LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Hear Me Out: A Gay Egyptian Misses the Boat but Takes a Stand |
by Mubarak Dahir |
On the eve of May 10, 2001, three of Maher Sabry's friends were nagging him to go out dancing with them on the Queen Boat, a floating disco known in Cairo to be a local gay hangout. But Sabry, a 36-year-old playwright and director, was too tired. He just wanted to stay in for the evening and unwind. It may have been the last time since then that Sabry has been able to relax. That night, the Egyptian police rounded up and jailed 52 men from the Queen Boat. Officially, the men were accused of oblique charges such as "indecency and debauchery," or committing "obscene behavior." But it was clear they were being persecuted for being gay. Of course, it wasn't the first time that gay men had been harassed and arrested in Egypt. But the sheer numbers of men rounded up, combined with the fact that this time they would be tried in a special "emergency" court that forbids rulings or sentences to be appealed, made this case different. While 29 of the men were inevitably found "guilty" and sentenced to jail time, the case garnered international attention and condemnation. Without the brave work of Sabry, it might have gone quietly unnoticed. In the years before the Queen Boat incident, a tiny but determined gay and lesbian movement was germinating in Egypt. Most of it was Internet-based. "It was the only free space to express our ideas," says Sabry, who got online in 1997 and became a cyber activist. "The Egyptian media likes to say homosexuality came through the Internet from the West, but the forums and discussion groups were all Egyptians." Meanwhile, of course, people continued to meet cautiously at certain coffee shops and hotel bars, or for private parties. By 1999, Sabry was bold enough to stage his play, The Harem, which included overt portrayals of society's oppression of gays and lesbians. The play showed three days before it was closed down by the government. The government also began cracking down on the gay Internet, closing Web sites and jailing their owners. Police also created a climate of fear by arranging meetings via the Internet, only to arrest men who showed up for what they thought would be a date. Still, as one site would close, another page or listserv would pop up. With the Queen Boat incident, however, "even those who had been activists disappeared because it was so unsafe," says Sabry. "Suddenly, all gay life seemed to evaporate." Despite the grave situation, Sabry knew he could not retreat. One of the first things Sabry did was to get online and, under a pseudonym, broadcast the news to international human rights groups, hoping some amount of international exposure would bring pressure on the Egyptian government. "We couldn't count on the Egyptian press, as it is more or less controlled by the government." Just sending out the information was risky. Internet accounts in Egypt and e-mails coming out of the country were being closely monitored by the police. At one point, they even tried to crack the pass code to Sabry's e-mail account in an attempt to identify him. Even more dangerous than his postings to the rest of the world, however, was his courage on the ground in Cairo. For at least two weeks after the arrests, only immediate family members were allowed to see the prisoners. Much of the Egyptian press, however, was spewing the names and faces of the jailed men on their front pages, along with outlandish allegations that the men were perverts and Satanists. In a culture where shame is a powerful weapon, some were afraid to visit their family members in jail. Sabry contacted many reluctant relatives, even going with them to the jail to talk to the prisoners, cull information from them and arrange legal help. In doing so, he risked arrest himself. During one meeting where Sabry escorted a man to see his jailed brother, the guards took note of Sabry's long ponytail-an unusual site in conservative Egypt. "Why do you have a ponytail, faggot?" asked one policeman, who searched Sabry's bag and found newspaper clippings and notes on the 52 arrested men. "You're here to visit the cocksuckers!" he said to Sabry, threatening to arrest him, too. "Then he started to touch my crotch, to humiliate me and show he could dominate me," recalls Sabry. In a moment of quick thinking, Sabry insisted on making a phone call to a high ranking police officer, who, Sabry told the guard, was his uncle. "In truth, the officer was a very distant relative who would have done nothing to help me if he thought I was gay," Sabry says now. Luckily, the guard did not call Sabry's bluff, and he was released. Even after his own near arrest and imprisonment, Sabry continued to go to the jail and courts to monitor the situation, and to send whatever information he could get to international human rights groups. "I couldn't just leave my friends [in jail], Many of the guys in there, they had nobody else to help them." And he refused to cut his hair. "It's a symbol of protest," he laughs now. "After the arrests, I'd be walking down the street, and people would call out, "Queen Boat faggot!' All my friends were telling me I had to have short hair, that long hair was too dangerous. But I couldn't stand the feeling that I was submitting. I would have felt like a coward." Sabry is, of course, just the opposite of cowardice. He is the embodiment of valor, and his bravado is being honored this May by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission as a recipient of the organization's Felipa Awards, given each year to individuals who make a significant contribution to fighting abuse based on sexual orientation. You don't have to live in an anti-gay foreign country to be inspired by Sabry. If he could overcome the most extreme obstacles of a police state and stand his ground as a gay man, just think of the changes each of us can make here if we simply come out as openly gay and lesbian people. Mubarak Dahir receives e-mail at MubarakDah@aol.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 12, No. 05, May 17, 2002 |