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Unlocking the Arab Celluloid Closet

Homosexuality in
Egyptian Film
Garay Menicucci
Images of same-sex love and sexual dissidence from the
heterosexual norm have long been portrayed in literature,
theater and cinema in the Arab world. While the explicit
depiction of homosexual acts in film has been the subject
of strict censorship, cinematic references to gays and
lesbians abound, if often in heavily coded forms.

The most ubiquitous coding for gay and lesbian cinematic imaging has been cross-dressing. While the
tradition of transvestite performers in Arabia can be traced back to pre-Islamic times,1 in Egypt
transvestites gained added prominence in the 19th century when Muhammad 'Ali banned female
dancers who were then replaced by khawalat-male dancers who dressed in women's clothing and
performed at popular celebrations and other public venues.

Costume and disguise go to the very essence of theater and film as media. Transvestism-a cultural
practice which codes gender dissidence often associated with homosexuality-in itself is often an
expression of eroticism and sexuality.2 Virtually all Egyptian films employing cross-dressing as a plot
device do so within a comic context in order to introduce sexual, gender or social issues that would be
deeply shocking if dealt with in a serious manner.

Women as Men

One of the earliest examples of an entire plot constructed around cross-dressing is Bint al-basha al-
mudir (The Pasha Director's Daughter, 1938) directed by Ahmad Galal who also starred in the film
along with his wife Mary Queeny and his wife's niece Asya. Asya is forced to disguise herself as her
brother Hikmat and must substitute for him in a job as a tutor on a wealthy estate in the Egyptian
countryside. Most of the plot revolves around untangling misidentities so that all the main characters
will end in appropriate heterosexual marriages. There are, however, long erotic diversions before the
prescribed happy ending. Asya, as Hikmat, becomes a symbol of worldliness and sexual dissidence for
members of a rich Pasha's household who lack experience outside the confines of provincial society.
One of the estate owner's daughters, Badriya, becomes sexually attracted to Hikmat. At one point,
Badriya tries to seduce Hikmat by twirling a rose between her teeth and then dropping it to the ground
so that Hikmat will be forced to stoop before her to recover it. Asya as Hikmat then tries to kiss
Badriya. Interrupted by Badriya's older brother Tawfiq, the symbolic deflowering is stopped. A
consummated lesbian act is prevented as well as any form of uncontrolled sexuality outside of
marriage. Despite the conventional outcome, this scene is one of Arab cinema's most erotic portrayals
of two women engaged in flirtation and seduction.

Transvestism in the plot of The Pasha Director's Daughter was consistent with an elite heterosexual
strategy to press for the right of romantic marriage based on erotic attraction instead of the arranged
marriages still common in the upper classes in the 1930s. In The Pasha Director's Daughter
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 transvestism is coded lesbian eroticism. Asya, cross-dressed as Hikmat, dresses to pass and is not an
obvious parody. The kissing scene between Hikmat and Badriya is not performed in a comic style, but
in one of complete seriousness which heightens the erotic content. Despite scenes of same-sex
eroticism coded by cross-dressing, it was to be understood by audiences that there were clear limits to
erotic expression. Premarital sex was to be avoided; homosexuality was abhorrent.

During the Nasser period in the 1960s, female transvestism often served a didactic function.
Mobilization of social resources was seen as imperative for economic growth. This meant new work
roles for women. Gender segregation and residual traditional attitudes towards women's activities
outside the family domicile were seen as impediments to economic development. The regime
promoted controlled entry of women into the public sector work force. Women dressed as men in film
scenarios often provided ideological justification.

In Lil-Rigal Faqat (For Men Only, 1964) director Mahmud Zul-Fiqar tackles the problem of the gender
segregated workplace in a comedy starring Nadia Lutfi and Su'ad Husni. At a state-owned oil company
in Cairo, two women geologists are prevented from going on site to the Sinai in order to apply their
skills in the "for men only" oil exploration project. None of the objections raised are convincing to the
two geologists. Su'ad Husni as Salwa delivers an impassioned speech avowing that women can
perform any kind of labor as well as men and often much better. When two male applicants for the
Sinai position arrive at company headquarters, Salwa and Hind (Nadia Lutfi) take their credentials and
head for the Sinai. Upon arrival, Salwa and Hind are immediately attracted to two drilling technicians,
Fawzi and his friend Ahmad. They must then control their sexual attraction and continue to act as men.

Lil-Rigal Faqat has one of the few portrayals of gay social life to be found in Arab cinema. When the
two women in male drag first arrive at the Sinai work camp, they are taken to the barracks' mess where
all the men gather to dance cheek to cheek to Western romantic music. The setting has all the
appearances of a gay nightclub. The inevitable problem arises of who is going to lead (a little disguised
reference to gay sex roles). Fawzi chooses Salwa as his dance partner. In negotiating who will lead,
Salwa in drag protests, "I'm a man." Fawzi easily consents to being the "woman" and taking the
passive role.

There are a series of unmaskings of the two women. The first occurs when a bedouin woman enters the
barracks and, while making insistent sexual overtures to Salwa, is caught by a male relative with rifle
in hand. Just as he is about to shoot, Salwa and Hind tear off their wigs and reveal their true gender.
Later, both Fawzi and Ahmad find women's clothing in the closets of Hind and Salwa as well as the
two women's identification cards. The gender confusion is set right; everyone is paired in the
appropriate heterosexual couple; and finally with everyone standing in awe in front of an oil rig, it
gushes forth oil in commercial quantities in none too subtle symbolism.

While transvestism as an economic strategy for women continued to be a theme in Egyptian cinema
into the Sadat-era infitah, the link between cross-dressing and gender equality in the workplace began
to recede. The popular quarter and the workers' barracks were forsaken for the drawing room of the
new middle class created by the infitah.

Niyazi Mustafa, one of Egypt's most prolific directors, began directing in the 1930s. One of his most
successful drag films was Bint ismaha Mahmud (A Daughter Named Mahmud) which came out in
1975. The main setting is the furniture business of a man whose only concern is to marry off his
daughter once she has finished high school. His daughter represents the new generation of infitah
women. She shuns the traditionalism of her father and never goes out without wearing a miniskirt and
a revealing top. In love with a young medical student, she herself has an exam score high enough to
enter the business faculty of the university. When she rejects her father's choice for a marriage partner,
her medical student boyfriend comes up with the idea of dressing her as a man and informing the
gullible father that his daughter has had a sex change operation. The sex change allows the daughter to
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 enter the university and prevents the arranged marriage. The father is convinced that he now has a son,
Mahmud. As Mahmud, the daughter has easy access to education and also takes over the family
business which begins to profit as never before.

The daughter's drag disguise is unraveled when it is suspected that "Mahmud" does not have an
"ordinary male's" sexual drive. On three occasions Mahmud is caught kissing her boyfriend, causing
general alarm that the sex change not only created a son out of a daughter, but also a homosexual out
of a heterosexual. The transvestite disguise is revealed finally during a double marriage ceremony
concocted by the father for himself and his "son." There is general relief that Mahmud is once again
his father's daughter and not a male homosexual. Her normative heterosexual behavior is rewarded by
an on-the-spot marriage to the medical student.

Men as Women

Male drag queens have become stock characters in Arab cinema. In Al-Anissa Hanafi (Miss Hanafi,
1953) Isma'il Yasin institutionalized the role of drag queen. In this nationalist parable, a traditional
baladi Hanafi is forced into an arranged marriage with his stepsister. At the point of consummating the
marriage, Hanafi is stricken with abdominal pains and is rushed to the hospital for an emergency
operation that accidentally transforms him into a woman. Hanafi then devises various strategies to wed
his beloved-a butcher's assistant in a popular quarter of Cairo. He succeeds in the end and even gives
birth to quadruplets before the official wedding ceremony. Yasin's drag is not meant to be erotic; it
mainly consists of modified traditional women's dress with very little homosexual double meaning
associated with the transvestite disguise. Cross-dressing here serves as a comic vehicle for introducing
class issues and the cultural transition from traditionalism to a particular kind of nationalist modernity.

In its elaboration of a gay subtext, the 1960 film Sukkar Hanim (Miss Sugar) marked a sharp departure
from Al-Anissa Hanafi. Based on the Brandon Thomas play Charley's Aunt and its 1920 adaptation to
the Egyptian silent screen as An American Aunt.3 Sukkar Hanim appeared one year after the popular
American transvestite comedy Some Like It Hot, starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn
Monroe.

The plot involves two cousins, Nabil and Farid, who have moved into an apartment next door to two
other cousins, Layla and Salwa, with whom they immediately fall in love. Layla and Salwa are
watched by Layla's father who tries to enforce strict gender segregation. An actor friend of the two
men, Sukkar (note that "Sukkar" meaning "sugar" is also Marilyn Monroe's name in Some Like It Hot),
is practicing for a stage role as a woman and must dress in women's clothing. He is accidentally caught
in drag by Layla and Salwa. Posing as a long lost aunt, Sukkar Hanim, who has lived in the Americas
for the past 15 years, offers the pretext for the couples to associate without patriarchal supervision. The
middle-aged drag Sukkar Hanim is exempt from the sexual behavioral norms expected of the two
younger women. As would be expected, the real Sukkar Hanim finally appears on the scene to expose
the true identity of the drag queen, untangle the confused sexual orientations and give legitimate
sanction to the marriages of the two couples.

While Sukkar Hanim makes the statement that to be modern is to replace traditional arranged
marriages with unions based on romantic love and freedom of choice, the film replaces the de-
eroticized image of Al-Anissa Hanafi with a provocative and overtly sexual drag. The drag character
Sukkar Hanim not only facilitates happy heterosexual unions, she also symbolizes uncontrolled sexual
passion and alternative sexualities.

Beginning with Sukkar Hanim, drag comedies codify transvestism persistently, and sometimes
explicitly, as tied to homosexuality. 'Abd Al-Mun'im Ibrahim's camp drag performance, with his
feminized voice intonation and swishy mannerisms, is imitating and parodying stereotypical notions of
feminine behavior as well as gay male behavior. It is no accident that Sukkar in drag becomes "tante,"
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 the French word for "auntie" and the same word that Arab gays often use among themselves as a form
of humorous mutual recognition.4 The film has a gay ending reminiscent of Some Like It Hot. In the
last scene of the American film, when Lemmon pulls off his wig and declares he is a man, his intended
fianc‚e remarks, "Nobody's perfect!" In Sukkar Hanim, when Layla's father is about to be wedded to
Sukkar in drag and the real gender of the bride is disclosed, Layla's father is undeterred by the
revelation that his intended marriage partner is a man and cries out, "I want to marry." In Sukkar
Hanim modernity is achieved when sexuality transgresses the boundaries of marriage. The confusion
of gender roles unleashes repressed sexuality.

After directing two female drag films, in 1980 Niyazi Mustafa turned to male drag in Adhkiya' . . .
lakin aghbiya' (Clever . . . but Stupid). The film is short on plot and seems to have been an excuse for
parading the popular comic star 'Adil Imam around in drag. The film has all the earmarks of an infitah
social comedy. 'Adil Imam and a friend are poor students who cannot afford housing in Alexandria and
do drag in order to be accepted into an all-women's boarding house operated by an obsessive peeping
Tom. Economic necessity is the pretext for cross-dressing. Although the references to homosexuality
are numerous, 'Adil Imam is a reluctant drag queen. He looks like a man wearing women's clothing
and refuses to alter his voice intonation. The lack of Imam's finesse accentuates the outer limits of
erotic fantasy. 'Adil Imam had another run-in with confused sexual orientation in Al-Irhab wa-Al-
Kabab (Terrorism and Kebab, 1992) when he follows a man who he assumes to be a government
bureaucrat into the men's bathroom in the Cairo Arab League Building and instead finds a swishy
queen waiting for quick sex in a bathroom stall.

Khawalat
Khawalat (male transvestite dancers of the 19th century and pre-1952 days) in history had very public
roles as dancers and performers at popular festivals and celebrations. In Arab film, however, they have
become standard characters to imply the existence of a homosexual subculture or transgressive
sexuality in general. Functioning as the servants of brothel prostitutes and their mentors in the art of
erotic belly dancing, they are cinematic code for the depiction of homosexuals as derogatory,
effeminate men. They also often possess uncanny wit, a cynical sense of pragmatic realism and
personal integrity lacking in the conventional heterosexual characters who surround them.

One of the central characters in Naguib Mahfouz's 1947 novel Zuqaq al-Midaqq (Midaq Alley) is
Kirsha, whose sexual obsession with young men continually provides a source of scandal and secret
delight for the inhabitants of the quarter. In Hassan Al-Imam's 1963 cinematic adaptation of the novel,
Kirsha is practically written out of the script while a brothel khawal is kept in. The film plot revolves
around Hamida (played by Shadia), a beautiful naive opportunist. Hamida realizes that she has been
lured into a life of prostitution when she is given a tour of a brothel. In one room, there is a man in
women's clothing and make-up instructing other prostitutes in belly dancing. The khawal symbolizes
the complete moral degradation into which Hamida has fallen. In the film version of the novel, the
khawal becomes the worst imaginable form of social aberration-a man behaving like a woman.

In the novel, Kirsha is self-willed and cares little about the neighborhood's condemnation of his sexual
antics with young men. When the guardian of local morals tries to convince Kirsha to stop a
homosexual liaison with a shopkeeper's assistant, Kirsha retorts, "People have been like that ever since
God created the earth and all that's on it."5 By erasing the homosexual Kirsha and leaving in the
khawal, the film omits a characterization that would have made a neutral statement about the social
acceptability of homosexuality. Instead, homosexuality is associated with perversion.

Khawalat fared much better in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 1983 film Darb al-hawa (Alley of Desire)
starring Yusra and Ahmad Zaki, a brothel khawal is given a fully developed character. The plot
involves the ill-fated love of an idealistic professor for a young prostitute in the pre-Nasser period. The
khawal acts both as a historical reference point for brothel culture in the 1930s and 1940s and as a kind
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 of Greek chorus, observing and commenting on the drama that unfolds around him. Despite his
subservient position, the khawal Siksika-a play on the word "saksuka" which means "goatee" even
though Siksika lacks any facial hair and wears women's eye make-up-maintains his personal dignity in
every situation while other characters succumb to avarice and moral weakness. He playfully and
overtly flirts with the brothel's male clients. He is both wise and humorous at the same time. Siksika
has left such a strong impression on the popular imagination that in Cairo street language "Siksika" is
the term used to refer to an effeminate gay person.

Homosexuals as Themselves
Homosexual characters-not in drag-appear in many Arab films in an implicit rather than explicit
manner. There are no kissing or sex scenes to be found. Directors have faced problems in realistically
depicting homosexuals, even when they are required by adaptations from literature. Neither the word
nor outright acts can appear on the screen because they violate censorship codes that ban the word
"homosexual" or obvious depictions of homosexual sexual behavior.

One of the most fully drawn gay characters appears in Salah Abu Saif's 1973 film Hamam Al-Malatili
(The Malatili Bath). Abu Saif is noted for his social realist style and for introducing provocative
subject matter into his films. The plot involves a young man who leaves his family in Ismailiya for
Cairo to seek work and gain an education. Hampered by insufficient funds, he finds shelter in a bath
house frequented by gay men. A gay man, who comes often to the bath to sketch the nude men, is
attracted to the youth and brings him to his apartment to seduce him by plying him with wine,
cigarettes and the music of James Brown's Like a Sex Machine. This particular scene is the closest that
Arab cinema has come to portraying gay sexuality. The artist bares his chest and gyrates in a frenzy to
the music before falling in erotic exhaustion on a cushion next to the youth who is also bare-chested. In
an effort to accent the realistic setting of the bath house, one scene includes fully naked men showering
and walking in and out of the view of the camera.

Through the character of the homosexual artist, Abu Saif makes a plea for tolerance of sexual
difference. In the seduction scene as the artist reflects on his life as a homosexual, he tells the youth
that it is evident from reading the chronicles of the 18th-19th century historian Jabarti that there was
unrestricted freedom in the past. In the modern period there is none. The artist begins to imagine what
a tolerant society would be like and the camera cuts to the artist in the Tal'at Harb district of Cairo (a
traditional cruising place for gay men) wearing a braided wig of long hair and what would be
considered unmanly clothing. Shocked bystanders glare at him as he strolls down the street with a
decidedly swishy gait. In an unfortunate case of pop psychologizing, Abu Saif explains the artist's
homosexuality as stemming from a love/hate relationship with his overbearing mother which causes
the artist to abhor the idea of sexual involvement with women and, at the same time, to desire to
become a woman in his outward appearance. Thus, homosexuality is associated with women's
supposed emasculation of men, transvestism, perversion and the social ills accompanying rapid
urbanization. Nonetheless, the overall message is "live and let live" and that every person has the right
to human affection no matter what form it takes.

In the 1977 Egyptian remake of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starring Nur al-Sharif and
Bussy, 'Isa-the homosexual love interest of the hero Amin-figures prominently in the script. In the first
scene the alcoholic Amin reminisces about his youth as the captain of a national soccer team. He
remembers a championship match when he scored a winning goal. In front of thousands of cheering
fans, his best friend 'Isa interrupted the match by rushing onto the playing field to embrace and kiss
Amin on his cheek. Here we see the connection between Amin's drinking problem and his relationship
to 'Isa.

Amin courts an Alexandrian woman named Gigi. From the beginning of the romance, 'Isa hovers in
the background at every meeting of the couple. 'Isa is not attracted to Gigi's girlfriend and is adverse to
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 dancing with women. Even after the marriage, Amin prefers to go on a train trip in the company of 'Isa
rather than his wife. Determined to break up the relationship, Gigi reserves her own train ticket and
shows up in the sleeping compartment that Amin is meant to share with 'Isa. When they arrive at the
hotel, Amin refuses any sexual contact with Gigi. When he falls asleep, Gigi restlessly prowls the
grounds of the hotel and spies 'Isa propositioning a male hotel guest for a sexual tryst in his room. She
then rouses Amin telling him that she is ill and needs aspirin from 'Isa's room. Amin then catches 'Isa
with the stranger. While Amin is distraught, 'Isa, even more horrified that his sexual orientation has
been discovered, commits suicide by slashing his wrists. Amin turns to alcoholism, suffers a
debilitating leg injury and refuses to have sexual relations with his wife ever again. In exchange for the
film's explicit honesty in portraying the homosexual tenor of Amin and 'Isa's relationship, the
homosexual is killed off and the object of his affection is physically and psychologically scarred for
life.

More positive images of gay people appear in the films of the renowned Egyptian director Youssef
Chahine. Gay people appear as they are without the heavy moralizing of most other Arab films with
gay characters. In his 1972 socialist-realist epic extolling the completion of the Aswan High Dam, the
joint Egyptian-Soviet production The Nile and Its People, one of the main subplots revolves around the
friendship between a male Soviet technician and a male southern Egyptian worker. His latest film Al-
Masir (Destiny, 1996) includes a homoerotic scene in a traditional bath house, although none of the
characters are explicitly portrayed as gay.

In his autobiographical trilogy Al-Iskandariya Layh? (Alexandria Why?, 1979), Haduta Misriya (An
Egyptian Story, 1982) and Al-Iskandariya Kaman wa Kaman (Alexandria Once Again, 1989)
homosexuality is depicted in a matter-of-fact way. In the first segment, one of the characters from
Chahine's family album is a homosexual uncle who is involved in plots to assassinate British soldiers
during World War II. He falls in love with a drunken British soldier that he has marked for
assassination and instead of killing him, takes him home and sleeps with him. The telling scene has the
British soldier waking up in the uncle's bed in his underwear not knowing what has happened. The
uncle goes on to act as a role model and mentor for the adolescent Yahya who represents Youssef
Chahine.

The final segment of the trilogy, Alexandria Once Again, is a complicated-almost surreal-
autobiographical commentary on Chahine's personal life and the fantasies that have shaped his films.
Chahine plays himself. The main story line traces his romantic obsession for the actor who starred in
the first part of the trilogy. The signs of the love affair are often heavily encrypted and unfold at one
point during a song and dance routine between the young actor and Chahine mimicking a Ginger
Rogers-Fred Astaire number during the Cannes Film Festival when Alexandria Why was nominated for
a prize. Chahine also writes into the script a fictitious wife who is jealous of his relationship with the
young actor. Despite the softening effects, the homosexual nature of the relationship is unmistakable.

Following the lead of Chahine in giving an autobiographical imprint to his films, his longtime student
and collaborator, Yusri Nasrallah, has been more forthright in his depiction of homosexual characters.
Set during the period of Nasser's land reforms, his first film, Sariqat Saifiya (Summer Thefts, 1988) is
the story of the childhood friendship between the son of a bourgeois landowner and the son of an
Egyptian peasant. The relationship intensifies in adulthood, but the two are divided as one becomes a
journalist in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion and the other is in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.
Nasrallah's 1993 film, Mercedes, includes not only a main protagonist who has a gay brother with a
lover, but also a drug addicted lesbian aunt.

It is Tunisian cinema, however, that has become the leader of the sexual avant garde in the Arab world.
Compared with other Arab directors, Tunisians have had much more leeway in dealing with
controversial sexual matters. This is due in part to the more lenient censorship policies of the
government and in part because most Tunisian films are produced with French financing for
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 simultaneous European distribution. Tunisian Nouri Bouzid is the only Arab director to script entire
film scenarios around characters with sexual identity crises involving homosexuality. In his first
feature film, Mih Al-Sadd (Man of Ashes, 1986), three young carpentry apprentices are sexually
molested by the head carpenter. When they become young adults, none of them can live up to the
expected norms of marriage. One of the boys' families tries unsuccessfully to arrange a marriage. No
remedy-including a trip to a brothel-can be found to induce his sexual attraction to the opposite sex. In
Bezness (1992) [see review by the author in Middle East Report 192 (January-February, 1995), pp. 30-
31], a man in his 20s has spent his adolescence as a male prostitute and tries unsuccessfully to become
a gigolo servicing a clientele of middle-aged European women tourists. A crisis ensues when he is
unable to persuade his fianc‚e to remain secluded while he plies his trade with diminishing returns.

It may be that foreign financing, mainly French, has created the artistic space for the introduction of
homosexual subject matter into a number of Arab films. In the woman director Asma' al-Bakri's 1991
film Shahatin wa Nubala' (Beggars and Aristocrats) we find not only a dancing khawal in a World War
II brothel, but also a homosexual policeman investigating the murder of a prostitute. The
homosexuality of the policeman is portrayed with nonchalance. He suffers the minor irritations that
anyone would in their daily life, including an argument with his temperamental young male lover in a
cafe.

At the same time, in an increasingly conservative Arab cultural environment, the accusation has been
made that European financed films include sexual material designed for European audiences and
negatively distort the reality of Arab social life. Homosexuality in the Arab world is said to be a
figment of the Western imagination.

The future for development of an uncensored sexual discourse in Arab cinema or the depiction of
homosexuality is not a bright one. Egypt historically has been the major producer of Arabic language
films. While Egypt used to produce 50 to 60 films in a year, the current annual average is about 15.
Most of these are financed with Saudi and Gulf money for eventual television broadcast. Television is
even more strictly censored than cinema and certainly the arbiters of official culture in most Arab
states are not about to launch initiatives that promote public discourse on social issues relating to
sexuality. Small scale, independently-produced films hopefully will continue to give us images of
sexual diversity. But like Yusri Nasrallah's 1995 documentary on sexuality and veiling among young
adults in a Cairo popular neighborhood, Boys, Girls, and the Veil, they might also only be shown in
Western countries and sit on the shelf in the Arab world due to lack of effective distribution networks
and the ever-present hand of the government censor.

Endnotes

1 See Everett Rowson, "The Effeminates of Early Medina," Journal of the American Oriental Society
111/4 (October-December, 1991), pp. 661-693.

2 See Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge,
1992).

3 Mustafa Darwish, Dream Makers on the Nile: A Portrait of Egyptian Cinema (Cairo: The American
University in Cairo Press, 1998), p. 9.

4 See Everett Rowson, "Cant and Argot in Cairo Colloquial Arabic," American Research Center in
Egypt Newsletter 122 (1983), pp. 13-25.

5 Naguib Mahfouz, Midaq Alley (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1995), p. 95.

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