style royal tent with intricately embroidered fabric sealing, huge Persian carpets and circles of cushions and arm rests guaranteed to hold your drug hazed and inebriated frame contently. The drums and the Oud sang loud and clear; the Indian incense combined with the aroma of fragrant tobacco flowing from the numberless hookahs fogged up the air with the subtle smell of every Wahabbi sin imaginable. A marriage of seductive darkness and mingling that seem to have lit an internal match brighter than the red Christmas lights hanging about with dreadful irony. Being in there was the closest I have ever gotten to being in an Ottoman opium den.
And now I sit here and look back as the memories I evoke are increasingly curious.
As unruly as they were, they seemed to have upheld one thing, or did they? And that is the complete and utter exclusion of feminine energy, in America, giving the place a true Saudi face. And now I sit here and look back as the memories I evoke make me rephrase . . . there were no women.
Amongst the dancing silhouettes, one group of three handsome young men had taken upon themselves the act of compensation, they wrapped their shimaghs (headscarf) very tightly around their wastes as they danced,…
A n d d i d t h e y e v e r d a n c e .
They waved their shoulders and swayed their midriffs like bathing mermaids; their feet went around with steps evocative of youthful stallions doing their flirtatious dace. They had grace and femininity that would rival the best belly dancers in Egypt. And they were dancing peacefully, leaning back and forth absolutely uncondemned by everyone in the room. As I sat and watched them in awe with the urge of getting up and joining on their celebration of Arab drag queen-ism, I remembered my uncle and suppressed the urge. But I began to recall the stories I read in my father’s secret “adult” library. Stories of the Dancing Kocek, a common object of masculine affections in the Ottoman Empire among other men. How at one point in time, in the Arab world, loving a man was just as tolerable and agreeable as loving a woman. And how Wahabiasm destroyed all of that.
It made me gain a distinct sense of hope in learning that not only social pride is rooted in the Arab culture, but many other less obvious values, including our history of being the love-all-that-is-beautiful party people. One day, the west is going to open its eyes to what is floating just beneath the surface of the protests of the arab islamic populas: a crowd full of gay belly dancing stallions.
Viva La Reforme!
I recalled what at the time seemed to me as nothing more than a group of uprooted Saudis hanging loose. The more I remembered about the experience, the more I grasped how naïve I was at the time.
One thing you should know about the Saudis and their culture is that they do not take religion or family values to as an extreme degree of seriousness as they do to sustaining a virtuous reputation and keeping the family name, not the family, wholesome. It is – by far– the only virtue that gets passed from Saudi generation to generation seamlessly. Pride in social status is embedded so far deep in the psyche of the people, it would take nothing less than a Napoleon style colonization to reduce its significance.
But how? And why this place?
To describe it loosely, the space was transformed into a Saudi style royal tent with intricately embroidered fabric sealing, huge Persian carpets and circles of cushions and arm rests guaranteed to hold your drug hazed and inebriated frame contently. The drums and the Oud sang loud and clear; the Indian incense combined with the aroma of fragrant tobacco flowing from the numberless hookahs fogged up the air with the subtle smell of every Wahabbi sin imaginable. A marriage of seductive darkness and mingling that seem to have lit an internal match brighter than the red Christmas lights hanging about with dreadful irony. Being in there was the closest I have ever gotten to being in an Ottoman opium den.
And now I sit here and look back as the memories I evoke are increasingly curious.
As unruly as they were, they seemed to have upheld one thing, or did they? And that is the complete and utter exclusion of feminine energy, in America, giving the place a true Saudi face. And now I sit here and look back as the memories I evoke make me rephrase . . . there were no women.
Amongst the dancing silhouettes, one group of three handsome young men had taken upon themselves the act of compensation, they wrapped their shimaghs (headscarf) very tightly around their wastes as they danced,…
A n d d i d t h e y e v e r d a n c e .
They waved their shoulders and swayed their midriffs like bathing mermaids; their feet went around with steps evocative of youthful stallions doing their flirtatious dace. They had grace and femininity that would rival the best belly dancers in Egypt. And they were dancing peacefully, leaning back and forth absolutely uncondemned by everyone in the room. As I sat and watched them in awe with the urge of getting up and joining on their celebration of Arab drag queen-ism, I remembered my uncle and suppressed the urge. But I began to recall the stories I read in my father’s secret “adult” library. Stories of the Dancing Kocek, a common object of masculine affections in the Ottoman Empire among other men. How at one point in time, in the Arab world, loving a man was just as tolerable and agreeable as loving a woman. And how Wahabiasm destroyed all of that.
It made me gain a distinct sense of hope in learning that not only social pride is rooted in the Arab culture, but many other less obvious values, including our history of being the love-all-that-is-beautiful party people. One day, the west is going to open its eyes to what is floating just beneath the surface of the protests of the arab islamic populas: a crowd full of gay belly dancing stallions.
Goodbye, my
friend.
8:09 PM
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8:09 PM
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