We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers, edited by Selma Dabbagh, Saqi Books, 2021
As an Egyptian, Arab, and Muslim woman, love and lust have largely occupied two separate worlds in my life. While I yearned for the elusive idea of love in my youth and pursued it in relationships, I had also deeply internalized that it had to end in heartbreak; I believed that love, like many ideas, could never be fully comprehended. But lust was different. Lust was an action—an action to avoid and repress, because it leads to sex, and sex is dangerous. When I started reading We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers, I thought of my upbringing, of the two separate worlds I have built for love and lust, and the difficulties of reconciling them in my adult life. This anthology, edited by the British-Palestinian writer Selma Dabbagh and published by Saqi books, includes one hundred and one pieces by seventy-five different women from the Middle East and North Africa region, as well as from the diaspora. Most of the pieces are translated from Arabic, many are originally written in English, and the minority are translated from French.
In the book’s introduction, Dabbagh explains that translating works about love and lust is difficult, though we do not learn about the ways in which the various translations could have impacted the anthology. This is especially pertinent in the cases of translations from Arabic to English, which represent the majority of the works in the text; Arabic can be seen as a unifying language, but the subtleties and differences between the dialects dictate different cultural specificities and reflect a stark diversity in both place and community. In other words, unless the place of origin is clear, the readers lose a sense of place with the absence of dialect, and different geographies and contexts start feeling neutral.
In the introduction, Dabbagh contextualizes the largely overlooked history of erotic female writers in Arabic literature. Although names of ancient goddesses of love and fertility in the Arab region—such as Isis and Ishtar—are well known, the topic of female Arab sexuality still comes as a novelty for many. Similarly, despite the fame of certain Abbasid poets such as Abu Nawas, female poets in elite Abbasid literary salons are not famous, if known at all. This lack of awareness is further complicated by the total disappearance of women erotic writings during the fall of Andalusia in 1492; Dabbagh clarifies that women writing on love and lust faced a blackout for almost half a millennia, reappearing only in the late nineteenth century. By then, authors and novelists—like Zaynab Fawwaz—began challenging common misogynistic practices such as arranged marriages, and therein paved the way for many women Arab writers to discuss sexuality in various literary forms today. Ranging over three millennia, the long span this anthology covers is indicative of the two interests of my review: what lies beyond the celebratory—especially in relation to difficult and/or painful lust—and the limitations of the narrative linking love and lust as two sides of the same coin.
A recurrent theme in the book is the struggles surrounding lust, sex, and sexuality in the lives of Arab women, made especially clear in stories set in contemporary contexts. In Samia Issa’s “Fig Milk,” two characters, Rakaad and Fatima, are connected through their separate, yet parallel, masturbation routines in the toilets of a refugee camp. Rakaad, the “Head of the People’s Committee” in the camp, is fearful that someone will find out his secret, and paranoid of losing the public’s respect. Nevertheless, he continues masturbating to Fatima’s moans every night without her knowledge, highlighting the privileges he grants himself to her body and to her privacy. This invasion is further cemented when the narrative takes a closer look at the different struggles of Fatima, who is oblivious to another person’s presence. Despite the fact that she was married, discovering herself as a widow leaves her surprised that her body can feel this type of pleasure. Though she is torn between fondness for her new routine and her feelings of shame, a sense of playfulness and excitement at her new discovery overshadow her feelings of guilt. We see this throughout as the narrative follows Fatima’s slow but persistent journey in reaching orgasm: “What now? She wondered. How far to go? Was there more to come? Fatima didn’t know how her fingers had learned to play like that.” She continues: “When she came, she could not suppress her scream. Better: her scream surprised her. It had come from nowhere, from the borderline between life and death. It was as if she was dying and being born at the same time. Past, present, and future ceased to exist, as she departed from her body.”
In Ahdaf Souef’s excerpt from her novel In the Eye of the Sun, the theme of difficult lust manifests in pain and neglect as we learn about the protagonist’s struggles with her husband in bed. Following a miscarriage, her husband believes she stopped wanting him, and trapped in her thoughts, she reveals the extent of pain she is willing to go through to earn him back: “She had been absolutely determined that, however much it hurt, she would not complain. It would not hurt forever. It would get better and then it would stop hurting and be just wonderful. That’s what everybody and all the books said.” As her conflicted desires continue to be pronounced, she considers leaving him, but is aware of the seemingly silly reason behind it: “Leave him? ‘Your Honour, my husband won’t perform his conjugal—’ Absurd. She might as well talk of leaving her father, or her country. She might as well talk of leaving herself.” This nods to a long-forgotten history of court records from the Abbasid era, which demonstrate the option for women to seek a divorce based on dissatisfaction with one’s husband’s performance in bed.
The theme of difficult lust is also very clear in stories discussing sexuality and the coming to terms with one’s sexual orientation. In khulud khamis’s “At Last,” the protagonist Nadia hesitates to accept her love for her partner, Noor. At forty-eight years old, she decides it is time to pursue a life that brings her joy, but her decision comes late as Noor has already given up. Nadia overhears her lover talking to another woman: “I do love her, but I can’t do this once-a-week thing anymore. I need a real relationship. She promised me she’d tell her son and mother months ago, but so far, nothing. She thinks she can live this double life forever. But I can’t do this. I can’t do secrets like she does.” The furtiveness kills the relationship as Nadia does not confront Noor and decides to leave. Through these stories, and many others discussing the same theme in the collection, we get a closer look on what it looks like to be an Arab woman under the current socio-political context where secrecy and silence control, overshadow, and limit women’s desires.
Shame and guilt are two looming words that are usually associated with the sexuality of Arab women, and on the other end of the spectrum, “mysterious” and “hidden” are also often used to sexualize and objectify Arab women’s bodies. The intersection between these two extremes can be found in stories like those in The Thousand and One Nights. In the excerpt “What is its Name?,” we face the challenge of naming what is hidden. Throughout the story, three women constantly ask a man to name what is between their thighs. As he consistently fails, the women punish him for his failures. Finally, one of the women tells him: “hotel happiness.” Making the invisible visible and heard is an approach taken from Abbassid-era poems, where women asked for sex explicitly, openly discussing their desires. In “Rock and Shake,” a poem by Umra bint al-Hamaris, she calls for the listeners to tell single men about her. She takes pride in her body and describes her desire for sex: “The girl whose legs are shapely and knees are round, And who would rock and shake when a phallus is found.” Similarly, in “I Urge You To Come” by I’timad Arrumaikiyya, she describes her love for sex in clear demands, saying: “I urge you to come faster than the wind to mount my breast and firmly dig and plough my body, and don’t let go until you’ve flushed me thrice.”
Unlike the visibility of a phallus, women face an obscuration of their sexual organs, which seeps and becomes a silence in the written and spoken language. This secrecy has led to years of misconceptions and violences committed against Arab women, whose bodies are policed—denied sexual experiences unless within the framework of marriage. From female genital mutilation to so-called “honor crimes” and marital rape, the bodies of Arab women are often controlled and their sexualities pathologized, measured merely by a thin tissue, remains a determinant of worth, and the silence of a wife’s sexual needs—in favor of the husband’s—is expected, as many still insist on falsely claiming that the sexual desires of men are stronger than that of women.
Within this context, the theme of sex and sexuality cannot be detached from sanctioned love. In the introduction, it is made clear that love and sex are interconnected and linked throughout the collection. Debbagh mentions that the pieces have a common belief, quoting from Galliarda Sapienza: “But isn’t sex, love? Love and sex are two sides of the same coin. What is love without sex? The veneration of a statue, of a Madonna. What is sex without love? Nothing more than a clash of genital organs.” However, this interconnectedness is problematized and questioned by some of the stories in the collection, in particular those that describe sex outside of any relationships or notions of matrimonial commitments. In Salwa Al Neimi’s “Seventh Gate: On the Ecstasies of the Body,” a scholar evokes memories from her life, among them her sexual relationships with “thinkers.” The narrative highlights the hypocrisies of “intellectuals,” as well as the tensions of being an Arab woman who decides to share her body with others outside of a sanctioned framework of love and marriage. We see this in the following conversation between the protagonist and one of the men in her life:
“I love two things about you. Your free spirit and your Arabness.”
“Never in my life would it have occurred to me that a free spirit and Arabness could be the height of sex appeal,” I replied, with a light-heartedness that tried to hide the pain racking my consciousness, as the words penetrated deep within, to reemerge later on, letter by letter.
Now I recall his words and I shudder. Now I recall his words, his touch, his gaze and I shiver.
I recall them now and I do not want to forget.
I want to remember.
I want to write.
Other stories detach love from sex differently. During a live sex party depicted in Joumana Haddad’s “Lovers Should Only Wear Moccasins,” the protagonist expresses a frustration at the cliche pick-up lines from the attending men. She later also expresses her frustration with her female friend’s performed shame, constant lamenting, and regret for having attended the party. In between these incidents, we follow the “shameless” protagonist as she observes people engaging in sexual acts, confirming what she already knows: “. . . there is nothing to discover here, only an established truth to confirm: the guaranteed obscenity of desire condemned to drain away at the instant of its satisfaction.” In a starkly different setting, Yousra Samir Imran’s piece, “Catch No Feelings,” presents a portrait of a conservative and gender-segregated society, wherein a man regularly flies from Riyadh to Doha to have sex with a woman at a five-star hotel. Their “love” affair ends when the woman suggests the man moves to Doha. He asks her if she is catching feelings, then immediately upon his return to Riyadh, he blocks her on WhatsApp and disappears from her life. Despite the different contexts in these stories, they all provide a framework where sex exists in the lives of Arab women without love.
This is not to say that we can necessarily find a specific pattern in the “progress” or “decline” in the topics women Arab writers have discussed. As made clear in Dabbagh’s introduction, sexual desires were accommodated in some eras and places, and punished and shunned in others. For example, the pre-Islamic poet Jariyat Humam ibn Murra was killed after reciting the poem in this collection, whereas some celebratory poems that describe the love between women—such as those written by Ulayya bint-al-Mahdi in the Abbasid era—are cherished. Looking at the anthology in relation to these contrasts can show us the possibilities of writing about sex and sexuality in Arabic. From describing wetness, to detailing the inner conflicts of pain, anger, and shame, to the trials and errors till a woman reaches a pleasurable spasm, Arab women have consistently found different ways to talk about their bodies.
This anthology provides a glimpse into a world that has been constantly made invisible or policed within systems of domestication and abuse. With the rise of the #MeToo movement in the region, and the current growth in Arab initiatives that provide sexual health content online, more Arab women are pursuing the education they never received as children and young teenagers. Within this new reality, the writings in the anthology provide a language and a needed vocabulary for Arab women seeking to find solace and community. Whether they are experiencing love, sex, or a combination of both, the voices of the included writers provide a point of reference for the long forgotten tradition of erotic writings and the censorship of Arab women’s sex lives and experiences. Pain, shame, and guilt are challenges that persist in the anthology, but so is joy, and joy within pain is a revolutionary act of love that can pave the way to collective healing. In the words of the protagonist in Nedjma’s “The Almond”: “[Happiness is] the terror of having to open up and the incredible power of giving yourself when everything in the world is a reason to weep.”
Mariam Diefallah is a childbirth doula, educator, and writer from Giza, Egypt. She is a strong advocate for better sexual and reproductive health and rights for women, and is passionate about pleasure as a form of feminist activism. Her work has been published in Jadaliyya and Jeem.
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