The week before Ramadan is a strange time: a time of moral, mathematical, sentimental reckoning, of constant calls from my mother to correct herself on the start date. Lies are the only things I no longer count. Away from home, I play along via phone. I realise that what I have on my shoulders is a Schindler’s list of never-made coming-outs with my mother, that grow in number from one year to the next, that become radical: a never-ending inventory. I remember where, when and why I started it: at the age of 14.
When I was 14, I fasted for the first and only time. I fasted from food, from water… but not from thoughts. I discovered that fasting meant also fasting from all appetites, even sexual ones. And that’s when I realised that the only time I had fasted in my life, those thirty days of the strange moon, were in fact worthless.
It was the age of the countless wanks. My penis had come between me, tradition, my mother’s strictness and God. It had sabotaged me. My penis had sabotaged me… but I was OK with it, it was a fasting without belief, a meaningless fasting, done to avoid arguments with my good mother. My penis, a liberating Moses I never expected. And please forgive that hint of blasphemy.
Thus, I am once again starting a new month of great theatre. Some time ago I ventured in listing my coming-outs with my mother. Two years after the letter I wrote for the pages of Il Grande Colibrì, I definitely realise that I am in debt up to my neck. I pass through a crowd of other debtors. Others, like me, who are getting ready to go on this travelling show. We Ramadan drag queens, sabotaged or invited by our penises or vaginas, by our morals, conscience, judgement, faith, philosophy, lack of interest or thought, to look away and sip, with a straw, a spritz in the middle of Ramadan.
What taboo we still are. And I realise that I am my own executioner, while using my life, my history and now even my own penis, to tear down those same taboos.
I am afraid I will have to live a life of coming-outs and, in the wake of that famous letter, here’s an updated version, dear mother, strong perhaps in the knowledge that you will never read me, because you cannot read. Prompted by cowardice and courage alike, here to you, these few words…
Mother, you likely won’t be able to find me and read these few lines. But I must tell you what you may already, albeit in a small way, know. I have not fasted since I was 14 years old, I had long before discovered the art of masturbation and this did not help the one year when I seriously fasted.
Mother, I am a happy apostate. I seriously am.
Mother, I study Persian, not Arabic.
Mother, do you remember that politician who father mocked because of his earring? Who later found out he was homosexual? Yes, Vendola… Well, in 2013, if you remember, I forced you to vote for him in the primaries and in the general elections… but you don’t know this, because you don’t know writing, like children you move between drawings, signs, colours and images.
Mother, remember all those trips to Ancona, Fano, Rome, Milan, Bologna? You financed my education and my gay activism.
Mother, I spread the LGBTQIA word from the pages of The Great Hummingbird and you are constantly a
recurring voice. You would hate me for that.
Mother, during the month of Ramadan when I was 16 years old, when father forced me to go with him to
the mosque for the prayer [I wasn’t abused, don’t worry, I suffered the same religious pressure as you do for Easter or Christmas mass] well, I didn’t do my ablutions and I sang Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory” in my mind. Great song.
Mother, remember when in Morocco my cousin, in front of everyone, asked me if I was wearing clear nail varnish? Well, yes, I was, and it was your nail varnish!
Mother, you don’t know this, but I came out to you dozens of times when you were cooking and I was helping: I was telling you in Italian, French, English… But you don’t know these languages and I was fine with that.
Mother, I am not the only one in the family!
Mother, I have never thanked you for introducing me to Arab/Berber culture, your stubbornness led me to study anthropology, even though in reality – like most people who ask me – you have no idea what I actually study. Anthropology, this poor wretched creature.
Mother, you were a school of patience.
Mother, you know I started working on weekends, I told you I’m a bartender and that’s true, but I do it in a gay sauna. You would be surprised at the huge number of Arab homosexuals there.
Mother, officially I have never been engaged, but that’s OK, I am a happy single man. I’ll save my love woes for another letter.
Mother, you have enabled my studies and my readings with your sacrifices. To you I owe my education in
beauty, in feeling, in reading. The discovery of Arabic poetry, and art.
Mother, it amuses me when you reproach me because you see I used some Madonna by Raphael or
some Praying Madonna by Sassoferrato as a screensaver: You immediately think that I have given myself
over to Christianity, and here I reprimand myself, for stubbornly never discussing the meaning of beauty with you, for never reading you a poem out loud, for never explaining what a poem is or for never showing you a painting, and all the mathematics and literature behind it.
All that comes to mind are the words of a poet, Paolo Volponi, who rests not far from home.
How I wish
My father reads
My poems.
He who has soil
Under his nails.
Printed
On beautiful white paper,
Big enough to make a hood
For the scorching sun
On top of the scaffolding.
Mother, freedom, this word so misunderstood yet which I treasure so much, is your work. It was born in and from your objections, but the understanding of it is renewed every year, when Ramadan comes. And in all this, there is no need to tell you what you may already know: “Ana mithly” (I am gay).
Happy Ramadan mother, to you and to those who believe!
Anas Chariai
translation by Antonio Pauletta
©2019 Il Grande Colibrì
