Hasan Namir
During a recent work trip, I had some downtime and popped over to Santa Cruz, a surf–hippy college town on the Pacific Coast, some 100 km south of San Francisco. Walking around the bijou downtown, I came across the fantastic if unimaginatively named Bookshop Santa Cruz. I could have wandered the shelves for ages, but I spent an alarmingly large amount of money in a distressingly short amount of time.
The shop had a whole shelf of international LGBT authors, whose contents in large part went directly into my shopping basket. A couple of the authors were from countries you would not typically expect to find such writing, including Nigeria, South Korea and Iraq. I was particularly pleased at the prospect of updating my 4,000-year-old previous entry for Iraq with something more contemporary.
Set in wartorn, 2003 Baghdad, God in Pink focuses on Ramy, a young man struggling to find the impossible balance between his sexuality, religion and culture, and Ammar, an imam whose beliefs are tested by his dealings with Ramy. The violent horror of war is made to seem nearly normal, a contrast with the vivd urgency of Ramy's self-doubts and questioning.
Another Middle-Eastern book, along with The Sand Fish from the UAE, where the outcome didn't fall into my Western narrative expectations and was more thought-provoking than its 151 pages would belie.
Another Middle-Eastern book, along with The Sand Fish from the UAE, where the outcome didn't fall into my Western narrative expectations and was more thought-provoking than its 151 pages would belie.
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