Free Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes by Kamal Al-Solaylee

was a hit. I, of course, wanted to go back to the wardrobe and create a new outfit. That was in the fall of 1972, to the best of my recollection, and it might as well be the curtain closer on a whole life.
    It was the last free display of my latent gay tendencies. The older I got, even while still a child, the less tolerant the family became of my perceived femininity. Whenever I played with a doll or my sisters’ nail polish—the smell of which I adored—it would be snatched away from me and I’d be instructed to join my brothers in a game of football. I still don’t think of my sisters’ and mother’s responses as homophobia as we understand it today, but merely their attempt to shield me from bullying in school. In hindsight, their worried looks whenever I indulged in something unusual for a boy of my age were also watchful, and protective.

CHAPTER FOUR
    CAIRO
    Changes
    I n the years following the 1967 Six Day War, Egypt experienced a massive crisis of faith. The war shattered illusions of military might and nationalist pride that for years Nasser had sold his people. The high tone of nationalist Egyptian culture in the 1950s and first years of the 1960s was replaced by a flippant, defeatist, escapist one. Instead of mining Egyptian folklore to glorify their heritage, many composers and writers turned to local art for lascivious notes. Songs about girls taking baths or refusing to drink tea—”I don’t drink tea; I only drink Coca-Cola” went one lyric of a popular song—became anthems for middle- and working-class Egyptians who felt betrayed by Nasser. At school we were told not to sing or quote lyrics of such baladi , or native songs. They represented a decadence that students of our respectable school were to avoid. But I must admit I wish I was older back then so I could have enjoyed such decadence. What I don’t remember, I’m able to glean from Egyptian movies of the period. One of them in particular, Adrift on the Nile , summed up the mood in a story about an ethical journalist uncovering an underground network of sex and drugs on a houseboat on the Nile. (To my utter surprise, in 2006 a multicultural theatre company in Vancouver adapted the novel by Naguib Mahfouz on which the film was based.)

    We had this picture taken at a photography studio on Tahrir Street in Cairo to celebrate Wahbi’s birthday in 1972. Khairy (left) and I are dressed in vests, the latest fashion, although mine, in shades of brown, is clearly oversized.
    My consciousness as a growing boy in Cairo started with another war against Israel, the war beginning on October 6, 1973, known by Israelis as the Yom Kippur War. No matter how secular you were and how many Jewish families you knew, if you lived in the Egypt of the 1970s, Israel was the enemy. At school, Israelis were portrayed as unlawful occupiers of Palestinian land and killers of children. Our school held several fundraisers and charity concerts for Palestinian refugees during which footage of displaced children and women were shown. Most Arabic families publically used the word “Jewish” as a synonym for someone who exploited or threatened innocent victims. It took years of cultural readjustment and conscious effort to disassociate the two in my mind. The early days of the short-lived war, when it looked like Sadat’s army had the upper hand, shocked many Egyptians out of their complacency and revived the fortunes of the country’s military forces, which explains their continued place in the country’s politics.
    To me the war at first just meant a few days off school. Even though it was fought in the Sinai desert, Cairo was under watch for possible air raids. For my father, who was still largely unemployed and plotting his “comeback,” the war meant a further delay of his business plans. But it was a worthy sacrifice. “Even the date of October 6 has a ring to it,” he’d tell his brother Hussein, who was visiting from Aden at the time. The new military