This Arab is queer: Takweer’s next steps

Key to Kaabour’s mission? Showing that queer, Arab youth don’t need to solely rely on westernised forms of LGBTQIA+ representation – there’s plenty in the Arabic-speaking world, at least when you know where and how to look. “I recall growing up with plenty of local references, icons, lexicon that seemed to be getting side-lined in favour of a Drag Race-dominated discourse,” Kaabour says. “I wanted to address that imbalance.”

Of course, a digital platform can only communicate so much, which is why the intentions behind Takweer are now set to manifest into another influential form – a book. Due for release in June next year, The Queer Arab Glossary is a study of how queerness is expressed in spoken dialects across the Arabic-speaking region. 

According to Kaabour, queer Arab communities did what any other group would do when it comes to forming an identity: play with language. And because spoken Arabic is rich in diverse dialectic variations, each queer community across the region has its own lexigraphy and set of neologisms – even with the influence of English.

“Expectedly, a lot of slang used by young queers is informed by western slang,” Kaabour explains. “Due to the proliferation of the internet, we see that a lot of English words have entered the Arabic dialects, such as ‘boya’, an Arabisation and feminisation of the word ‘boy’, meaning a boyish girl, which is used across the Gulf region, or botmah an Arabisation of ‘bottom’ which is used in Jordan.”

Divided into eight dialects of spoken Arabic, The Queer Arab Glossary features eight essays by queer Arab writers, activists, artists, and academics to reflect on the glossary’s findings and themes of language and queerness. 

Language beyond borders 

While Arabic is lingua franca across West Asia and North Africa – and has the potential to unite the varied queer communities within these areas – The Queer Arab Glossary doesn’t shy away from the multifaceted history of the MENA region and how this is reflected in language. 

Delving into how slang and colloquialisms reflect colonial histories as well as the languages of minority non-Arab communities, The Queer Arab Glossary highlights Ottoman Turkish words in the Levant, French words in North Africa and Kurdish words in Iraq. 

Rather than being divided into nation-states, the book is grouped together by Arabic dialects like Levantine, Gulf, Egyptian, and Maghrebi. “Nation states are the result of political movements like revolutions, colonisations, and war,” Kaabour explains. “Language, like queerness, is a fluid notion that grows irrespective of political borders.”

Kaabour views The Queer Arab Glossary as the first fully realised project to come out of Takweer, and is building plans to re-envision how audiences can understand the Arabic-speaking region’s own version of queerness. “With the book specifically, I hope that we can take back ownership of our queer lingo, reappropriate derogatory words, and start using it more widely in the face of western words that have for too long been the norm within our communities,” he reflects.

However, for now, the graphic designer takes pride in how Takweer has grown into its own after four years. “I never thought that the ideas I had in my head would be welcomed and embraced in the way they have been,” he says. “It only goes to show the thirst for a space that the queer Arab community can call their own.”

The Queer Arab Glossary by Marwan Kaabour will be published June 2024 via Saqi Books.