Novelist Saleem Haddad on Conflicting Identities, Sexual and Political, in 'Guapa'

"Guapa" is a remarkable novel not simply for the under-explored terrain that it covers -- being a gay man in the Middle East and being an Arab man in America. This grappling with identity, of course, is rich soil from which to start. London-based writer Saleem Haddad's account of a young man's clandestine gay love being discovered by an aunt peering through his bedroom keyhole, and the personal and sociopolitical turmoil surrounding this event, brims with authenticity and acuity -- so much so that one has to remember not to equate author with protagonist.

Haddad, who comes from a multinational background that includes heritage and residence/work in several Middle East countries, does share certain traits with Rasa. "Guapa's" main guy is an impassioned young revolutionary who negotiates life in his war-torn hometown in an unnamed Middle East country and then, in flashback, an American city reeling with post-9/11 anxiety (and sometimes fatuous hostility). Rasa's American college experience is tainted by the newfangled racial tension into which he is thrust. Haddad also learned in both English and Arabic and had the ambivalent experience of studying in North America as an Arab man, directly following 9/11.

Haddad publishes essays on topics such as Arab masculinities and 'gay fiction' as a curious category and has been an editor/contributor to Muftah, a progressive group of thinkers from the Arab world who present English-language analysis of social and political phenomenon that subverts Western media's focus on terrorism. Foreign Policy named him a top 100 Global Thinker of 2016. This comes as no surprise, I'm sure, to those who consume his compelling debut - which has been praised duly by the likes of The Guardian and The New Yorker -- because it is such an astute rendering of the personal as political.

In the Middle East section of the book, Haddad uses three different sorts of gay men to grapple with the particular experience of living through war, political conflict, and contested religiosity as a queer person. Maj is the firebrand, effeminate fighter who performs in drag and refuses to compromise his identity even if it invites emotional anguish and torture. Taymour, Rasa's love, is the privileged conformist. His love is sincere, but he is ruled by reason and fear of losing the power bestowed on him by society. Rasa is the bold lover and fighter who melds Maj's rebelliousness and passion with Taymour's discretion.

Once Haddad got a breather from the book tour that took him across Europe and North America, he met with me to have a conversation.

Why write in English?

EDGE: There is a lot that I either relate to or admire in Rasa. He is politically engaged, reflective not just about his own affairs but about societal ills. There is a moment when Rasa is studying in the U.S. and discovers writers/theorists like Marx, Said, Chatterjee while working in the university library. He has this sort of self-guided leftist education. Is this reflective of your education in Canada?

Saleem Haddad: That was definitely something I went through in terms of discovering these theorists in university and the incredible impact they had on how I understood the world and how I was making sense of the developments that were happening after 9/11, which had very real impacts on how I was being perceived. So, theorists like Edward Said were hugely influential -- theories like orientalism and the power of narrative. Inevitably, when I started writing that part of the novel, that became part of Rasa's intellectual coming of age. In the novel, Rasa describes the first time he read Marx to the first time he watched softcore pornography, and I remember a friend of mine reading it -- a straight Canadian woman -- and she said, 'Oh my god, that's how I felt.'

EDGE: Also, Rasa expresses ambivalence both towards the U.S. and the society from which he comes. He mentions his passion for English literature class and at the same time the dread he feels for the dull Arabic text that is peppered with Quranic verse and his wish to avoid Arabic class. Also, the image that he has of the U.S. which is formed by media representations is, if not completely shattered, at least extremely complicated by the way he is treated in the U.S. Is this alienation a reflection of your experience studying in Canada. Why did you choose to set the flashbacks in the U.S. instead of Canada?

Saleem Haddad: There are a few nods in the book towards why I chose to write the novel in English rather than Arabic, reflecting on my own insecurity about resorting to English to write the novel. And that, I think, is one of them. While I was writing the novel, one of the big questions I was asking myself was why I was writing this in English? So, the novel was inevitably exploring all of these dimensions around language -- what different languages mean, the different attachments we have, and also the broader political and class issues that create situations like someone like me feeling more comfortable writing in English.

There are a couple of processes going on, and I think the part that you reference is one part, one angle of it. For me personally, I grew up speaking both English and Arabic, but I primarily studied in English; and Arabic is something I would reserve for friends or family. And then you have the occasional religion or Arabic class where you have these really rigid texts to study from. So, I guess my association with Arabic growing up was this rigidity -- this kind of sacred text that I didn't own but I could just sort of go in and out of, whereas English felt more relatable. The other question was about why study in the U.S. not Canada. It comes back to the idea of not naming a single country. While I was struggling with the reality of not naming an Arab country, I realized that I could maybe equalize that by having a broad America -- idea of America. You don't know what state he is in or really if he is in the U.S. or Canada. It's just sort of a broad North America.

Dual alienation

EDGE: What is the advantage of not naming?

Saleem Haddad: It's funny. I don't think it was really a decision. It was something that was necessary for me to write the novel. I'm from a mixed background; I come from several different Arab countries, and I was in this odd position in which I didn't feel like I belonged to one country or that I could write about one country. But also I had the opportunity to draw parallels from all these different countries I have lived in and create this other Arab country. The other reason is not wanting to expose the LGBT community of any one specific country to scrutiny. You end up in a sort of ethical bind when you are writing and you decide to name a country. You are stuck with either keeping it as true as possible to the reality in that country and consequently exposing the queer culture there or not doing that and risk being accused of being not accurate to the reality in that country.

There are lots of parallels - I was visiting a lot of Arab countries while writing, and I was noticing so many patterns, relationships, and social and political dynamics that were being played out in all of these different countries. I wanted to focus on those patterns and similarities. I felt I could tell the story without naming a country, allowing the story to reach a wider audience; and by doing so I wasn't necessarily putting a finger on a certain country. If I said, 'this is a book about Jordan,' then the Jordanian government would feel compelled to respond in some way. By not naming a country, different countries can say, 'well this is not us,' while at the same time the queer populations can say, 'this is very similar.'

EDGE: Was the dual alienation that Rasa feels coming from a personal place?

Saleem Haddad: Yes, and I think it's a bit more complicated than that duality, as well. When he's back home he also has big questions around his social class, especially when he goes to visit the Islamist family and compares their life to his life, and I think that also factors in in terms of his ideas about whether he is part of the political problem that these people are fighting against. He is always in this position of being an outsider in some way. I suppose it's something I felt more when I was younger. A lot of the feelings and emotions that led me to write the book, I think they are still there; but they play out in different ways, which is great because now I can write a different book about it.

Writing the book was my way of understanding how a lot of these different conflicts played out in my life and how I could reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable aspects of myself. I might have not come to any answers, but I've reached a sort of peace. It was definitely driven from my own personal experience, but I was very keen about it resonating with a generation of Arabs, regardless of their sexuality, particularly when it comes to politics. The feeling of being part of something but also of loss at that revolution falling apart and your own internal problems taking over. I was just trying to capture a mood that many people felt at the time.

Interaction with taxi drivers

EDGE: Rasa also expresses ambivalence about Teta, the grandmother and guardian who is perhaps the most compelling secondary character. On the one hand, he says it is people like her who will keep the country from accepting gay relationships and she's quite cruel, at times, to Rasa's freedom-loving mother. At the same time, he loves her and commends her commitment to doing right by him. It feels like a real, bittersweet family dynamic. Could you say something about the inspiration for the relationship in the book, including the tension between Teta and Rasa's mother, who both appear in the dedication to the book?

Saleem Haddad: Teta was very much based on my grandmother, or at least my perception of my grandmother. I lived with her a lot growing up because my parents moved around a lot and at a certain point I got sick of moving, so I just stayed with my grandmother. And we were quite close, and I drew on our relationship a lot. Initially, Rasa's parents weren't a big part of the story, and it was just after I finished writing the first draft that I realized something was missing and that I needed to delve into the story of his mother and father.

That was challenging because it was one of the few places in which I was not drawing from personal experience. I was constructing these two characters who were just appearing. With the mother character I was writing very impulsively and emotionally and not thinking much about what her story meant, and then it was really after I had written the book that I reflected on the mother. I think the mother represents a complete ambivalence towards the rules that are put in place by society and Teta, and there's something that is inherently revolutionary about her. I think that Rasa struggling to connect with his mother and the self-destructive nature of his mother maybe speaks to some of the aspects of what drew a lot of young people -- or what I think drew a lot of young people -- to take to the streets to protest and initially drove those protests. The relationship between the mother and grandmother is similar to the dynamic between freedom and anarchy versus this very traditional social and political order that Teta represents.

EDGE: I also appreciated how you used interactions with taxi drivers to develop Rasa's character. Can you say something about the phrase 'castrating donkeys' that wins Rasa over when he wants to ignore the driver?

Saleem Haddad: Actually, I was worried because it's a bit clich� to rely on taxi drivers to talk about Middle East society because that's what a lot of Western journalists use. They speak to a cab driver in an Arab country and suddenly they understand. I was having fun with that a bit, but also there's the reality that you do learn so much being in taxis in the Middle East. It was a cab driver in Jordan that told the castrating donkeys story. He was complaining and complaining, which is very usual; and he used the phrase 'castrating donkeys.' I asked him about it, and basically it comes from this Arab folkloric character Juha who starts a castrating donkey business and charges people five piasters, but the soap he needs to wash his hands costs 10 piasters; and so he is in this loss-making business that he just keeps doing. The taxi driver was using that analogy as a way to describe his occupation and life in general as sort of pointless. I found it funny -- such a creative way to complain. It just stuck with me. A lot of these stories, these encounters that end up in the book, even the names, are things I came across years and years ago and that stuck with me and I ended up finding a home for them.

Multicultural impact

EDGE: While studying in the U.S., Rasa is sharing food with a French friend he has made. He is more ravenous than her and feels like he should be able to eat beyond his portion because she has excess, but she insists on dividing their food evenly and taking her remains as leftovers. It's such a simple moment but it reflects a significant cultural difference and the difficulty maybe of existing in an unfamiliar culture. I'm curious about your writing process in regards to these kinds of moments. Are they pulled directly from life or are you conscious of needing concrete manifestations of culture divide and then you search for a way to depict it?

Saleem Haddad: It's a bit of both. I remember being in college. We had all ordered Chinese food, and a friend of mine divided the Chinese food equally between the four of us with a knife, the way Cecile did; and I remember thinking at the time that that was a bit rude. I had been in Canada for a year, and I remember being a bit angered and irritated by it. So, I took that encounter and sort of developed it a bit further. And I'm always interested in this sort of thing; and I do it both ways -- seeing these small inconsequential details of life and seeing what the cultural, social, and political undertones of the simple action could be. I think that's how I like to write. Those are the stories that I like reading.

EDGE: The manner in which Rasa comes out and in which you handle his sexuality in the U.S. section of the novel is a bit unexpected. It's not the focal point at all, which I found appropriate. Did you think much ahead of time or during the process of writing about how you wanted to present Rasa's sexuality, or to what extent did it develop organically as you went along?

Saleem Haddad: It developed completely organically. I didn't really set out to make a point with any of it. The novel went through fifteen or sixteen edits, and with each round of editing I was discovering different layers of the story and then highlighting those. I started writing the U.S. section a long time ago actually, for a different story, and then just adapted it. It felt it was important, but I didn't know why exactly. I started re-writing those sections from the perspective of Rasa, and obviously a lot changed as I was doing so. Stuff started coming out, and I wasn't sure why I was putting it there and whether it fit -- things about Rasa's trajectory in terms of his own understanding of what it means to be Arab, things that I wasn't aware of necessarily, even reflecting back on my experience as a student in Canada.

Now it's easy for me to look back on my time in Canada and say, 'my Arab identity was discovered in this new way, and it didn't leave much space for me to explore my gay identity,' but at the time and even five or six years later when I started writing the novel, I couldn't articulate it that way. I just had all of these conflicting ideas about what my time in Canada meant for me, and writing that section was a way to understand what was happening. So it was very much organic.

EDGE: How do you think being multinational and working in numerous different countries impacts your creative process and your worldview?

Saleem Haddad: I'm inevitably part of a transnational cosmopolitan community, perhaps an elite community now that I have my Western passport, which I didn't have three years ago and which makes traveling a lot easier. I think it's important to bring that up, right? Guapa tells a lot about the queer Arab experience, but it speaks to a specific kind of cosmopolitan Arab experience. The feedback I have gotten speaks to a certain global queer community. If you look at gay novels set in the Middle East that have more of a working class perspective -- there's one called 'In the Spider's Room' which was released about the same time as Guapa but in Arabicte, tells a different story. Of course, there are parallels in terms of the places where the queer community congregates, etc. I am drawn to these situations where people from different cultures collide -- a cross-pollination of cultures and what that means for us. I think that sort of literature is important, especially now that we're seeing this sort of fetishization of pure national identity. I think recognizing the reality that for a large group of people that simply is not their experience is important.

A struggle to market

EDGE: Do you think much about the marketing and readership of 'Guapa?' In Rasa, you are encapsulating two minority identities. Is there a struggle in how the book is marketed, categorized, and received?

Saleem Haddad: Yeah, it is definitely a struggle, from a lot of different angles. It's a struggle because sometimes there's an urge to pitch it as this gay Arab book, which is fine, it definitely is; but in my mind it's not just that. Among the queer and LGBT Arab community there is so much history of pinkwashing -- the LGBT community in the Middle East is represented and often used to demonstrated how backwards and homophobic the Arab and Muslim societies are. I think there's a lot of fear when the queer community sees a gay Arab book about what agenda it is serving. I was very aware that because I was writing in English that I was traveling within this agenda whether I liked it or not. I think once people read the book they realize it's about much more, and it approaches things from a different perspective. But that was definitely a thorny issue.

And I think there aren't many queer Arab perspectives that are out there in Arabic media but also in English media; you are often burdened with this idea that you are representing a very broad and diverse community. I have always pushed back against that idea, and I still do. I recognize that my voice is part of that community, but it is in no way representative of it. I had an event in Jordan, and I said this; and some of the LGBT community that were present said that whether you like it or not you are representative; and I said I see that, but I am not. I had a very interesting experience with my German publisher. They used a blurb by a well-known gay Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia, who was a huge inspiration while I was writing 'Guapa.' He wrote a very nice blurb about me saying I am an important voice from the region, and someone responded by saying, 'how can you say he is the important voice from the region? There are many voices.' There's always this tension. You are being seen as representative of LGBT people. You are being seen as representative of Arabs in Europe and America. You are being represented as a voice of the Arab Spring. And those to me are the hardest parts because I understand publishers' wish to pitch someone as that, but I feel like also they are setting up a trap that I can't get out of.

EDGE: They are putting you in a tough spot.

Saleem Haddad: Exactly.

EDGE: What do you hope for gay Western readers to get from the story?

Saleem Haddad: I don't know. From what I've heard, readers are getting very different things, and that's great. The novel is yours now. It's for the readers now, and whatever they get out of the novel is valid.

For more on "Guapa,"

For more on Saleem Haddad, visit his website.