“Guapa” by Saleem Haddad:
This is a is fluent, passionate and emotionally honest coming-of-age tale of a young gay Arab man named Rasa in the Middle East and his struggle for self-definition, mirroring the complex battles for self-determination being fought out in Arab societies. The political landscape is just post Arab-spring revolution with an overall feeling of despair and resignation.
it is set over the course of one day and we follow Rasa on his way through an unnamed Arab city in search of his identity, his lost love of his life, his family, his mother who has left when he was a young boy, his father who died some years ago of cancer. Rasa lives alone with his only remaining relative, his grandmother. Their flat is a shrine to Rasa’s dead father and a way of dismissing his vanished mother. The grandmother, Teta is an oppressing strong force, ruling the household, dominating the family life even when the father of Rasa was still living and the mother was still present. With her stubborn mind, rooted in the old ways, her head full of misgivings, prejudices, rules, restrictions, all founded on shame and the fear of what people will say. Even if to her she acts only in the interest of the family, she thereby drives the family apart. She is a personification of the old mind-set that rules the Arab world with its tight rules regarding family and conduct.
Rasa has lost his true love because his lover, Taymour who, even though he truly loves Rasa back, is also too weak to not bend to society’s rules and marries a woman for appearance sake, so betraying their love. Everyone is performing, in one way or other, everyone is putting on a mask and not showing their face.
Rasa is torn between many conflics. He is queer in more than one way. He is gay in a male dominated society who disapproves of homosexuality. He is Arab, but a young Arab who fights the old ways because there is no future to be seen for the younger generation. He studies in the USA and there meets a girl who accuses him of being so Arab and and an American-Arab who accuses him of being too westernized.
Family, identity, and politics collide in this honest, insightful novel. This is in many parts a very political novel and in some parts it feels like a young-adult coming-of-age novel. The main characters are approaching thirty, yet often acting like thirteen-year-old teenagers. Maybe this is a hint that until self-acceptance occurs and sexually based discrimination ends, development is arrested.
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