Titans in the Midst of Plains

I have been blamed for language and for my use of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. For those who blame, I say it has never been a problem of tongue, or dialect. It has always been a problem of language, which slips inside us, stirs our feelings, steals our thoughts and emotions to recreate them in the form of words; words that come to be born on our lips, or out of the tip of a stupid pen, sometimes out of our wobbly fingers stroking a stupid keyboard. I do not mind the tongue.

Homosexuality they say is an obscene creation of some distressed minds who want to transgress all the pre-established orders and rules. Homosexuality, I elucidate, is not a creation or a fabrication as it is only a different natural reality. Think of those hanged in Iran for the sole crime of Love, and think of those oppressed in Conservative Islamic and Puritan societies. Would a distressed mind endure death and harassment for the simple pleasure of body or obscenity? If I ask those who blame to rip the skin of their faces because they look ugly to my eyes, would they be capable of doing that? This is my face; I may give the impression of being hideous and repulsive, but in the end, I will not be able to hate my countenance and the slightest features of it. I like what I am, because I cannot be but what I am.

As for religion, please dear fellows, religion is a personal and intimate set of beliefs. I have an aversion to tackle this subject openly and hear from humans like me that hell will be my inescapable chastisement in the hereafter. Some people speak like self-designated gods and there are millions of them who allow themselves to speak in the name of divinity so as to aggress others, persecute them and kill them. Leave the love of god inside of your heart, speak and act in your name for only the frail and stupid minds use the divine, out of cowardice and helplessness, to hold arguments and judge others. I do not blame religion-mad people for their practices, which have always been prevailing in a world of injustice, intolerance, and hatred. I tell those who abhor my difference to kill me with a sword, hang me in front of the large public, or put me on a cross. In the end, all what they would like to do would be abortive. How many people have you executed and oppressed in the name of religion, colour, culture, race, ethnicity and gender? How many would you kill and subjugate in the future? You are killing and tyrannizing but yourselves because, in the end, we are all Different and Alien to each other. Leave God aside, and have the guts to speak in your names.

Here comes the turn of the photos, some comments made me chuckle. Some fellow spoke of a festival because of the rainbow colours and the eccentric celebrations that take place each year during gay parades held almost everywhere in the world (Tunisia, unfortunately, is not included). Dear Sir, in a grim planet and a depressing gloomy reality of wars, conflicts, materialism and hatred, don’t you think we need some light and colours to spice up the murky life. I want, in this context, to give the motives that lie behind the selection of these pictures. Here, I refer to the concept the scandalous, as I wanted to reveal that everything, which is different or new, is, at the same time, shocking. Most of the people, including me, find it bizarre to see or experience a same sex kiss because we have been used to see straight couples exchanging affection. Hence, all what is unusual and new to the eye seems, at the first glance, outrageous and offensive. A kiss is a kiss; it is a simple exchange of affection and love, and gesture of approval. Greek scholars used to kiss their students on the lips to show they have transmitted them knowledge and wisdom. Today, the photos on the profile may be shocking for some, though they show no sexual intercourses; tomorrow the eye will get used to the vista.

Tunisia, I love this country, I love Tunisians; they are so sweet. Being Tunisian myself, I love who I am. Tunisia, kind sometimes, bitter sometimes, compassionate but also cruel. Many paradoxes and inconsistencies merge to produce a bravura mosaic. Being part of this aesthetic montage, I feel swollen with pride. Nevertheless, the Tunisian mindset has always been hassling to me. Sometimes, I close my eyes and prefer being Venetian blind, on other occasions, I stare, smell and feel this mentality to end up vomiting in the closest corner. Our repressed and introverted desires and motivations have transformed us into what I would call Salman Rushdie’s beast of Sufia Zinobia. We endure all our subdued desires, shame, sharam haram; we end up blushing and flushing; we burn underneath our garments; we grow into aggressive beasts; we hurt others; we loose common sense; we enter into a kind of a mad trance. Yet, coward as we are, we experience these demoniac transformations in darkness. When we are unseen and undetected, we shred the robe of chastity to liberate the shameful beast hidden underneath. Dear beasts of reticent desires, spare me your sexual trances for I am speaking about love in its difference and diversity, about affection and tolerance though I know that these might be strange to some roaming spirits who have been contaminated by the ugliness of the unmerited world. I am just a childlike homosexual who likes to dream and believe in a Utopia, and an alternative reality. Hence, I am not seeking a partner or looking for a fleeting pleasure for my only delight is to put pen to paper.

For those boys who think I am aggressing their manliness, I say that their claim is but charade. Your masculinity, dear guys, is a fixed reality as my homosexuality is too. I feel neither abhorrence nor love towards you and regardless of the sexual orientation, we are all human beings. I may be different from other girls; the fact that I am unobtainable may be frustrating for some gentlemen, but this does not curtail their manliness, as their presence does not impinge on my homosexuality.

Many people think that being queer is a crime and a misdemeanour that should be punished. I grew up thinking so, though being myself queer. I struggled to hide my true self from reprimanding and admonishing gazes. Until the end, I misled all those who have known me. They have been so dim-witted and stupid as none of them have found out about my conjured guilt. Throughout days and years, the desire to unveil my queerness, and my bizarre self grew stronger and my yearning to tell the people of my far-fetched genius who helped me dupe them all the way became overwhelming. I would say it is like the “imp of the perverse” to use Edgar Allan Poe’s verbal skill. In our gay culture, we term this a “coming-out” which is needed to take away the feeling of guiltiness and pave the path for self-reconciliation. Today, I know I have never been guilty since being what the others despise is no crime. Hence, to tell about my self is not an act of exhibitionism, as many pretend, it is rather an attempt to remove a worn-out disguise and achieve a certain self-recognition. I would like to point, in this context, that I am not militating for Lesbian rights since any revolutionary movement requires a number of essential elements like the determination, the awareness, the commitment and the sacrifice, which our queer community in Tunisia, including me, are short of.

Difference is tough to subsist, but difference makes us come to the foreground. We dislike curious gazes, which cannot circumvent us, and some of us resort to put out of sight. I played the game of the blind-man’s buff, and I found that concealing my true self was like hiding an elephant inside a matchbox. It would be better to rise, stand, look towards the heavens, taste the splendour of the self in its difference, feel like a rose in the midst of a desert, savour the grandeur and the majesty of being nothing like others, arise like a Titan in the midst of a plain, steal power from the gazes that gravitate around, and be like a sun different but fervent in the midst of a galaxy.

-Faithinlove-