"Jinn": Arabic Teen Angst-Horror with a Gay Character

In the Netflix Arabic-language drama Jinn (2019), a group of high school students sets out from Riverdale...um, I mean Amman, Jordan...on a field trip to the ancient archaeological site of Petra.

1. Veronica...um, I mean Mira (Salma Malhas), who has just broken up with bad boy Reggie...um, I mean Nasser (Mohammed Nizar)

2. Good girl Betty...um, I mean Layla (Ban Halaweh), who is dating Fahed (Yasser al Hadi)

Ok, I'll stop with the Archie references.

3. The frizzy-haired know-it-all Hassan (Zaid Zoubi), who happens to be Mira's cousin.

4. The bullied good-boy Yassin (Sultan Alkhail, left)

5. The bellgerant drug-dealer Tareq (Abdelrazzaq Tarkas)

6. Tareq's gay-coded sidekick/boyfriend Omar (Mohammed Hindieh, left, the one in pink)

At Petra, Tareq, Omar, and Nasser beat up Yassin, who runs away and falls into a pit.   He is rescued by the mysterious Vera (Aysha Shahaltough).

That night, amid the sexual shenanigans, someone throws Tareq off a cliff to his death.  Guess who?

Later, a mysterious boy in an old-fashioned Bedouin costume comes through Mira's window.  His name is Kerasquoixian, Keras for short (Hamzeh Okab, top photo).







Keras has come from the other realm to warn Mira that she and her friends are in deadly danger: an evil jinn has been unleashed, with a murderous hatred of all humans.  They must find its summoner (the person who called it from the other realm) to push it back, or other jinn will be released, and everyone will die.

At a memorial service for Tareq, Nasser  pulls out a knife, says "We don't belong in this world," and slits his throat.

Two of the three bullies who harassed Yassir.  Do you have any idea who the jinn and its summoner are?

Meanwhile, Hassan returns to Petra to look for clues about the jinn.

Omar, investigating on his own, discovers that Keras looks like a missing Bedouin boy named Hosny. Was this all the insane ramblings of a deluded boy?

There are some game changers, some "Wow, I never thought that you were a jinn!" moments, and a pleasant cliff-hanging ending.

Heterosexism: The jinn and the summoner are always male-female, and jinn always wants to "unite" with the summoner so they can "be together forever."  Sounds like a heterosexual union to me.

On the other hand, Mira and Keras don't seem to be attracted to each other.

Beefcake: No.  Yassir takes his shirt off while he's in the pit.

Gay references:  No.  This is the Middle East.  What did you expect?

Gay subtexts:  Omar is quite obviously gay, in love with Tareq, and then he buddy-bonds with Keras.

Jordanian scenery:  A lot of Petra, not much Amman.

Side note: How secular is Jordan?  No hijabs anywhere in the city.

My grade: A-.

Humphrey Bogart Comes Out of the Closet

I just watched Casablanca (1942) again, about a suave American exile in World War II Morocco who helps his ex-girlfriend and her husband escape the Nazis, and was impressed by:
1. The war intrigue.  It's as important as the hetero-romance.
2. The gay subtexts.  Every man in Casablanca is in love with Rick, and the fade-out scene shows Captain Renault offering to go away with him, as he quips "This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
3. The humor.  Humphrey Bogart tosses out sardonic one-liners with the ease of a Woody Allen.  He could easily have been a comedian.

Bogie was the most famous actor of his generation, winning five Oscars for 86 film roles, mostly as suave, sophisticated guys with troubled pasts and passionate hetero-romances.  Also strong gay subtexts, at least in the movies I've seen:

Dead End (1937): Baby-faced gangster (Bogie) and architect (Joel McCrea) compete for the body and soul of a teenage hood.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938): Same plot, only baby-faced gangster (James Cagney) and priest (Pat O'Brien).

The Maltese Falcon (1941): Detective Sam Spade (Bogie) wrests the mysterious statue from the hands of a gay criminal.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948):  Gold prospectors (Bogie, Tim Holt) get more than they bargained for.

Knock on Any Door (1949): Attorney Bogie is in love with his hunky young protege (John Derek, below).

I really should see Key Largo, The African Queen, The Caine Mutiny, Sabrina, The Barefoot Contessa, and We're No Angels.

There is also, apparently, a gay connection in real life.  Due to his lisp, sophistication, and feminine mannerisms, Bogie was often assumed gay.  Even if he wasn't, any male Hollywood star was bound to get lots of offers.  He rejected them with good-natured aplomb -- or, according to rumor, sometimes not.  After all, he had a prodigious sexual appetite, and even the most wealthy, talented, and attractive of heterosexual men sometimes has trouble finding enough women.  

The occasional guy amid his thousand or so women made Bogie wonder about his sexual identity, especially when he found himself impotent with second wife Mary Philips (1928-37).  Was he gay?  The thought filled him with self-loathing; he considered suicide.



Wait -- he had no problem with gay people, yet grew suicidal over the thought that he might personally be gay.  Something doesn't add up here.

This all comes from Darwin Porter's obviously fictionalized biography.  One doesn't find any references to Bogie being bisexual in earlier accounts of Hollywood "scandals."

But it's undeniable that Bogie was a gay ally -- or as allied as you could get in that era.  He frequented gay bars and had close friendships with gay men throughout his life, including Charles Farrell, Spencer Tracey, William Haines, Noel Coward, and even a young Truman Capote (who beat him at arm wrestling).

A life full of beautiful friendships.

Teen Idol Cagatay Ulusoy: 10 Things You Should Know

1. Cagatay Ulusoy is the star of the Netflix series The Protector.  He's a former teen idol from Istanbul, but he's currently living in Santa Monica.

2. Turkey is one of the most-gay friendly countries in the Middle East, which means that most people are no more homophobic than your average Protestant fundamentalist in the U.S.

3. He is of Bosnian and Turkish-Bulgarian ancestry.  According to the World Penis Map, Bosnians average 15.6 cm, and Bulgarians 15.02 (Americans only 12.9).

4. The Turkish national sport is oil wrestling, in which half-naked guys grease up with olive oil and try to pin each other.

5. Cagatay started modeling in 2009, at the age of 19, and won the Best Model of Turkey contest.

6. His first acting role was in the adventure film Anadolu Kartallari (Anatolian Eagle, 2011), but now he concentrates on soaps.  In the soap Adini Feriha Koydum (2011-2012), he played rich kid Emir.

7. In the Turkish version of The O.C., Medcezir (2013-), he plays the Ryan Atwood character, Yaman Koper.  He's got a girlfriend, but the gay subtext seems to be retained.

8. Cagatay has never fallen in love, although he gets lots of offers.

9. He is heterosexual, but does not currently have a girlfriend.

10. He loves his gay fans.

Asian Muscle #2: The Middle East

When I was a kid, National Geographic published a map of "Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East."  It was on my bedroom wall for years -- hearing nothing on tv except sheiks with white robes and camels, I was fascinated by the many ethnic groups, religions, and languages between Pakistan to Morocco, the Baluchi, the Zoroastrians, the Copts, the Berbers, and the Druze.

Searching for beefcake in the Middle East, heading west from Iran, then south:

Iran.  Ancient Persia, site of the fabled empires of the Seleucids, Parthians, and Sassanids, not to mention the golden age of Sh'ia Islam, where poets openly discussed their homoerotic affairs.  No extremely homophobic.  But with bodybuilders.

Persian, also called Farsi, is an Indo-Iranian language, similar to Hindi, but written in the Arabic alphabet.














Turkey. Part of the Graeco-Roman world, then the Ottoman Empire that extended across Eurasia, through the Balkans, and threatened Vienna.  The Turkic languages form their own family, with no grammatical connection to Arabic or the Indo-European languages.

I have a big sausage
Yatağım bekliyor

Jn 2017, Ismail Balaban won the 656th annual Kirkpinar, the Turkish oil wrestling competition.  Over 2,000 wrestlers competed.

Iraq.  Ancient Sumer, the oldest civilization in the world, dating back to at least 4,000 BC, with the world's first writing system.  The Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians.  Ur of the Chaldees.  The Code of Hammurabi.  More recently, devastating war, hundreds of terrorist attacks, and the incursions of ISIS.

There's still time for wrestling, boxing, swimming, and bodybuilding.

Syria.  More fabled lands from antiquity.  The Phoenicians.  The Assyrian Empire.  Sargon the Great.  Damascus.  And today, more devastation.  Over half of the 22 million Syrians have lost their homes, and about 6 million have fled the country.  Most have sought refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Sweden.  16,000 have resettled in the United States.

Syrian refugee Rami Anis, who now lives in Belgium, competed on the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Olympics.

More after the break.

10 Gay Reasons to Visit Malta

Malta is one of the smallest countries in the world, 122 square miles (smaller than Philadelphia), and one of the more isolated, but you can fly there from Paris (3 hours) or Athens (2 hours), or take the ferry from Sicily (5 hours).

And it's worth the trip. Here are the top 10 reasons to visit.

1. It's got some of the most stunning natural scenery in the world, including the Speedo-clad men on the beach at Mellieħa Bay

2. .  You can also look for the "nude beach" at Gnejna Bay.

3. It's got towns that sound vaguely dirty, like Xgharja, Marsaxjokk, and Ghawdex.  Wouldn't you love to tell all of your friends, "I was in Marsaxjokk last month."

4. The Maltese language is an archaic version of Arabic with an Italian vocabulary, and written in Roman script.  So it looks and sounds like nothing else on Earth:

Aħna marru għall-bajja u mbagħad għall-mużew li tħares lejn l-irġiel mikxufa

(We went to the beach and then to the museum to look at naked men.)

5.  The national obsessions are wrestling and soccer.

6. You can visit the Casa Lanfreducci, one of the headquarters of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Catholic religious order, claims to be the real smallest country in the world, with just a few buildings in Malta, Rome, and Britain.  It has permanent observer status at the U.N. and issues passports for its diplomats.

7. The National Museum of Art is a beefcake paradise (check out Cain Murdering Abel).  But the National Museum of Archaeology seems to specialize in Neolithic female fertility figures.

8. There are nearly as many public penises as in Prague. In 2004, President Guido de Marco unveiled this new statue of Aeneas at the Lower Barraca Gardens, a very well-endowed gift from the people of Italy.


9. Malta has same-sex civil unions, adoption, and anti-discrimination laws.  60% of the population supports gay marriage.

10. There are a couple of gay bars, but most of the gay social activity occurs at private parties. This summer there's a Gay Pride Party (July 5th), two NaviGAYt Boat Parties (July 13th and August 24th), the Bordello Foam Party (August 9th), and the End of Summer Party (Aug 6th).

Omar Sharif and His Grandson

When I was a kid in the 1960s, our newspaper, The Rock Island Argus, had several interesting columns: Dear Abby, a criptoquip, and "Omar Sharif on Bridge."

Nazarenes weren't allowed to play cards, so I was only barely aware of what bridge was.  Still, it seemed exciting that a famous actor would stoop to writing about something so mundane as a card game.

Born in 1932 in Egypt, Sharif got his degree in physics before becoming an actor.  He starred in many Arabic movies before hitting Hollywood with a starring role in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962.  A rarity in its day (and even now), the movie fails to heterosexualize the gay T.E. Lawrence, and even gives him a gay-subtext relationship with Arab leader Sherif Ali (Sharif).

Next came starring roles in the big-budget epics Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Genghis Khan (1965), plus dramas, Westerns, and musicals.  He played revolutionary leader Che Guevara (Che!) and the mysterious Captain Nemo (The Mysterious Island).

This nude scene is from the Western MacKenna's Gold (1969). He plays an effervescent but amoral Mexican outlaw named John Colorado, who doesn't display any interest in women.

He became best friends with French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo after they starred together in Le Casse (The Burglars, 1971), as a jewel thief and the corrupt cop who wants his share of the loot.

By the way, bridge was not only a hobby for Sharif, it was a second career.

I don't know if he was gay-positive or not, but his grandson, Omar Sharif Jr. is gay.  Also an actor, he left Egypt in 2012 after the restriction of human rights, and came out in an article in The Advocate.

Said Taghmaoui: Who Says You Can't Be Gay and Muslim?

I never heard of Saïd Taghmaoui until I saw him in the deplorable remake of Conan the Barbarian (2011), and decided to google him.

This picture, the first thing that came up, is stunning enough for a blog post on its own.

But there's more.

Said was born in France to Moroccan parents, and became a professional boxer before he shifted to acting.  He has appeared in many French, German, and Moroccan films.  In the United States, he has appeared in Three Kings and G.I. Joe, plus the tv series Sleeper Cell, Secrets, Lost, Touch, and The Missing.

But there's more.

National 7 (2000) is set in a home for handicapped people, where Rene (Olivier Gourmet) wants to have sex.  Meanwhile, a gay Arab orphan, Rabah (Said), wants to convert to Catholicism.

In Room to Rent (2000), Ali (Said) has a succession of crazy roommates, including Rupert Graves as a gay photographer.

My Brother the Devil (2012) stars James Floyd and Fady Elsayed as Rashid and Mo, brothers who belong to a British Arab street gang.  Rashid recognizes that he is gay, and begins a relationship with photographer and former gang member Sayyid (Said).  Probably the first gay romance set among British Arab gang members.  

The actor is heterosexual in real life, but a gay ally.  And, yes, he believes that you can be gay and a good Muslim.

See also: Farshad: A Gay Muslim Surprise in Brittany

Bedouin Beefcake

This post has been moved to Small Town Beefcake

Arabian Nights on Stage: Bare Chests and Turbans

I knew I'd find beefcake in The Arabian Nights eventually.  A dramatic adaption by Dominic Cooke, first performed in 1997, is making the rounds of high school and college drama departments.  It goes back to the original  Persian frame story, with Shahrazad telling stories to King Shahrayar so he won't have her executed in the morning.  She tells six, so each actor plays several parts:

1. Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves
2. Es-Sindbad the Sailor
3. The Little Beggar
4. How Abu Hassan Broke Wind
5. The Wife Who Wouldn't Eat
6. The Envious Sisters

I hadn't heard of 4-6 either.  I suspect that they were put in place to give female performers something to do in the male-heavy traditional opus.

A 2005 version by Adam Forde and David Perkins gives Shahrazad a sister-confidant, and includes the stories of Ali Baba, The Fisherman and the Genie, The Ass and His Ass, Sindbad, and the Little Beggar.

And there have been many other more local adaptions, thrusting lots of guys into turban and golden robes, or tunics with no shirt beneath, or topless, their chests and biceps golden in the stage light.

Brad Ogden performed as Shahrayar at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

More after the break.

"The Arabian Nights" Beefcake Fantasies

European artists constantly draw on ancient Greek mythology and the Bible for their beefcake, but what about The Arabian Nights?

The Arabian Nights, aka The Thousand and One Nights, is an Arabic story collection from the Middle Ages, first translated into a European language in the 18th century.

 It contains some classic tales that have become as essential to Western culture as Ulysses, the Trojan War, and Daniel in the Lion's Den: Aladdin's Lamp, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves; the Voyages of Sinbad?

So how about some paintings of a nude Aladdin or a muscular Sinbad?

I looked.  I didn't find much.






An Arabian Nights Fantasy by contemporary artist Nona Hytinnen

Marc Chagall, an illustration from a 1948 Arabian Nights book.  That's the story of "Abdullah the Fisherman," who catches a male mermaid.

Maxfield Parrish, the great 19th century illustrator, gives us a little beefcake with this dozing giant.

And the Classics Illustrated comic book version has a genie in a loincloth, although a bit too feminine for my tastes.

And that's it, unless ycu count fan pics of Disney's Aladdin (like this one from Nippy13 on deviantart.com).

I don't know why The Arabian Nights seems to have inspired very few male nudes.

Oh, well, back to real-life Arab men.

On the Road: The Gay Beat Generation

On June 21st, 1985, I drove cross-country 1860 miles from my parents' house in Rock Island, Illinois to West Hollywood, my 10-year old Dodge Dart packed with bedding, dishes, clothes, and mementos.  There was only room for one box of books, so I took an Italian-English dictionary, a world atlas, Death in Venice, Les fleurs du mal, Earthfasts, Alice in Wonderland, The Gayellow Pages, Pidgin to da Max, a complete Edgar Allen Poe, a guide to old movies, three Alix and Enak comics, three books from the Green Library, The Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.

My heterosexist Modern American Literature professor mentioned the Beat Generation, briefly, as a literary movement that rebelled against 1950s conformity with drugs, jazz music, Eastern mysticism, and free love.  He didn't mention that the "free love" was often gay.  In fact, the main poem he assigned was: "Woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman woman."

But when I looked more closely into the movement during the famous summer of 1981, I discovered lots of gay content:

William S. Burroughs, who wrote weird impenetrable "cut up" novel (where he tore the pages up and reassembled them at random), but the heroes were gay junkie outsiders.

Paul Bowles (right), who moved to Morocco in 1947, drawn by the Muslim nonchalance to same-sex practices.  In 1960 he met a young Berber named Mohammed Mrabet (left), and translated his autobiographical novel about rent-boys, Love with a Few Hairs. 

By the way, the 1959 movie The Beat Generation, with Steve Cochran, has nothing to do with the Beat Generation.

Allen Ginsberg (played by James Franco, top photo, in 2010), whose long poem Howl (1957) was about his alienation from materialist, heterosexist American society. It was tried for obscenity due to the overt references to gay sex.

Ginsberg's long-time lover Peter Orlovsky (right, with his brother), whose poetry was even more overtly homoerotic.

My friend Fangorn claimed that his first sexual experience was a three-way with Ginsberg and Orlovsky.

Leroi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, who renounced his gay identity to proclaim that gay men were devils.

And the counterculture classic that every hipster at Augustana College read, or claimed to: On the Road (1957), by bisexual Beat Generation guru Jack Kerouac (right), about his mostly unrequited love for Neal Cassidy.  In the novel, Sal Paradise is in love with Dean Moriarity (played by Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund in the 2012 movie), who keeps talking him into leaving The Girl for wild homerotic jaunts across American.

They like sex with both men and women (they disapprove of "fags," who like only men), but are suspicious of women, who lead to marriage, settling down, domesticity, and conformity, a loss of something essential and noble.  Men represent freedom, adventure, nonconformity, being true to yourself.  In the end Sal chooses domesticity and rejects homoromance as "selfishness."

But on the way they are obviously lovers, and that in itself was freedom enough in the dull furrowed Midwest in 1981.

See also: Fangorn's Hookup with Allen Ginsberg.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is probably the most famous work of Middle Eastern literature worldwide, except maybe The Arabian Nights.   You're probably familiar with some of the passages.  But do you know what the poem is about?

Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) was a Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician who may or may not have written the ruibaiyat (4-lined verses)  ascribed to him.  The compilation came three hundred years after his death.

It became famous in the English-speaking world with the translation by Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), based on original manuscripts in the Oxford Bodleian Library.  The first edition (1859) contained 75 quatrains.  New editions increased the number to 101.

The plot is simple: a scholar abandons his studies for a romantic interlude with a young friend.

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

After all, life is short: we should seize the day:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and - sans End !

Who is the Poet seizing the day with?  Translators and illustrators tried their hardest to make it a heterosexual romance, but some of the quatrains describe a young man.

Up, smooth-faced boy!  The daybreak shines for thee!

Translator Edward FitzGerald was gay.  He was with William Kenilworthe Browne from 1832 to 1859, in spite of their both being married.  His romance with his second lover, a fisherman named Joseph Fletcher, or Posh, lasted from 1865 to 1873.

Eli's Dispatches from Amsterdam, Mostly About Arab, Pakistani, Greek, and Iranian Men

Plains, July 2013

My email to my friend Eli in Amsterdam contained only one word: "WTF????"

He had just told me that he was taking a job in Oman.

That's right, Oman, the sultanate just south of Saudi Arabia, on the Indian Ocean.

I called.  "But...but...but it's the Arabian Peninsula!  I wouldn't set foot in any country where being gay brings the death penalty."

"No, that is Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  In Oman the penalty is only three years in prison."

"Only three years in prison?"

"Most of the states in the U.S. had worse penalties.  Besides, it is only if you are discovered."

"But...you live in Amsterdam, where everything is open.  Gay life in Oman must be incredibly closeted.  No bars, no bathhouses, no organizations."

"They have Grindr.   And it is a very good job, and it will last only one year."

"Whatever.  If you want to be scared, closeted, and celibate, go for it."

Eli's Dispatches from Oman (modified slightly for grammar).

September 2013

"You were thinking mud streets and minarets, yes?  Oman is modern!  The Food Court in the Muscat Grand Mall has Charley's Grilled Subs, Curry in a Hurry, Hungry Bunny, KFC, Papa John's, Mr. Pretzels, and Wok and Roll."

"Half the people here are guest workers from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.  Last night I met a very cute boy from Bangladesh on Grindr.  He never met a black guy before.

The full story, with nude photos and sexual content, is on Tales of West Hollywood