Unicorn

by Amrou Al-Kadhi

  DR. ABC, my new male oppressor, was always buzzing about, calmed only by being with Mama.

  As Allah and DR. ABC enacted a mental tug of war with a masculine brutishness, Mama offered a mystical feminine grace of a different order entirely. While public expectation called for a strict separation of the genders, the rules seemed to fall apart for us in private.

  I think this was particularly due to the peculiar set-up of our family unit; for the most part, my brother was raised by my father, and I was raised by my mother. (This is why Ramy doesn’t play much of a part in this book – well, until right at the end, when he steps in and has a very significant role.) Weekends were centred around what Ramy and I wanted to do. Ramy enjoyed playing football and going to the arcade; my father was passionate about football, and enjoyed the camaraderie this gave him with Ramy. Baba was also usually drained from his long weeks at work, and enjoyed any activity that required no emotional commitment. My favourite pastime was going to the mall with Mama, and I spent most weekends watching her try on clothes and get her hair blow-dried at the salon (how I loved observing her gossip with the hairdressers, marvelling at the waves of her rich Arab hair and hearing the chorus of laughter that greeted her anecdotes). Whenever Mama was driving, I always seemed to be in the front seat of her car; Ramy was Baba’s passenger. Among relatives, it became a family mythology that Amrou was Mama’s and Ramy Baba’s; in all honesty, it sometimes feels like we had separate childhoods with little overlap.

  ‘Amoura,’ Mama sang from her bedroom one evening, a tune that I was more than happy to follow. For I knew what this musical tone meant. ‘Yes, Mama?’ I said with a performed coyness, knowing full well the treat that awaited me. Mama was going out to dinner with friends, and she needed help deciding which pair of shoes to wear. Her left foot flaunted a short-heeled, patent silver, open-toe number – divine – while her right foot donned a more sensible boot, though not without its embellishments, which included studs, and gold eyelets for the laces. Like a runway model posing for a designer, Mama switched from profile to profile so I could assess the full picture before giving my vote. I went for the silver (a total no-brainer). My mother winked at me, then fetched a baklava sweet from her make-up table, which she fed me as she stroked my hair, chanting, ‘My clever boy. My clever, darling boy.’ Mama and I knew that she was going to choose the silver shoe all along, but this performance was all part of our secret language. She knew I was illiterate in football, but the grammar of glamorous footwear – in this I was fluent.

  There were other iterations of our secret club. When my brother and father went to play in the park, I would stay in to ‘finish my homework’. Once the echoes of football studs against the marble floor were no more, I emerged from my bedroom to be with Mama. This usually entailed me sitting with her on the couch as she painted her nails, smoked her cigarettes, and gossiped on the phone to a background of whatever the Egyptian networks were airing on our TV. It was during one of these sensory sofa experiences that I witnessed the magic of Umm Kulthum.

  As Mama was flicking through the channels, a powerful voice flowed out of the TV screen. The moment this happened, Mama put down the phone, and both our heads turned simultaneously. This sonorous voice had the depth and gravitas of a gargantuan black hole that nothing would escape. The vibrato of her chords felt more like a tremor, as if each note was sending the room into a seismic shock that grabbed your insides until you were crying without realising. And not only was her voice able to take up – even alter – space, but her presence was of a might that I’d only ever associated before with the force of Allah. A large woman, she stood rooted to the spot onstage, her hair towering above her in a perfectly constructed up-do, her ears enveloped by enormous oval diamonds, and as she sang each heartbreaking note, she wrung her hands together with all the intensity of a grieving mother.

  ‘Mama … who is that?’ I said. My voice came out whispering and faint, as though Umm Kulthum had sucked in its power to strengthen her own.

  ‘Hayatti (‘my life’), that’s Umm Kulthum: she was the most famous singer in the world.’

  Mama explained how Umm Kulthum (1898–1975) – oddly, her name translates as ‘mother of the male elephant’ – was an Egyptian singer who had taken the Arab world by storm. She was the most notorious singer of her time, known for a voice so powerful that it would break microphones if she stood too close to them. ‘You see how far away the microphone is on the stage? That’s so it doesn’t break.’ Her performance on TV was transcendentally majestic, and the response of her audience would make a Gaga concert look like an episode of Countdown. I watched with fascination as grown Arab men, dressed in traditional Islamic gear, broke their patriarchal stoicism and wept in front of their wives, who themselves stood up and ululated at Umm Kulthum. This feminine deity had the power to crumble the strict gendered behavioural rules that governed our communities. A fuzzy, comforting feeling started to circulate in my bloodstream. Hope.

  And so I lay my head on Mama’s silky lap, as her indigo-manicured hands brushed my hair with the delicacy of a feather. But as I closed my eyes, the velvety bass timbre of Umm Kulthum’s voice gradually became the shadowy echo of an Islamic call to prayer. The shift in mood woke me from my hypnagogic dozing, and I realised that it was the male voice of an Imam interrupting the TV broadcast, as happened five times a day on Muslim networks. I fell asleep with ease that night, thinking that even though I had missed my prayer that evening, my sofa time with both the elephant’s mother and my own was its own kind of religious experience.

  Umm Kulthum was a matriarchal version of the Middle East I wished I knew more of. During Islam lessons, as our teachers reminded us of our inevitable damnation, I would close my eyes and think of Umm Kulthum, the true ruler of Arabia.

  Part of Islam class involved learning verses in the Quran – surahs – off by heart, so that we could recite them during prayer. The importance of our knowing these by memory was impressed upon us with severity; we could be called at random to recite a surah in front of the class, and detention awaited us if we weren’t able to. I’ve had the fortune of a photographic memory my whole life, so was always able to have these surahs down. And learning an Umm Kulthum song was not dissimilar to learning an Islamic surah. Umm Kulthum’s songs were similar in form to Islamic prayer – they felt more like incantations with no fixed melody, were often thirty minutes long, and the concerts they resulted in were practically spaces of worship.

  I asked my mother to buy me some Umm Kulthum CDs to play in my Discman – remember how even the slightest movement would jolt the music in those? – and her voice would hypnotise me until I fell asleep. Umm Kulthum chanting in my ear was an anaesthetic against DR. ABC, as if all the water in the River Nile ran through me, calming every one of my demons with its soporific embrace. And after my week with Umm Kulthum (the coming-of-age Arab sequel to Simon Curtis’s My Week with Marilyn?) I had learnt one of her fifteen-minute songs off by heart. When my father was away with work one week, I woke my mother up in the middle of the night and sang it to her note by note. With a smile that could thaw even Putin’s cold, dead heart, she watched my solo performance, and invited me back into bed with her once I had finished the song. This time, I was sure not to suggest we find ourselves a condom.

  Holding onto Mama was the only way I could feel safe in a culture and faith that was really starting to scare me. The idea that we might ever be separated was a thought too horrifying to entertain, and I had to do whatever possible to keep her close. This took quite a literal turn when I became obsessed with grabbing my mother’s thighs. Whenever Mama and I were separated for longer than I was used to – if, say, it was my father whose car I was in for the weekend, or if she was late from work, and Islam class had been particularly terrifying that day – one of the first things I would do was beg to play with her thighs; more specifically, the bit that jiggled on the inside of her legs. This might sound slightly sordid, but I assure you it wa
s completely innocent and utterly calming. When Mama emerged from her bedroom in one of her airy silk dressing gowns, she would sit on the couch to watch TV and smoke, allowing me, if no one else was there, to shake the loose bit of muscle on the inside of her thigh. I found its soft, buoyant texture deeply calming, as if her flesh were like a stress ball that could assuage any anxieties about my status as a sinner. Enveloping myself in her flesh was like burying my face in a silk pillow, a site of utter relaxation and peace from the terrors of the world outside. This activity was such a habitual remedy that when Mama could sense I was having a particularly bad day, she would open up her dressing gown and present her leg to me, the calming cushion to all my fears.

  My father was clearly insecure about the unashamed preference I had for Mama, so one evening he took Ramy and me out to dinner for ‘a boys’ night’. I dreaded the evening to my core. Not because I didn’t want to be with them, but because I didn’t want to be apart from Mama. To be honest, I can’t remember much of the evening, except one quite alarming moment. As I excused myself to go to the toilet for the eighth time during the main course, I glimpsed the back of Mama’s head at a table in the smoking section of the restaurant (a smoking section – how vintage!). I felt suddenly elated that my time in the boys’ corner might be over sooner than I expected. I sprinted over to her and wrapped my arms around her neck as if we were two conjoined swans, burrowing myself into her hair. She jumped up in shock and turned around, severing me from her embrace as she did so. When I looked up at her … she was not my mother. She was just another Arab woman of my mother’s age (who potentially used the same hairdresser). I apologised, and drooped back to Baba and Ramy, embarrassed and upset. All I wanted was to be with Mama. I was all about my mother.

  When it was just me and Mama, we created a pocket of ‘camp’ that only we were privy too. And it was in this special fortress that my love of performance was born. Now, Dubai and Bahrain had no culture of theatre – literally, none – and so my only access was a VHS tape of CATS on the West End that I received as a gift from some cousins in London. Until I was a teenager, I thought CATS was the pinnacle of Britain’s rich theatrical history. In truth, I believed that it was the only real bit of theatre that mattered. The first time I watched it, I was struck by the way male bodies were celebrated for their balletic curves, how they flaunted chic feline poses with utter pride, sitting side by side with the female performers without any shame. Now, my homosexual desires hadn’t quite taken shape when I was nine, and sexual desire was not a concept anyone articulated (in fact, one of my Muslim cousins only learnt that pregnancy was the result of sex, rather than marriage, at the age of sixteen); but the way that the musculature of the male performers was embellished by their spandex costumes sparked a feeling in me that had been lying dormant until that moment. All I have to do is get to London, and then I’ll be able to roll around with the spandex male cats. This became a definitive, serious ambition of mine, and I told my mother that I wanted to be a performer so that I could be in CATS in the West End one day.

  Because Bahrain was so bereft of theatre, Mama turned into Miss Marple in her quest to find me a stage – no doubt my midnight impersonation of Umm Kulthum had convinced her of my chops. Her investigative efforts led her to discover that the British Council often held a Christmas pantomime as a way to preserve the cultural tradition. She called them up and explained that her young son was desperate for a part – but they said this was more a production for British citizens living in the Middle East. My brother and I had British passports; when we were yet unborn in our mother’s tummy, she and my dad had left Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and we were born in Camden, thus granting us immediate British citizenship (Theresa May wasn’t in the Home Office yet). But then they told Mama that there were no roles for children in the pantomime. Undeterred, with the might of Umm Kulthum, and the tenacity of Erin Brockovich, Mama marched me into the British Council building the next day, and demanded they give me a part. But in this amateur production of Cinderella, there just wasn’t a part for a child. And so we were forced to drive home, tears running down my face, in a melodramatic tableau I wish had been filmed for posterity.

  The next evening, as I mourned my non-existent pantomime career on the sofa in front of the TV, Mama came running from the kitchen, excitement all over her face as if she’d just won the lottery. ‘Amoura! Pick up the house phone – there’s someone on the line.’ Was it Baba, wanting to know if I’d join him and Ramy at the kebab shop for the umpteenth time? I had an excuse pursed on my lips, but I was caught completely by surprise – it was the director of the pantomime! He said he was so impressed with my determination to have a role in his production, that he had written one into the script for me – yes, you heard me: a role created specially for me.

  To my knowledge, this character existed in no version of Cinderella throughout history, but I was ecstatic nonetheless. For I was going to be premiering the never-before-seen role of … the Fairy Godmother’s gecko. You heard it. A gecko. In Cinderella. My first foray into show business was to play a GECKO in a story that had nothing to do with geckos. Who knows, maybe the casting of a brown boy as an exotic reptile was rooted in systemic colonial structures – this was the British Council after all – but at the time, I felt nothing but victorious.

  Rehearsals were after school every evening. I was the only child in the production, and because the gecko was – surprise! – not exactly integral to the plot, I really wasn’t needed much. However, I told Mama that I needed to be at every single rehearsal if I was going to do the part any justice. What is the world this gecko is inhabiting? Is this gecko scared of the Ugly Sisters too? Has the gecko been watching Cinderella’s abuse their whole life? – there were many urgent things to interrogate. In reality, all I had to do was stand in front of Cinderella as she got changed from rags to riches in the ball sequence. Effectively, I was a shield – a role so perfunctory that at the last minute they roped in my twin brother so that he could provide extra blockage. Despite my role as a wall divide, Mama sat with me in every single rehearsal as I soaked up the colourful world of pantomime and its diverse cast of performers.

  Remember how, as a kid, a lot of your time was spent looking up at adults with a fiery curiosity? Remember how BIG every grown-up seemed? How each grown-up was like a speculative mirror to your future self, and you imagined yourself living the incredible lives you presumed they had? And there were some grown-ups who seemed different to any other grown-up you’d seen before – who took on a prophetic status, as if your paths crossing was an act of divine intervention? There were two such adults in the pantomime – and they were the grown men playing the Ugly Sisters. Both were from England, in their late thirties/early forties, and with hindsight I think they were a couple, but at the time I believed them to be best friends. From my minuscule height they seemed to have imposing, manly frames, yet they gestured with their hands as if they were flicking wands, oozing wit and comic flare – what we might term ‘camp’. ‘Were you in CATS?’ I asked them one evening with complete sincerity, at which they laughed from the belly, one of them commenting: ‘Darling, I wish.’ Yes, I wish too. We get each other.

  During one dress rehearsal, I was completely blown away when both men came onto the stage in women’s clothing. I remember their costumes vividly; one of them had bright orange pigtails, radio-active fuchsia lips, and freckles dotted all over his face, while the other had a plum-toned up-do of a shape not dissimilar to Umm Kulthum’s. The former had what looked like a pink chequered apron flowing down his body, while the other was strapped into a purple corset and black thigh-high boots. With little conception of my gender or sexuality at this point, I can’t remember processing my own dysphoria or sexual orientation within what I was seeing – the overarching feeling I had was, ‘is this allowed?’ I looked around the room, seeing the rest of the cast laugh and celebrate both men in their feminine get-ups. The pair were melding the masculine and the feminine, tran
sgressing both, relishing both, and there was nothing dangerous about it – all it brought into the room was a feeling of collective joy. Just as Umm Kulthum’s voice could apparently overcome audience gender divides, again I was witnessing the potential of femininity to alter social space. Rules and codes of behavioural conduct formed a major part of Islamic teachings, so the idea of a man transgressing his gender codes was not something I thought I’d ever see publicly in the Middle East. But here, in front of me, were men wearing women’s clothing, and the only reactions they provoked were ones of enjoyment. I was smiling goofily, and, as I turned to my mother, I could see that she too was enjoying the performance of the two infectious, loveable queens. Mama’s enjoying this too! Maybe not being a manly boy will be OK with Mama! It seemed that in our secret club, these other ways of being were tolerated – celebrated, even. Perhaps I had nothing to worry about.

  But, as I would shortly learn, Mama’s and my bubble was going to burst. And in the next phase of my life, nothing could have prepared me for how sharp a turn Mama would take to stop me being different.

  The first proper realisation I had of being gay was at the age of ten. I was at home watching TV when the cartoon of Robin Hood aired. And let me tell you: I crushed hard on Mr Hood (the cartoon fox, not the actual historical figure). Now I promise you I’m not into bestiality, but the arousal I experienced was an extension of the titillation I had felt for the men wearing spandex in CATS, only this time it was tangibly sexual. The cartoon character wore a remarkably progressive gender-queer T-shirt, which was long enough to cover his groin, but he wore it with no bottoms, and cinched at the waist with a River-Island type belt. The way the garment billowed around the character’s pelvis had me fixated, and I was desperate to know what lay underneath – to be frank, I was hungry for a bite of it (minus the fur, but definitely with the balls). His stud status was accentuated by muscular thighs and an ability to penetrate enemies with his bow and arrow, and, as I watched, I imagined myself by his side, a little damsel in distress who he would make it his mission to protect.