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Gay muslims
shed their veil of secrecy for the night
 05
Jan 2008- Berlin- Six men whirled faster and faster in the centre of
the nightclub, arms slung over one another's shoulders, performing a traditional
circle dance popular in Turkey and the Middle East. Nothing unusual, given the
German capital's large Muslim population.
But most of the people filling the dance floor at the
club SO36 in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood were gay, lesbian or bisexual,
and of Turkish or Arab background.
They were there for the monthly club night known as Gayhane, an
all-too-rare opportunity to merge their immigrant cultures and their
sexual identities.
"When you're here, it's as if you're putting on a mask, leaving the
everyday outside and just having fun," said a 22-year-old Turkish man
who would not give his name for fear that he would be ostracised or
worse if his family found out about his sexual orientation.
Safety and secrecy come up regularly when talking to guests, who laugh
and dance but also frequently look over their shoulders. To be a gay man
or lesbian with an immigrant background invites trouble in two very
different ways.
"Depending on which part of Berlin I go to, in one I get punched in the
mouth because I'm a foreigner and in the other because I'm a queen,"
said Fatma Souad, the event's organiser and master of ceremonies. Souad,
43, a transgender performer born in Ankara as a boy named Ali, has put
on the party for more than a decade.
Souad came to Berlin in 1983 after leaving home as a teenager. She
studied to be a dressmaker and played in a punk band, but discovered
Middle Eastern music through a friend and taught herself belly dancing.
Souad started Salon Oriental, her first belly dancing theatre, in 1988
and threw the first Gayhane party – hane means home in Turkish – in
January 1997.
The club was packed by midnight and still had a queue outside. On stage,
Souad mixed a white turban and white net gloves with a black tuxedo with
tails and a silver cummerbund, her face made up with perfectly drawn
eyeliner and mascara. Dancing, she was all fluid motion, light on her
feet, expressively twisting her hands and swivelling her hips.
Under flashing coloured lights, guests, some with dreadlocks and others
with carefully gelled coiffures, moved to songs by the likes of the
Egyptian Amr Diab and the Algerian Cheb Mami. Beats from traditional
drums crossed with electronic ones, as melodies from flutes and ouds
intertwined. When several circle dances – halay in Turkish – broke out
at once, the floor began to shake from the stomping.
One of the regular DJs, Ipek Ipekcioglu, 35, said she got her start
rather suddenly, when one of the founders of SO36 walked up to her and
asked: "You're Turkish, right? You're lesbian, right? Bring your
cassettes and DJ."
Ipekcioglu spins everything
from Turkish and Arabic music to Greek, Balkan and Indian, a style she calls
Eklektik BerlinIstan. She has been a full-time professional DJ for six years and
now performs all over the world.
Hasan, a 21-year-old Arab man sitting at a
table in the club's quieter adjoining cafe, declined to give his last name,
saying: "They would kill me. My brothers would kill me." Asked if he meant this
figuratively, he responded: "No, I mean they would kill me."
"I'm living one life here and the other one the way they wish me to be," Hasan
said, referring to his parents. He said that he still planned to marry, but when
he turned 30 rather than right away as his parents wished.
"I have to have children, to do what Islam wants me to do," he said. "I would
stop with everything in the homosexual life. I would stop it." |
