Beirut

They're Gonna Think We're Fags

By Shahier Beirut

Content warning: Sexual assault

The buildings in Stella are all white stucco and lined with azure tiles, giving it the allure of a true Mediterranean haven. Although, in typical Egyptian fashion, the architecture borrows from Arabesque aesthetics with domed archways to provide a mismatched feel. The entire town is a hill sloping down to the beach, the streets steep enough to make our thighs burn even when drunk. There’s a construction site right next to the border, a multi-million-dollar project from neighbouring Marassi, heaps of desert and rubble. The most common modes of transportation are golf carts and BMWs; then there’s the tram that makes the trip around the hill, through the tight streets between villas and mansions, ferrying sunburned bodies to and from the beach.

Everybody knows everybody. Even the nannies have created their own social network in between chasing down their hosts’ spoiled children. The rich mothers carry designer beach bags paired with Dolce & Gabbana shades, while the Sudanese stewardesses trudge through the sand after their kids. This is widely considered to be a successfully symbiotic relationship: the mothers get their demented toddlers off their hands to enjoy gossiping and getting day-drunk with each other, while the nannies get to experience a fraction of the high-life they otherwise wouldn’t in their genocide-ridden countries.

You wonder if your parents should hire one to look after your little brother. He’s growing up in a particularly challenging time when every kid seems to be undergoing some kind of brainwashing from long exposures to dull iPad games and explicit YouTube videos. “Do you think I’m a bad brother?” you ask, clearly troubled, both of us squeezed into the same doughnut floatie in the pool, our backs sticking together.

You don’t know how happy it makes me.

VOYEUR: 1. Someone who obtains sexual gratification from observing other unsuspecting individuals undressing or engaging in sexual acts. The term comes from the French voir, which means ‘to see’. Voyeurs were well-paid hole-lookers, notably in Parisian brothels in the 1800s.

We stay awake after all our friends fall asleep and sneak out of the villa to drive through the coastal night. We tip-toe in the dark, careful as we shut the refrigerator door so as not to wake our mothers, each of us armed with a cold can of Stella (the brand of liquor sharing a name with the town we spend summer in is a common thing Egyptians joke about). Without explicitly communicating it, we’ve both been saving them for this exact moment.

Windows down, beers on our mouths, we play music and laugh. We go around town so many times I lose count, and when I try tossing my empty Stella into the trashcan on your side, I miss and accidentally hit the frame connecting the window to the windshield, spilling beer into my mom’s car. A short trip to the supermarket to clear the crime scene. When we’re sure no evidence of the liquor remains, I park in front of some random chalet and we dangle our legs in a nearby swimming pool.

Over the rows of villas and blue rooftops, the sun breaks into the sky. We stay quiet, splashing water at each other every once in a while. You swipe open your phone and we take photos while hugging each other ironically. Two ten-year-old girls walk by, looking lost and tired, dragging their sandaled feet lazily on the cobble path.

I think their presence and noisiness irritate you, too, until you turn to me and laugh, “They’re gonna think we’re fags.”

A few days later, you approach me with a confession you’d been sitting on for a while. The movements of my body are almost unconscious, like muscle-memory, leaving our friends behind in the garden and following you onto the stone path leading to the deserted pool. They don’t question it, either; they’ve gotten used to our sudden disappearances.

Once alone and out of earshot, you say, “I had sex with her a few weeks ago.”

I stare blankly at you. You already know I’ll be upset because everyone knows about this unfurling relationship with one of the hottest girls at our high school but me, and I’ll wonder for years to come why you never said anything before then. For now, you claim it’s because I called her a slut once at a party after seeing her interactions with other guys. I pretend this doesn’t bother me, simply nodding before rejoining the others under the pergola.

Later, alone, the image of your lean body on top of hers is all I can conjure up, and it’s more erotic than any other medium of pornography I’ve ever been exposed to.

2. A person who likes seeing, talking or writing about something considered to be private. In recent years, the term has crossed over to media in a more praising light, ‘voyeuristic’, to describe stories that are so intimate it almost feels wrong for an audience to have access to them.

During our last day in Stella, we spend what remains of our allowance on peach-flavoured Cubanas from the shack on the beach. We play into the alcoholic characters we’ve become known for among our friend group, downing the carbonated rum mixtures one after the other while declining their offers for petits-sandwiches from La Poire.

Eventually, your eyes become shot through with red, the usual give-away that you’re intoxicated. You plant the pink bottle in the sand and rise from the plastic chair, half-stumbling down the shore while Dani and I laugh at this careless and outspoken drunk persona. Halfway, you turn around. “Aren’t you coming?” You smile when I don’t answer, showing your turquoise-rimmed braces. “Don’t act like you’re not coming. Don’t play hard to get.” You know me better than anyone else, and keep finding new ways to obliterate me.

In the ocean, we discuss university. I’m a year older than you, and my impending departure has been on your mind more than I thought it’d be. You say you’re only going to McGill because I am. You could’ve chosen any other school, and you would’ve gotten in, but you’re not. Then, taking my hands under the water, you say, “Because I love you.”

“What?”

“I love you. I love you more than anything in my life.” Everything stills. By now, I’ve spent years yearning for those words, words you say so banally. We stare at each other, and I can’t stop the smile forming on my face. “Can I hug you?” you ask. Other people are watching. But nothing in the world could stop my skin from touching yours, nothing.

5:07 a.m. the following day. We’re sitting on one of the benches installed on the tram that’ll transport half-naked bodies to the beach in six hours. The security guard is asleep, probably on drugs, and doesn’t wake up from the JBL blasting pop songs I like. You’re crying because your grandpa died a few months ago during the height of the pandemic, taking sips of the Jack Daniel’s I stole for us in between every few sentences. You hug me and say I’m the reason you got through it. Then, you cry because I’m leaving for school in Montreal in a month, and this seems to break you down even further. I whisper in your ear, “When we hug at the airport in front of the others, don’t make it quick. Please.”

A convertible drives by, three boys cheering as they throw eggs at us, splashing yellow on the wooden planks and metal steps before disappearing somewhere into town.

My mother returns home early one day towards the end of August to find me drunk in bed. I miss Stella, and have a terrible time coping with the start of school and my impending departure from Cairo. She screams at me, and takes the opportunity to interrogate me on a matter that’s been keeping her sleepless for months now. “Did you sleep with him?” She doesn’t know I’d die before I spill, that I’d do anything to keep you safe. She forces me to unlock my phone, then proceeds to mine through our chat, extracting whatever information she can from some of our most intimate interactions. She scrolls right onto the nudes of girls we’d exchange to give each other hard-ons in public settings. She returns my phone, bewildered even further.

3. Someone who can predict the future, possessing the ability of clairvoyance. It’s not uncommon for Egyptian stay-at-home moms to take up some form of witchcraft, holding psychic sessions in their living rooms for friends and family. One of my mother’s friends is known to perform religiously-questionable rituals to send good luck her daughter’s way, or to tell someone their fortune from the remnants of their coffee cup, or ahwa. She once met with one of their friends, a forty-something-year-old divorced mom called Noha, and told her that she sees the letter ‘‘A’’ becoming an important part of her future. Unbeknownst to everyone, Noha was dating a man called Ahmed at the time.

It’s Christmas when your mother singles me out. As usual, our families are spending the holidays together since our moms are best friends. She finds me by the small, poorly decorated tree, which matches the rest of your apartment charmingly. The difference in social class between us has never been something we openly discuss, although you once complimented our Cairo penthouse and said it reminded you of some sitcom with a rich family. I’m slightly drunk, a crystal glass in my hand.

“How are you?” she asks, before proceeding to question me on life in Canada. She and I share this friendly dynamic you could never have with my mother, who secretly hates you because she knows I love you more than I’ll ever love her. Yours, however, has always been delusional to this sort of thing. It’s why, after I tell her I’m good and give shallow replies to her inquiries, she asks, “So, who’s the girl? I know there’s one. He keeps talking to someone on the phone all night.” I smile. I love keeping your secrets. “You’re the only person he confides in anymore,” she adds.

Nothing would feel more exhilarating to me in this moment than to say: Then, you have your answer. How destabilizing it would be, how scandalous. “I don’t know.”

She smiles playfully, then glances at my drink. “I don’t know what the two of you will do once he joins you in Montreal next year.” Everyone sees our fondness of alcohol as a naturally masculine thing to occur, because they don’t see what we’re actually like intoxicated. If anything, I think your mother finds our beer-based friendship validating: she raised a real man. She puts a hand on my shoulder and whispers, “I don’t think I can afford it.”

You text me a few days after New Year’s asking if we’re not going to celebrate. For once, there was no big party thrown where we could get drunk and hold each other as we usually do, our families wanting to respect the passing of your grandfather in early 2020. I’m pleased that you crave me despite your dead grandpa, and offer to pick you up so we can drink in my car instead.

We’ve done this before. I park in our usual spot, an abandoned street next to the Catholic Church where we used to play basketball. You brought the plastic cups, the cologne, and I got the Jack Daniel’s and Diet Coke. You light us both a blueberry L&M while I make our drinks, spilling just a bit more whiskey in yours. The playlist I’ve made for our drunken nights is on, and you compliment me on almost every song that comes on.

I’ve just returned from my first semester in Montreal, where I spent three months doing online school and nearly killed myself from loneliness. I don’t tell you that, though, not yet at least. You’ve asked me about life in Canada a dozen times before, ever since I returned during the winter break, although always with friends around. I kept it light, complaining about the weather and having to wear masks everywhere (wearing a mask in Cairo would attract looks from strangers, even during a pandemic). But you knew my answers weren’t answers. Perhaps it’s why you venture, “When was the last time you cried?”

The question feels a bit comical, and I chuckle, already feeling the alcohol. I cry all the time. From books, movies, music. Sometimes because I’m angry. Sometimes because of you. It happens too often for me to pinpoint a specific moment, and it slightly embarrasses me that you don’t feel as much. “I don’t know, I cry a lot.”

“No, but I mean like a full-on sob. Like when you were the saddest.”

I think about it. It was probably because of you. “I think in Canada, maybe sometime in October. I cried so much I thought I was going to die. I felt trapped, like I couldn’t breathe. I would’ve done anything to be back here.” To be with you, always you.

You nod. “Me too.” I don’t understand what you mean at first, and it must show, because you add, “The last time I cried was because you were in Canada, too. It felt like you’d been gone for too long, and I couldn’t take it. I don’t think I know how to be myself without you.”

Time starts to move differently from that point on. I bury my head in your chest, and you lean casually against me. Our passion was always disproportionate. But then you were suddenly kissing me, and I could taste you through the whiskey.

A car parked in front of us, and a woman stepped out, throwing suspicious glances back at our darkened setting. I retracted myself, pulled the stick shift, and moved us to a more secluded spot, further down the road. I threw myself against you once more, but I could feel you’d changed. “Were you worried she might see us?” you asked.

4. The Evil-Eye, also known as hasad or el-ain, is a widely held superstition by many Egyptians, no matter their religion. It’s common in the country to purchase vegetables or fruits from street vendors in opaque bags so no one can see the contents, or for bourgeois families to fearfully accept compliments on their beautiful homes after throwing the most extravagant dinner parties, creating a constant air of envy. It’s most people’s first instinct to blame hasad whenever things go awry: my mother once broke an expensive vase while cleaning and said, “I shouldn’t have expected anything less from the way Mariam ogled the place the other night”. Although this concept seems to have originated in the region from Islam, Copts believe in it, too: my mother, yours, our doorman from Baltim, and eventually me.

That summer, we have a screaming fight because you’ve been preferring other people’s company over mine. This sudden shift of interest takes me completely off-guard: the new people you’ve been getting close to are the same ones you hated in high school. But apparently, something changed during your senior trip to Dahab in early June, when I wasn’t there to monitor your every interaction. Your interest in them—your idolization of the guys who bullied you—is incomprehensible to me. It also doesn’t help that you’ve been getting drunk with them, too, that you found a replacement, people to finally give you the life you’ve always wanted.

In my fit of rage, I say that you’ve made the wrong choice, that you’ll have to leave them behind anyway at the end of August and I’m all you’ll be left with in Montreal. That I’m all you have.

You say, “We’re not the same person, you know.” You mean it in the literal sense, like you’re allowed to have friends outside of me, like I don’t have to be there every time you hang out with someone else. Like we’re not conjoined twins. The image is horrifying, but not as much as your perception of me, that you think I’m that needy, that it’s probably true. At this point, I’m trying my best not to cry in front of the nannies chasing their assigned children down.

I remember once during a sermon, the preacher was denouncing boys like us. We glanced at each other with complicity from different pews. This was our own little crime.

I think, yes we are. We are the same person. I cry instead.

I run into you somewhere on campus with friends I don’t know. Just the sight of you splits me open. I smile as you introduce me to the new people who occupy your life, the kind of Egyptians who listen to techno and go to raves while wearing shades in the dark. Turns out, one of them is in my class, because by now, you’re so popular it’s almost impossible to meet an Arab at McGill who doesn’t know you. When the girl and I eventually sit together in class, she says, “So how long have you two known each other anyway?” I suspect she has a crush on you.

“We’ve been friends for years.”

She nods. “He told me you two were like brothers.”

“Right.” The prof starts the lecture then, launching into an explanation of regression models he insists will be vital for our future. All I can think is: I don’t mind the suggested incest, just don’t refer to me as a figure from your past.

5. If I could see you then, would I have changed a thing?

You invite me to hang out at your place a few weeks later—or rather, one of our mutual friends does. I don’t ask him why you can’t invite me yourself, and arrive feeling like a charity case but with a familiar sense of comfort, or ownership, like I’ve come to reclaim what’s rightfully mine. You live alone in an apartment on Rue De Bleury, and I’m surprised when I arrive to see how many people are already inside, people I don’t recognize. Your friends seem to spawn out of thin air. I look for hints at a lack of closeness between you, but the way you joke around with everyone, and your politeness towards me, feeds my anxiety.

We end up leaving the crammed apartment and go to a bar on Saint-Laurent. The walk up the damp pavement feels endless, and I pretend to be preoccupied by holding my phone up to my ear. Inside the loud, hot, industrial space, I’m seated next to one of your friends, and you take the spot to his right. He introduces himself as Carl, a software engineer major who went to the Lycée Français in Cairo, like most of your new friends, which explains their entitlement. When I introduce myself, he says, “Wait, you have the same name as his dad?”

I nod, smiling from him to you. “I am actually his dad. I fucked his mom, ask him.” I say this in a serious tone the way I usually deliver the joke, hoping you’ll agree like you always do. But you just go quiet.

The club pulses like a bodily function. I get drunk to feel happy and end up thinking of you. I’ve ruined my sense of self, diluted my character to this loose-limbed abandon, reduced my ability to form any real or abstract reasoning, and my thoughts still bow to you.

I think, in another life, we’re making out in this room and none of these people care.

6. I remember everything.

Hours before the boys show up to throw eggs at us, before you’re drunk enough to cry about your dead grandpa, we discuss the most recent case of sexual assault that’s broken the Egyptian media. Four guys attacked a hijabi and dragged her body down the street till she died. “I’m scared of that happening to me.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“That I’ll get caught.”

This strikes me as a deeply heterosexual thing to say, even though you just confessed your love to me the previous day in the water. I don’t care if you have the tendencies of a rapist or if you’re actually a horrible human, all I can feel is this numbness. You elaborate, or backpedal, saying that you’d never actually do something like that, but that some part of you is so attracted to women you can’t help but understand why others would.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me,” you say. “Please.” I keep staring ahead. “I hate it when you switch up like that. Tell me what it is.”

And hours later, by the time the boys drive by a second time to throw another volley of eggs that bursts weakly around us, you slur, “They must think we’re fags.” By then, our heads are leaning against each other helplessly, staring at the dawn. For now, these are only our hammered body doubles.

When I get up to piss on the roadside, consequence of the drinking, you grab my phone and film yourself saying, “I love you. I love you and I don’t know why I can’t say it to your face.”

Shahier Beirut is a Finance student at McGill University in Montreal. He was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. When he's not reading up on capital markets or currency devaluations, he's writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction detailing queer love in oppressive environments. His personal essay, "Imposter Syndrome", has been published in The Dalhousie Review's 2024 Spring Issue.