For gay Egyptians, life online is the only choice
By Liam Stack
First Published 5/18/2007
Growing up in a small delta city, Gamal Alaa always knew that he wasn’t like
his school mates. He and his friends were all from good, educated middle
class families, but at the end of the day there was something that did not
add up. He excelled at school, and got top honors at the prestigious Faculty
of Engineering at a nearby university. But he still felt out of place.
“I knew that I was different, even when I was a little kid,” he says. “Even
before I knew about sex or any of those adult terms, a long time before that
I knew any of that, I knew I was different in a way. But I didn’t know what
to call it.”
In his first year of university, Gamal began using the internet and making
friends in chat rooms. Online, he discovered a whole new world. Women and
men chatted and flirted through coy profiles and messenger services in a way
that would be impossible in public.
Even more taboo, there were chat rooms just for gay Egyptians to meet, make
friends, and flirt. It was in this parallel e-world that Gamal found a name
for his feelings. Gamal, he realized, was gay.
“I could go online and read about people’s lives, and see that they had
lives and relationships and they dated,” he says. “That was when I knew what
to call it, that it existed in the world and it wasn’t just me. I wasn’t the
only one.”
Adam Aboul Naga, a twenty-something media professional also raised in the
delta, felt the same way the first time he found a gay Egyptian website
during his university days.
“I went to this site
www.gayegypt.com because I heard people at school talking about it,
making fun of it and saying how bad it was that it was there,” he says. “I
didn’t have any gay friends, or know anyone who was gay. Before I went on
that site, I had no idea about being gay in Egypt.”
In the last decade, the Internet has opened up whole new worlds of
information for those tech-savvy enough to turn on a PC and give their mouse
a few clicks.
While market research indicates that internet penetration in Egypt is a low
8%, these forces of free-flowing information are nonetheless showing the
wired, largely urbanized few a whole new set of sexual possibilities and
lifestyle options that were unheard of a generation ago.
After reading the message boards at gayegypt.com for several weeks, Adam
moved on to gay dating websites based in foreign countries, like
www.gaydar.co.uk
. On these sites, members can create profile pages, send messages, make
friends and arrange dates.
“I’ve met a lot of guys over the internet. With very few exceptions,
everybody I met was online, through Gaydar,” he says. “I have met maybe 50
people over the internet. Some of them turned into friends – 2 of my best
friends I met through Gaydar. One of them actually was my school friend at
university. We didn’t know that each other were gay, we just knew each other
from school.”
Gamal, who is almost 30, also opened an account on a dating website. Soon he
was browsing profiles, making new friends through chat services and trying
to decide which men were safe to meet.
Both men say they have a number of guidelines they follow before they decide
to meet one of their online buddies. They have to have things in common and
get along well in their chats; they must both be interested in being friends
and not in just meeting for a quickie; and they must agree to meet in a
public place for coffee or lunch, just like two friends.
If someone meets those criteria, and they have fun in their real-life
meeting, then they might become friends or even start dating. But more often
than not, both men say, such meetings lead to neither long-term friendship
or serious dating.
Sometimes they end up as one night stands, says Adam, especially if one or
both men are feeling depressed about other things happening in their lives.
“A few months ago I was really feeling down one day and I was online and I
saw this Dutch guy,” he says. “He was kind of old, in his 40s, and was
staying here in a hotel. I asked him when he was leaving and he said that
night. So I went to his hotel and we had sex like one hour before his
flight.”
Afterwards, Adam says, the tryst made him feel bad, and he realized that it
was just a way of coping with his unhappiness.
“After we had sex, I felt cheap. I felt like an unpaid prostitute,” he adds.
“I don’t even know his name. Maybe he said it, but I don’t remember his name
now. I think I only did it because I was feeling down.”
Other times, the meetings get off on the right foot but end very badly. Both
men say that stories of homophobic violence and petty mugging are common.
Gamal has experienced it first hand.
“Back in a time when I was less careful, years ago, I met someone after
chatting just one time,” says Gamal. “He seemed to be a good guy - cultured,
educated, a university graduate, he had a job, he was good looking. It
should have worked fine.”
“I met him, and he robbed me, even though I met him in a public place – we
met in a shopping mall in Nasser City, in one of the coffee shops on the
first floor. It scared the hell out of me – I never expected it to happen.”
Working with a partner who made a distraction inside the shop, Gamal’s date
took off with his expensive new mobile. When Gamal called the man to
confront him and ask why he had stolen the phone, the man threatened to tell
everyone on his SIM card that he was gay.
“You’re a fag,” he said, “and you deserve what happens to you.”
Still, Gamal says he was lucky that nothing worse happened.
“I have heard of worse stories, horrible stories of people being mugged and
robbed, or tranquilized, drugged and thrown out of cars while driving on the
highway,” he says. “There are horrible risks you take with gay chatting and
dating here.”
Years of online dating have taught both men a lot about gay life in Egypt,
and the perils and possible happiness of a life lived with a little help
from the internet world.
Adam met his current boyfriend, Sherif, over the internet. The two are in a
happy, committed relationship and so are predictably not as pessimistic as
some about the possibility of gay romance in Cairo. But Adam says that he is
acutely aware of the challenges, both personal and professional, of living a
gay life in Egypt.
“I am involved in a lot of different things,” he says. “In university I was
involved in a lot of student activities. I was a leader of a big
organization at my university, so State Security knew who I was. Now I am a
journalist, so State Security knows who I am. I think the government has it
on my file that I am gay, and my biggest fear is that someday they will
black-mail me.”
“Its hard to think about the future because right now its easy for Sherif
and I, we’re young,” he says. “But people talk to me about marriage a lot.
And what about ten years from now - two 35 year olds living together? And
they’re not dating? What’s the story with that?”
Gamal, who is currently single, says that his years of online dating have
made him pessimistic about gay life in Egypt.
There is too much hostility to homosexuality, he says, too little respect
for people’s private lives, and too much pressure to follow the acceptable
path of sexual chastity until heterosexual marriage. Egyptian society does
not leave any space for people like he and Adam to live their own lives, he
says.
“Since I started dating through the internet, I’ve had 3 serious
relationships,” says Gamal. “Two were with Egyptians and one was with an
American. But they were all failures, of course. None of them worked. I
don’t think it is possible for two guys in Egypt to stay together for the
long term. Everything is against it here – it’s taboo, it’s illegal, it’s
forbidden.”
“You have to be discrete, and discretion is one major element that makes
everything fall apart, that makes it break up,” he adds, his voice more
resigned than sad. “If you’re going to share a life together people have to
know about it. But you can’t do that here, so everything always falls
apart.”
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