By Kit Nicholson
Marwan Kaabour
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for any readers who might not already know?
“My name is Marwan Kaabour. I’m a Lebanese artist, designer, and the founder of Takweer. I was born and raised in Beirut before moving to London in 2011. I did my master’s degree in Graphic Design at the London College of Communication at UAL which remains, to a large degree, my main profession. In 2012, I started working at Jonathan Barnbrook’s design practice. I have always admired Barnbrook’s approach to design which made space for political and social work in tandem with commercial projects. My own work has also always been politically and socially geared so finding space at Barnbrook was a natural fit. I started off as an intern and, by the time I left, I had been a senior designer for around four years. I worked with some of the UK’s and – maybe the world’s – most exciting cultural institutions such as the V&A Museum, Somerset House, and Art Basel among others. My farewell project was designing the Rihanna book for Phaidon.
Around the same time, in September of 2019, I founded Takweer. I was feeling frustrated that I wasn’t working on projects that I could connect with on a personal level as an Arab and as a queer person. I really needed an outlet for my personal interests and concerns. Additionally, I was also frustrated with how the narrative and discourse surrounding queerness, even within the Arab world, was very much rooted in the Eurocentric notion of how we should express and talk about ourselves. It seemed as if the main cultural references of all of the young queers back home came from RuPaul’s Drag Race. I wanted to counter that.
It all boils down to one moment when I was back in Beirut. I was in Bardo, a famous queer bar that has now sadly closed, and I was watching the drag show that they were putting on. There were around four or five drag queens in the show, and they were all wonderful. It was amazing to see how the drag scene in Beirut was thriving! However, I noticed that, out of all of the queens, only one of them was presenting in Arabic and making local references. At that moment, I remember wondering where the wealth of rich references to our own pop culture had gone. And that’s how Takweer was born. It was a way to reclaim our own history by using our own people’s narratives, histories, and popular cultures. Creating this space was an attempt to preserve this rich history – these references that only exist in the moments we share together or that only spread by word of mouth – before they die out.
Shortly after founding Takweer, I started my own design practice. My practice mainly focuses on bookmaking; I create books for museums, artists, and art organisations. I also develop branding for art and cultural exhibitions and events. At this point, I also began writing for different journals and magazines. It’s all an extension of what I do with Takweer. Most recently, with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, my political work has taken more of a central stage.
I started Takweer without understanding, really, where it was headed. Eventually, I started to view it as this open-ended and ongoing archive. It’s grown amazingly in the last four years. What once was a small passion project now has over 22,000 followers! It’s generated a lot of interest which has been really nice. My most recent project, The Queer Arab Glossary, is the amalgamation of all of the things that I’m interested in: graphic design, writing, languages, bookmaking, looking at the world through a socio-political lens, and putting a spotlight on queer Arabs. The book comes out on June 6, 2024, and it’s the first realised project to come out of Takweer.”
Can you highlight some examples of queer Arab history that you wish everyone knew?
“When you look at intimacy between people of the same sex, it has a long history in the Middle East. Many fluid relationships between same-sex or even non-binary people have existed throughout history. There was often this grey area where people were allowed to flow and where they were seen as simply ‘out of the norm’ or ‘quirky.’
In ancient Arab history, during the era of the first Islamic caliphates, there are numerous mentions of same-sex relationships; they’re mostly about men, but there are a handful that relate to women as well. There was even a specific type of poetry dedicated for men to speak about their love, admiration, and infatuation with other men. The classical Arab poet from the Abbasid Caliphate, Abu Nuwas, would constantly write about his desire for men, in fact. While, of course, there were conservatives who thought it immoral, that wasn’t the dominant discourse around queerness. There’s a famous story which is regarded as the first recorded instance of a lesbian relationship in Arab history from the 10th century. It’s this beautiful love story between two women: Al-Zarqa’ and Hind Bint al-Nu’man. When Hind died, her faithful lover cropped her hair, wore black clothes, and vowed to God that she would lead an ascetic life until she also passed away. She even built a monastery to commemorate her undying love for her lover.
Another famous story is about Abu Musa Muhammad ibn Harun al-Rashid: the sixth Abbasid Caliph. He apparently had no interest in marrying a woman yet would regularly sleep with both men and women. His mother was very concerned that he would never be able to produce an heir. She ended up gathering a group of ladies and cut all of their hair very short in an attempt to have him marry one of these ‘male-presenting’ women. In the end, her plan didn’t work. Her son fell in love with a young warrior who then passed away in battle. We know this because he wrote a beautiful poem in this man’s honour describing him in great detail – all the way down to the colour of his eyes and the shape of his body.
In more recent history, in 20th century Iraq, there was a famous folk singer called Masoud El Amaratly who was a part of the Ahwari community. Masoud was born as a girl but was never interested in doing traditionally feminine things. Eventually, he became a shepherd. One day, however, two men attempted to sexually assault him. In self-defence, he beat them up, took off their clothes, tied them up, and walked them back into town in order to shame them. The townspeople were so impressed by his courage, strength, and bravery that they let him live his life freely as a man. In fact, he is usually referred to with his chosen name rather than his birth name. However, when you read stories about him, you can sense that they tiptoe around the issue of him being a trans man by evasively mentioning his ‘very particular lifestyle.’ While the Iraqi people obviously love him – he’s a huge part of their history and culture – there is also a conservative tendency to reject him.
There are many more of these stories on Takweer; it’s a very rich archive that I’ve been building up for the past four years. The entries on the archive are organised by submission date, so what was posted in the beginning is just as relevant as what was posted most recently. Just scroll down and make sure to read all the captions! They’re usually very illuminating. The articles are always bilingual in Arabic and English.
Regarding your upcoming book, The Queer Arab Glossary, could you share with us some of your favourite slang words?
The Queer Arab Glossary
“My favourite word, one that I use with my friends, is the equivalent of faggot. If you wanted to say to your gay friend, for example, something like ‘Shut up, faggot,’ we use tobji in Lebanon. I know that some people might take offense but, whatever, deal with it. I didn’t know what it meant, at first; it’s just a slur that was used against me when I was younger. Because of this book, I finally managed to understand its etymology. So, the suffix at the end of the word – the sound ji – comes from Ottoman Turkish because Lebanon was under the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. It pertains to whatever the word before it is. So, let’s take khodarji, for example. Khodar are groceries so a khodarji would be a grocer. Niswan are women so a niswanji is a womaniser. Going back to tobji, we’ve got the ji. But what about the tob? Obviously, it has nothing to do with top and bottom. I found out that it was actually a word in colloquial Ottoman Turkish that meant gay. The origin of the word has to do with the practice of putting cannonballs inside of cannons which then became slang for gay. So, a tobji is a person who ‘performs the gay.’
The book is divided by dialect rather than by country. We have Levantine, Iraqi, Egyptian, Sudanese, Gulf, and Maghrebi. I decided to forego with nation states as a way to categorise, but I included a legend that tells you in which country each word/phrase is mostly spoken. One of my favourite words is from Tunisia. Shawwaya traditionally means grilling rack. However, there, it’s used to refer to a verse gay man because he has to flip over every now and again like meat on the rack. Another one of my favourites is ‘aqraba which means scorpion. This word refers to a woman, both cis and trans, who’s trying to poach your boyfriend (if speaking about a gay couple).
One thing that’s very particular about queer Arabic slang is, like Arabic, it’s very poetic and very visual. It’s heavy on metaphor. Some phrases really just paint a whole painting with only a couple of words. What I really wanted to capture is that humour and wit alongside this sense of macabre in a lot of the words. They really run the full range of emotions.”
Can you walk us through your investigative research process for The Queer Arab Glossary?
“I used Takweer and its followers as my main sources. In lock-down, which is when this project began, I posted a series of stories with a submission button where I introduced people to the research I was trying to do and asked them to tell me what words they were familiar with from their own languages, slang dialects, and/or localities. I asked them what these words meant to them and who normally uses them. The submissions were endless – just dozens and dozens and dozens of submissions. I then repeated this exercise multiple times and it very quickly grew to a few hundred submissions. It became a collective community project.
After I finished compiling the raw data, I began speaking with people on a one-to-one basis. I spoke with multiple people from each country and locality, people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and those who identify with the different gender and sexual identities along the queer spectrum. I approached people who spoke different dialects to confirm if they were familiar with these submitted words. I also asked if they themselves would use these words as well as which communities generally would. Sometimes you get contradictory accounts (which are both valid), so you have to admit the multiplicity in meanings. With queer slang, whether something is derogatory or endearing is always relative. Who is saying the word defines how it is. You always have to acknowledge both sides.
Then, for the very important final step, I had the honour of working with Suneela Mubayi. She’s a translator and independent writer of Kashmiri, Indian, and American Jewish descent. She’s amazingly fluent in Arabic; it’s wild. She has written extensively about a lot of queer issues, so she joined me as a co-editor of the Glossary. Her extensive historical knowledge gave brilliant context to a lot of the entries which she managed to situate historically, socially, and politically.”
Where do you see yourself in the future? Where do you envision this project going?
“I don’t know, yet, what I would like to do next. I’ve been practising graphic design for over 15 years now, and I love what I do but I can see myself starting to drift slightly away from actively practising it. Maybe I’ll take on an art director role that allows me to create work for myself while maintaining a design practice. I think nothing has brought me more joy than making this book as well as starting and nurturing Takweer.
The thing is: those projects make you no money whatsoever. All that I’ve done with Takweer has been without a single dime – it’s really just a labour of love. But, if I’m able to sustain myself and continue to produce work under the Takweer umbrella, that’s what I would like to do. I have more books in mind. There’s also exhibitions, workshops, and music-related project performance pieces that I have in mind. If I’m able to realise these projects – or even just a small handful of these projects – I would be very happy. But, yes, maintaining a space where I’m able to express my work in a multidisciplinary manner is where I’m at.”
Do you have any advice that you would like to give to other queer Arabs?
“For Arabs, specifically, if you come from a conservative, traditional, or difficult environment that you don’t feel is able to provide you with the love and the care that you deserve and are entitled to, just make sure you reach out to whoever is in your vicinity that can allow you to be embraced. Know that you’re definitely not the first nor will you be the last. Many have walked this path before, and it is possible to find joy and happiness. I know it’s hard, but try not to dwell too much in the harshness of that reality and try to grab whatever power and strength you have and direct it towards finding those people who will be able to provide you with that love. Our situation back home isn’t ideal, but the care is there. You just have to try and look for it.
For queer people around the world, my advice is to not get hung up too much on identity politics. Yes, it’s important to be recognised for who you are. Yes, it’s important to be visible and included. However, you are more than just a queer person; you are a full, complex, and contradictory person with needs, wants, and emotions that sometimes exceed your queerness. I find a lot of us getting stuck on labels and often saying: ‘I’m queer, and that’s what I’m all about.’ Great, Mama, but you are also so much more than that. Explore that and break out of the box that we’ve been trying so hard to break open; don’t put yourself back into it.”
What does feminism mean to you? How does it relate to queerness and everything else that we’ve talked about today?
“To me, they’re the same. You can’t be one without being the other; it’s always been that way for me. I’m very privileged that I was brought up in a feminist family and household. My mother’s side comes from a long lineage of women who have put the man aside and taken control of the ship, so to speak. I grew up with my six aunties and my many female cousins who never even allowed me to not be a feminist. To be honest, I just know that being a feminist is all about being a good and decent human being and not being an arsehole. That’s pretty much it. If there’s any bone in your body that somehow perceives a woman as being any different or any less than a man, then your moral compass is fucked, and you need to get it fixed.
What does it mean to me? It means looking at people as individuals who are multifaceted, complex, and often contradictory and accepting them. The minute you start to introduce hierarchy into any kind of group of people, you’re doing it wrong. It’s about not having hierarchy when you look at human beings. Instead, just look at them for who they are and treat them with that kind of respect. It’s almost banal and redundant to be saying these things, but the basic essence of it is not being an arsehole. That’s it.”
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For further information and to keep up to date with all of Marwan’s work, check out his website and follow him on Instagram at:
To pre-order The Queer Arab Glossary (available June 6, 2024), see here.
Marwan is also selling limited edition prints here to raise funds for the Palestinian Youth Movement. 70% of all proceeds will go towards charity.
Finally, see Marwan in conversation with the Bishopsgate Institute:
Liberation Fronts: Marwan Kaabour
Yalla Feminists! 