Guapa Read online

  Then there were the muscled guys, like peacocks in their open-neck shirts, with comically inflated arms and chests, standing in a serious line along the outskirts of the room, shuffling their feet to the music like robots. Most were too self-conscious to speak lest a feminine turn of phrase fall from their mouths, and from what I heard some don’t even call themselves gay because they would never bend over for another man (although Maj insists you can get them to roll over like a dog doing tricks if you ply them with enough drinks).

  Many of the best-looking men only had eyes for the foreigners, because they were a get out of jail free card. The reality is that the get out of jail free card only materialized for a lucky handful over the years, so much so that I don’t understand why those poor men even bother. But you could immediately tell from the type of foreigner that came in what goods he wanted to purchase. Some of them were slight, wearing expensive suits and constantly touching their coiffured hair. The manly men, the taxi drivers, banking on a piece of ass and a foreign passport, would rush over, light the foreigner’s cigarette, and puff out their chests. When a foreigner strutted in with his balls hanging like two footballs, the younger boys would clamor around him, batting their eyelashes, their butts up in the air for the foreigner to take a sniff and make his selection.

  Behind the bar a couple of al-Sharqiyeh boys served drinks. They were the usual bartenders at Guapa, tall, dark, with lean bodies that moved swiftly as they shook cocktails and poured pint after pint. They were mesmerizing, but everyone knew those guys were off-limits. Nora always made sure the men she hired only had eyes for women, so as to not mix business with pleasure. If a newcomer were to foolishly make an offer to one of these men, they were swiftly banned from coming again.

  A handful of the boys clacked around in heels, and Taymour was looking at one of them in particular, a potbellied older queen with bright orange hair and tropical green eye shadow, who was leaning against the bar as he painted his lips with stubby fingers.

  “Are you sure there’s no one here who will recognize me?” Taymour asked.

  “I’m positive. And even if they do, that would mean you would recognize them as well, so your secret would be safe.”

  “That’s not the point,” he snapped. “It’s not that I want my secret safe, it’s that I don’t want anyone to know. No matter who they are. Really, this was a mistake.”

  “I wonder where Maj is,” I said, trying to change the subject.

  The skinny boys who had admired Taymour earlier were now closing in on us. They formed a circle around Taymour, squeezing his cheeks and arms. Taymour staggered into a corner, wide-eyed. In my pocket my phone vibrated.

  I’m in the bathroom getting dressed!

  I looked up in time to see the bathroom door open, and Maj’s heavily made-up eye peered out from the crack. I grabbed Taymour’s arm and dragged him away from the boys. As we pushed through the room an anarchist boy crashed into us. He had long curly black hair, pulled back from his forehead by a bandanna. I recognized him from a demonstration a few months ago, but as the Arabic music blended into a bass-heavy techno beat he didn’t seem to notice me. The sight of him twirling around the room with closed eyes, a wide smile, and a blissful look on his face was a glorious antidote to the unimaginative God-worshipping slogan chanting that had become routine at the demonstrations these days.

  Maj opened the door just wide enough to let us in. The bathroom was tiny, the sink dirty with smudges of black eyeliner. He pointed to the empty bathtub and Taymour and I perched on the edge. The bathroom was hazy with smoke. Maj, a cigarette in his hand, was dressed in a Princess Jasmine costume: a turquoise bra, genie pants, and a long black wig. The bra straps hung loosely off his shoulders, the tattoo under his neckline in full view. He got the tattoo after the first violent attack on the protests, a simple statement in Arabic along his collarbone: If you won’t let us dream, we will not let you sleep.

  When Maj first started doing drag he would dress up as Madonna on some nights and other nights as Cher. One day he walked into Guapa and declared he did not want to perform as Western divas anymore, explaining that “the appropriation of queerness into the capitalist system, it’s happened in the West to such a terrible extent. And we’re next. What we have, we’re next in line.”

  So he performed as Arabic pop princesses instead. He painted his lips thick and juicy like Haifa, put on a blond wig as Elissa, and only lip-synched to Arabic songs. I found that while the lyrics had changed from English to Arabic, everything else remained the same. But more recently he had changed once again. “War-on-terror neo-Orientalist gender-fucking” was what he liked to call what he did.

  Maj gave me a hug and took a swig from a glass on the sink.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “I’m always ready,” Maj said. “You’ll be watching right?”

  “Of course!”

  “That’s the spirit,” Maj said. “We will always have fun. If there’s a bomb on the right, we’ll dance to the left.” He looked at Taymour with an expression of distaste. “Isn’t that right, Monsieur?”

  Taymour cleared his throat. Maj and Taymour never saw eye to eye and tolerated each other only for my sake. I suspect Maj didn’t like Taymour because everyone else was so enamored with him, and Maj wanted to make sure Taymour knew that he was lucky to have me. Maj threw his cigarette in the sink, blew out the smoke from one side of his mouth, and pointed his thumb toward the door. “Yalla, go, I’m on in a minute.”

  We left and stood in the crowd. Then, as the first chords of “Genie in a Bottle” began to play, Maj stepped out of the bathroom. He was wearing a full niqab, but the cloth covering his face had a print of Marilyn Monroe’s face. The crowd roared. I remember Taymour chuckling next to me, and we watched Maj slowly take off the niqab and begin belly dancing in the center of the room, lip-synching to the music. The crowd danced and sang along.

  The song ended and was quickly followed by a deep tabla beat mixed in with nineties techno music. Maj jumped on the coffee table, spilling a plastic cup of beer on the floor. Two younger boys crawled up beside him. The three of them wrapped shawls around their waists and swayed their hips furiously to the beat. You could tell the boys were from al-Sharqiyeh because they always put in more effort and seemed to dance harder than those from the western suburbs. They had more to lose by coming here, and their hips jutted this way and that, bouncing to the music, as if this might be the last time they would ever dance.

  Taymour pointed to his watch. I should have ignored him and kept on dancing. But I was hungry for him and nothing else mattered. I grabbed his hand and we stumbled out of the door like fools, sweating and laughing. We grabbed a midnight shawarma from the place around the corner. We ate our platters in his car in a dark alleyway under a large lemon tree. He was pensive, dipping a piece of chicken in and out of the garlic sauce in sad, hopeless gestures.

  “What’s on your mind, habibi?” I asked him.

  He looked surprised, but I wasn’t sure if I startled him by talking or by calling him habibi. “I need to get out of this city,” he said.

  “But if you want to get out, then why are you —”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Taymour interrupted. “For tonight at least, let’s act as if tomorrow isn’t happening.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, dropping a pickle in my mouth.

  “I don’t even care where I go,” he snapped, throwing his chicken into the pool of garlic sauce. He turned to me with an intense look in his eyes. He leaned toward me, sucked the oil from his fingers, and ran his thumb along my lips. “If I leave,” he whispered, “would you come with me?” His hot breath smelled of garlic and alcohol. “Or would you just stay in that apartment with your grandmother for the rest of your life?”

  I swallowed as his thumb made its way across my lips. “I want to be with you. Isn’t that obvious already? So if you want to go, I’ll go, and if you want to stay, then I will stay in that apartment with her until the day sh
e dies, or I die, or the day this city truly falls apart.”

  Taymour sighed and leaned back against the seat. “Nothing ever falls apart just like that,” he said bitterly. “This city has been decaying for decades now, and it’s going to keep on decaying. Unless we leave, we’ll rot along with it.”

  I laughed to ease the tension. “Well that’s optimistic.”

  I was suddenly very tired. I looked out into the narrow street, at the overflowing silver garbage can where a family of cats was tearing through the black bags. I loved Taymour because he was from here, because everything in him reminded me of everything here, because to love him was to love this city and its history. And yet I couldn’t love him because he was from here and so held ideas of how to be and how to love, which would never fit in with the love that we shared.

  But I did not tell him any of this. Instead I laughed and kissed him in the darkness. He kissed me back, hard, and as the engine roared to life I didn’t want to ever let go. It was only last night and remembering it now I can’t help but think how naïve we had been, how full of hopes and dreams. We were playing with fire, Taymour and I, as we pushed and pulled, not knowing how to get somewhere we weren’t even sure we wanted to go, all the while unknowingly dragging each other to the desert to be shot.

  The police station is an imposing brick structure with hardly any windows. As soon as I see it I feel like a fool, as if I am offering myself up for slaughter. The heavy metal doors are manned by two police officers with oily hair. I tell them I am here to pick up a friend, and as I say this it occurs to me that this might be a trap. Maybe they forced Maj to call everyone who was at Guapa last night. No. Maj might not feel any shame about wearing a dress, but he has too much pride to sell anyone out.

  The police officers point me toward a dark hallway that smells of sweaty feet. I walk through, the floor is sticky, and come out at what looks like a waiting room. The room is sparse, with a large desk at the front, a green metal bench along one side, and a row of chairs in the center, their blue paint chipped to reveal rusted metal underneath.

  Along the bench, two women and one man sit. The man is tall and slim and in his forties. He is nervously smoking a cigarette under the No Smoking sign. As his eyes scan the room he gets up and paces for a few moments on his long legs before sitting back down again. One of the women, a Filipina maid, stares at the floor. The other woman, probably a prostitute, is wearing a short skirt and silver stilettos, her face painted in shades of lilac and green. She picks at the lavender-colored nail polish on her fingers before letting out an unimpressed sigh as I walk in.

  I approach the uniformed officer behind the desk, a small balding man in his fifties with a hairy mole on his forehead, and tentatively explain my situation. I give him Maj’s name and tell him that he is due to be released.

  “Sit down,” he says without looking at me.

  I take a seat on the bench next to the Filipina woman. The officer at the desk stands up.

  “Not there,” he barks. He points toward the blue chairs.

  I stand up and take a seat on a chair in the center of the room. I take out my phone and type a message to Taymour to distract myself. You promised we would always find a way to be together. We can still meet in hotels. See, that’s just one idea. There will be others, if only we choose to look at the positives.

  “Put that phone away or I’ll break it over your face,” the officer shrieks. I quickly press Send and slip my phone back into my pocket. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest.

  The officer sits back down, lights a cigarette, and flicks through his phone until another officer comes out of one of the rooms behind the desk. The two officers speak to each other for a moment before going back into the room together. The woman in the short skirt coughs and lets out another heavy sigh.

  Jagged cracks run down the glossy beige walls. A portrait of the president in an ugly gold frame stares at me from behind the officer’s desk. In this one he is dressed as a police officer. Beside that is a portrait of the president’s young son, who is also dressed as a police officer. I stare at the picture for a while before looking away, trying to unthink the angry thoughts that are beginning to form. A slapping sound reverberates from a room down the hall, like a butcher slamming a slab of meat on a table.

  An ongoing fear of mine is to be arrested and taken to a place like this. Perhaps for something I might say or think in a careless moment. Having seen the records of police abuses Maj has collected over the past months, my mind often returns to the images of killing and torture, the slashed thighs and pulled fingernails and split skulls. What compels the feasting on death and fear that takes place within prison walls? Ideology? Power? Pure sadistic enjoyment? Or fear? The walls close in on me. I feel helpless again, there is nothing I can do but be here and accept whatever comes. I look at the man pacing nervously by the bench. He stubs out his cigarette and immediately lights another one.

  The officer comes out of the room.

  “You. With the ugly haircut.” He is pointing at me. “Yeah, I’m talking to you. Don’t look so surprised. Your haircut is ugly, you didn’t know that?”

  I stand up, follow him into the room, terrified and yet relieved that something, anything, is happening. Inside the room there’s a metal table, which is bare except for a notepad, an ashtray, a half-empty glass of tea, and a large folder. I am not sure how to behave. Cocky, as if I have protection, or shall I be friendly, present myself as an unflinching ally of the regime? Maybe apologetic, but apologetic for what exactly? What mask shall I put on for this performance to get me and Maj out alive?

  “Sit down,” the officer with the mole on his forehead says as he shuts the door. He remains by the door, while the other takes a seat behind the desk.

  I sit in the chair opposite the desk and put my hands on my lap. No sooner have I done this than the officer behind the desk jumps out of his chair.

  “UNCROSS YOUR FUCKING LEGS!” he roars. I look down at my legs, the right one resting on the knee of the left, and quickly uncross them.

  “Why are you here?” demands the officer.

  My hands are shaking now. I steady them on my knees, mumble something, can’t remember which mask I decided to put on.

  “Speak up,” the officer says.

  “I’m here to pick up someone I know. Maj … Majdeddin. I received a call earlier.”

  “How do you know the prisoner?”

  “I … I went to school with him.”

  The officer picks up the folder on his desk and pushes it toward me.

  “This is your file,” he says. “You understand?”

  I say nothing. For a moment all three of us are silent. They stare at me and I stare at the folder on the desk. It is black, with papers and documents spilling out of it from all sides. My life, or everything the regime deems relevant about my life, is in that folder. Twenty-seven years of events. What have I done in the last twenty-seven years that would be a cause for punishment? Anything I have ever done could be taken as a threat to the regime, if that’s what they wanted to prove. There is nothing I can do except sit and take it, speak logically, and hope that logic might, for once, be enough.

  “You used to work for Shami,” the officer says.

  “Yes. Can I ask why you are questioning me? What crime have I committed?”

  “Suspected terrorism.”

  I laugh. “Excuse me?”

  “Shut up!” the officer yells. “You were at the protests.”

  “Some of them.” My mind races through my meager list of friends who might be able to get me out of this, assessing the power each of them might have in case things get nasty. Laura might have enough voice to help, and Basma has an uncle who works for the government …

  “Why?” the officer asks.

  “Huh?”

  I’ve angered him. “Why. Were. You. At. The. Protests?” He spits each word out as if I have tricked him into eating a bitter almond.

  “Everyone was at the protests,” I reply.


  “I wasn’t,” he says.

  “I wasn’t either,” the officer by the door chips in.

  “I thought it would make the country better,” I explain.

  “This is what you think?” the officer says with a raised eyebrow.

  “I don’t know what I think anymore,” I say.

  The officer pauses for a moment. He reaches across and opens the folder. He picks up the paper at the top of the file and examines it.

  “You sent a message to the prisoner this morning, is that correct?”

  “I can’t remember.” The officer pushes the paper toward me. A single sentence is typed at the top of the otherwise empty paper.

  My grandmother caught me and Taymour last night. It’s all a mess.

  “Did you send this?” the officer asks again.

  “Look, I’m here to pick up my friend. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  The officer looks bewildered, like he is speaking to a monkey. He turns to his colleague.

  “She protests, she sends vague messages to a criminal, then she says she’s done nothing wrong.” The other officer chuckles.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I hate myself as I say this, and I think of what Laura said, about how Arabs kill themselves for the sake of their pride. Fuck my pride. What is my pride worth if I am dead? But this is not about pride, this is about dignity, and I feel myself losing any shred of it. I would like to think I would die for my dignity, but in this room all I am thinking about is how to get out.

  The officer takes the paper from my hand and smiles. He sits back, the folder in his hands, and begins to flip through the papers.