Crushing the Bones of the Other: Disability, Ethnicity, and Homosexuality in Rashid Al-Daif’s Sikirida’s Cat and Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and His Russian Mother

ABSTRACT

This article offers a textual analysis of Rashid Al-Daif’s Sikirida’s Cat and Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and His Russian Mother, focusing on the novels’ exploration of disability, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. I contend that both novels reveal the violence of exclusionary cultural discourses and practices that render the nation’s “Others” in a constant state of vulnerability by virtue of their stigmatized gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and/or corporeal difference. The novels give voice to emergent subjectivities that—while still marginalized—are no longer subdued by dominant discourses of disavowal and exclusion. Furthermore, no longer are the struggles of non-normative characters foreshadowed by the text’s preoccupation with war and security (or the lack thereof). By vividly portraying the lived realities of minoritized characters who struggle against hegemonic notions of gender, sexuality, ability, and citizenship, al-Daif and Chreiteh’s texts reveal and interrogate multiple discourses of oppression, including sexism, homophobia, ableism, and xenophobia.

KEYWORDS:

• Rashid Al-Daif
• Alexandra Chreiteh
• disability
• ethnicity
• sexuality

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Will Taggart for his tremendous support and thoughtful suggestions on the manuscript. She is grateful to Michele McKee, the anonymous reviewers at Critique, and the co-panelists (Ghenwa Hayek and Zaki Haidar) and audience members of the “Lebanese Writing beyond Al-ahdath” panel at the Middle East Studies Association Conference (2015) for their helpful feedback.

Notes

1. Ali’s mother is Ukrainian, but as the title of the novel indicates, Ukrainians are often referred to as “Russians” in Lebanon.

2. I refer to the 2014 Arabic edition by Dar al-Saqi. This novel has not yet been translated into English. All translations are mine.

3. I refer to the 2015 English translation by Michelle Hartman, unless noted otherwise.

4. A recent example of censorship includes the detainment of Egyptian author Ahmed Naji for publishing an excerpt from his graphic novel ‘istikhdām al-Ḥayāt (2016; The Use of Life) in the literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab (Cultural News). While the novel does not focus on homosexuality, it does include a transgender character as well as references to same-sex intimacy. The novel was condemned for its explicit references to sexuality and drugs, and it was deemed by a judge as “violating public modesty.” It is equally important to note that Naji’s detainment prompted much support in Egypt and the Arab world. For more details, see Ahdaf Soueif’s blog post “Egyptian writer Ahmed Naji’s crime isn’t what he wrote—it is that he is alive” (May 2016).

5. Lagrange notes that Barakat’s Khalil in Ḥajar al-Daḥik (1990; The Stone of Laughter, 1995) may be perhaps considered the first male homosexual main character in the Arabic novel. Al-Samman particularly commends the same novel for suggesting that Kahlil’s homosexuality is rooted in innate biological difference rather than “behavioral or psychological instructs” that pathologize same-sex desire. Hadeed reads Barakat’s Sayyidii wa-Habibi (My Master and My Beloved, 2004) as a “promising text” that resists epistemic closure. He also cites Ra’uf Mus‘ad’s Baydat al-Na‘ama (1994; The Ostrich Egg), Siba al-Hirz’s al-Akharoun (2006; The Others), and Hanan al-Shaykh’s Innaha London ya ‘Azizi (2001, It Is London, My Dear) as examples of novels that “disobey the cultural mandate for epistemic closure on homosexuality” (288).

6. Most recently, for example, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) and the American University of Beirut’s the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship hosted a discussion and photo exhibition by activists Nisreen Kaj and Mart Bogdanska. Kaj and Bogdanska’s project, which was titled “Mixed Feelings: Identity, Race and Family in Lebanon” (2014), featured portraits and personal stories of Lebanese people of African or Asian heritage and shed light on the struggles of mixed Lebanese with discrimination and racialization. The project was instrumental in initiating serious conversations on campus and beyond regarding issues of race and exclusion. For more information, see Bayan Jaber’s summary of the event (“Mixed Feelings,” 2014).

7. There are numerous civil rights organizations in Lebanon that have become increasingly active in the public sphere. Among these organizations are the following: (1) Helem (founded in 2004), a nongovernment organization that advocates for the civil, political, economic, social, or cultural rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgendered, and any individuals with non-conforming gender or sexual identity, and whose primary goal is to fight for the annulment of article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which penalizes “unnatural sexual intercourse”; (2) Meem (founded in 2007), a Lebanese LBTQ group that offers community-based support, legal advice, and psychological counseling for women in a safe space that guarantees privacy; (3) Insan (founded in 1998), an association that promotes the rights of marginalized populations such as refugees and migrant workers and offers educational and legal resources, in addition to launching advocacy and consciousness-raising projects, which aim to educate the public; and (4) Lebanese Physical Handicapped Union (founded in 1981), a grassroots organization created by and for people with disabilities that works toward creating equal access and ensuring the protection of the basic needs of disabled individuals with respect to health, employment, education, and socioeconomic integration. These organizations are conversant with both local and international discourses of human rights. For a complete directory of organizations that constitute Lebanon’s civil society, see http://daleel-madani.org/directory.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadine Sinno

Nadine A. Sinno is Assistant Professor of Arabic in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research interests include modern Arabic literature and cultural studies. Her articles have appeared in Middle Eastern Literatures, Journal of Arabic Literature, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and Arab Studies Quarterly.