Being LGBTQ in Beirut
Life in the increasingly open LGBTQ community in Lebanon’s cosmopolitan capital is far from perfect. But often it’s a lot of fun.
Words by Tim Murphy
Photographs by William Lakin
Illustrations by Steven Wilson
STRINGS OF LIGHT BULBS GLOWED, carpets were laid down, and candles were flickering on the vast rooftop of STATION, an alternative art space carved out of an old factory in the heart of Beirut’s industrial neighborhood, Jisr el Wati. The area is known for its ragtag weekend souk and — more recently — as the home of the Beirut Art Center, which has put Lebanon’s Middle East–meets-Miami-meets-Detroit capital city on the contemporary cultural map.
As a DJ spun electronica and the sun set, you might have thought you were at some arty event in Brooklyn’s Bushwick or Berlin’s Neukölln — except that the 400 mostly young Beirutis of all genders and sexual identities, not to mention religions, were speaking in a mad mishmash of English, French, and Arabic.
Once the music quieted down, Beirutis who identify as LGBTQ, or queer, rose to the mic one by one and told their stories of coming out — first to themselves, then to friends, and then, sometimes, to coworkers, family, and the public — in a city within a country within a region where the very notion of “coming out,” though more common than ever before, remains complicated. “I don’t recall any other time in recent Lebanese history when there was such a large gathering of LGBTQ people sharing their stories without fear,” says Dima Matta, a Beirut university professor who organized the event.
The stories weren’t just brave but funny. Hamed Sinno, the openly gay front man of Mashrou’Leila, whose music has captured free-thinking millennials throughout the Middle East and the Arab diaspora, got up and read a defiant poem about misogyny among gay men. One young man related how his mother took away his smartphone after realizing he was gay, so he surreptitiously bought another to call his boyfriend under the covers at 3 a.m. A woman talked of how she’d been harassed by police for “looking like a boy.” Another brought down the house while recalling how her mother, after learning that both she and her sister were gay, rushed into their brother’s room and demanded, “Tell me now: Are you gay too?” (To which he responded, “Uhhh . . . no.”)
The crowd was not exclusively queer, either. “We had straight parents bring their children to show them that being openly gay or trans was a reality,” says Hadi Damien, 28, an event designer and university professor who co-organized the event. The night was part of Beirut Pride, the city’s first officially branded LGBTQ Pride event, which featured a week’s worth of activities including a Drag Queen 101 seminar, an exhibit on gender-fluid fashion, and — perhaps most boldly — an evening out in which nearly 20 of the restaurants and bars that line the main street in the shabby-chic Mar Mikhael neighborhood agreed to fly rainbow flags.
“I was thinking of doing this for a long time,” says Damien. “And finally last August, I said, ‘Okay, let’s make this happen.’” The week was chosen because it encompassed May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia & Biphobia. “We had legal seminars and movie screenings, but also lots of parties and get-togethers just to let people mingle. It created a very beautiful space. Some people said it wasn’t political enough. I thought that was very stupid. To me, everything queer we do in Lebanon is political.”
Beirut often surprises Westerners, especially Americans. People of a certain age associate it with danger, remembering the sectarian civil war that tore it apart between 1975 and 1990 and made its very name shorthand for hell. But with the exception of a few rocky moments in the 2000s, Beirut — the coastal nerve center of a country smaller than Connecticut where virtually everyone is related by blood, business, or social ties — has been not just stable for 27 years, it’s been booming. Its beguiling mix of arch-windowed Ottoman-era homes and midcentury brutalist towers now rub shoulders with glossy new restaurants and retail buildings.
In many ways, the recent influx of Syrian refugees that has increased Lebanon’s population by a third has enriched it with an explosion of new businesses and workers. And though Lebanon’s parliament has its problems (a sanitation crisis filled Beirut with noxious odors a few summers ago, sparking an enraged civil protest), daily life in the city hums along.
Moreover, those who assume that Beirut must be oppressive toward women and gay people because it is a Middle Eastern capital are often surprised to find a cosmopolitan, religiously mixed city of both devout and secular-leaning Christians, Muslims, and Druze. Colonized by the French in the early 20th century, the country is influenced as much by North America and Europe as it is by its immediate neighbors. Before the civil war, the city was renowned for its culture, fashion, food, and nightlife. Much of that has survived and is now bolstered by a generation of wartime Beirutis who grew up abroad, like STATION founder Nabil Canaan, who transformed the space out of his grandfather’s former factory in 2013 after spending years in Switzerland, Nigeria, and New York. Many new entrepreneurs fly in and out of the country to visit family, friends, and business partners in London, Paris, New York, Montreal, and the Gulf states.
“You have all types of people here, both open-minded and well-traveled and super-conservative,” says Haig Papazian, one of the members of Mashrou’Leila. “Beirut is very lenient compared to the rest of Lebanon when it comes to people who don’t fit the mold and like to dress crazy.”
The city’s LGBTQ community did not spring up overnight. It has its roots in Acid, the legendary wee-hours gay dance club that opened in 1998 and, until its closure in 2010, put Beirut on the queer-tourist map alongside the still-running dance bunker BO18, designed by Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury. Acid gave gay Beirutis, particularly men, a place to congregate and be freely gay together. “I remember how empowering it was to dance and kiss another Arab man on the dance floor of an Arab city,” says London-based writer Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa, a gay coming-of-age novel set in an unnamed Middle Eastern city much like Beirut, where his family has lived on and off.
And though this year was the city’s first official Pride celebration, the LGBTQ community has been organizing since at least 2004, the founding year of Helem (it means dream in Arabic), the country’s first LGBTQ sexual-health and legal services group, which grew out of an underground online community. “Our first two years we were often harassed by the police,” remembers Georges Azzi, the group’s founder, who has gone on to found the region-wide LGBTQ nonprofit Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality. But the group persisted, boldly staging street demonstrations and bringing a generation of straight family members and friends into their movement.
As a result, Lebanon is becoming more tolerant of the LGBTQ community. Crepaway, a popular national restaurant chain, just released a commercial featuring a lesbian couple. A Pew Research Center study shows that though 80 percent of the country generally still rejects homosexuality, Lebanon has the region’s highest percentage of young people who accept it, after Israel. And though gay sex is still categorized as “contradicting to nature” in the country’s often antiquated penal code and people are periodically arrested, several judges have refused to prosecute such cases. Getting that seldom-enforced law stricken from the books once and for all remains a key priority for LGBTQ activists in Lebanon.
“Many of us have to go back to homes, workplaces, and communities where we’re still closeted, are afraid to display affection in public, and hold our breath when the police pass,” says professor Matta. “So the fact that open LGBTQ events can coexist with such oppression is a perfect description of where we are right now. Much has been done, but there’s still a lot to do.”
Meanwhile, there is the sheer buoyancy of queer life in and around Beirut. The mainstream scene revolves around Bardo, a warmly lit day-and-night restaurant and bar on a quiet tree-lined street a short walk from the bustling commercial center of Hamra, where muscle boys work out at Fitness Zone then chill over iced lattes at the nearby Starbucks or the more traditional Café Younes. Bardo, the city’s longest-standing gay-oriented bar, is quiet during the day, with stylish patrons lunching on spring rolls, ramen, wasabi-lime beef medallions, or sandwiches with the delicious fried cheese called halloumi. But it bounces at night, especially weekends, with a mix of western and Arabic dance music from a rolling roster of DJs and screenings of queer films old (The Boys in the Band) and new (Carol).
Many say that a more mixed-class gay crowd converges late Saturdays at the enormous club Posh, near the water in the traditional Armenian neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud. It competes for queer visitors with The Gärten, located partly under a funky geodesic dome, or the Friday-night Ego party at the club Projekt Beirut.
Dark Box on Rue Monnot (the city’s first postwar party strip) is a well-known transgender hangout, but Sasha Elijah, a 20-year-old transgender aspiring model, says she makes a point of hanging out in the come-one-come-all bars of Mar Mikhael. “People tell me they’ve never seen transgender people up close, that they’re surprised to learn not all trans women have double-size lips, tits, and asses,” she says. “Then we have a few laughs together, and they respect me.”
In fact, many queer Beirutis are quick to say that the city’s bar and club scene is blended, with no special need for gay people to seek out hiding places. Nonetheless, lesbians like to meet at the rooftop bar and restaurant Coop d’Etat overlooking the port. And in the summer months, queer and nonqueer social scenes intermingle in Beirut at the Saint-George and Sporting beach clubs — and even as far away as the bucolic Cloud 59 in Tyre, about 90 minutes south of Beirut, with the coastline of Israel dimly visible just 12 miles away. In the heart of Shiite Hezbollah country and boasting some of the most stunning Roman ruins in the world, Tyre features an old port and town center of astounding beauty, popular with regional and European visitors. On the beach, large Muslim families with veiled moms picnic easily alongside jet-setters in bikinis and Speedos smoking cigarettes and drinking Almaza, the main beer of Lebanon, or arak, the licorice-y spirit of the region.
With images like these, it can be tempting to paint Lebanon, Beirut especially, as a kind of libertine, sexually permissive utopia in the midst of a repressive region. That’s not quite accurate. For all its charms, the city, like many around the globe, is rife with inequality and economic hardship for many, and it is a long way from universally sanctioned acceptance of LGBTQ people. The very fact that the city’s Crowne Plaza hotel canceled hosting a Beirut Pride event after receiving threats from an Islamic group attests to that.
Then again, after the queer community protested, several more hotels offered to host the event. And there you have the state of LGBTQ life in this battered yet beguiling city circa 2017. “Social change is possible, but it’s happening slowly,” says Damien. “But if Beirut were a glass right now, I’d say it’s half full, not half empty.”
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF BEIRUT
LOCAL AIRBNB HOSTS SHARE THEIR TIPS
Wake up for a stroll, a run, or a bike ride along the Corniche, Beirut’s renowned seaside promenade, recommends Jay Nehme, whose Airbnb is on Mar Nicolas, in the heart of Achrafieh. “In Beirut, you’ll find people of all races, all religions, hanging out,” says Nehme. “It’s a beautiful combination!”
Indulge in a typical Lebanese lunch, suggests Asdghik Melkonian, who hosts in hip Gemmayzeh. On weekends, it can be an all-day affair, with 20 or 30 appetizers. “Just when you think you’re full, you get main courses — barbecued meat, chicken, and seafood. Wash it down with Lebanese wine and arak. Then it’s time for dessert. It’s a way for families and friends to get together.”She sends guests to the classic Mhanna Sur Mer, in Aamchit.
Head to a rooftop bar such as Capitole, Iris, White, or MYU and watch the sunset while relaxing with an ice-cold Almaza beer, offers Audrey Issa, who hosts in the Tabaris section.
Experience an interactive experimental dance performance and explore underground theaters with cabaret acts from the golden age at Metro Al Madina, says Tino K., a host from the buzzing Mar Mikhael area, known for its bar and restaurant scene. “Mar Mikhael is old during the day and young during the night,” says Tino.
Enjoy the eclectic range of music — from gypsy jazz to blues — at Onomatopoeia, a concept space and music hub in Sioufi, says Abraham Srour from Achrafieh, who likes to point his guests toward hyper-local, underground experiences that you’d be hard-pressed to find in guidebooks.
IT’S BETTER IN BEIRUT
WHAT NOT TO MISS — BOTH IN AND OUT OF TOWN
EAT
TAWLET: Local foodie king Kamal Mouzawak’s immaculately rustic lunchtime buffet (roughly $40) is a temple to traditional Lebanese cuisine, cooked daily by sweet aunties from surrounding villages. Arty international crowd. (12 Rue Naher off Armenia St., +961–1–448–129)
BARBAR: Legendary, longstanding late- night kebab house in the heart of humming Hamra. (Omar Ben Abdel Aziz St., +961–1–753–330) Note: Most Beirut venues lack numbered addresses.
LUX: The trendy place right now. Pricey grilled meats, fish, and vegetables from its own organic farm in an airy, minimal-chic setting. Brunch and regular DJs too. (Rue Al Jamarek, +961–1–444–311)
KABABJI: Cheerful, no-frills Lebanese chain offering great local staples (perfect shawarma, meze, fatteh, fattoush and much more) at gentle prices. Throughout the city.
DRINK AND DANCE
DRAGONFLY: Beautiful amber-lit jewel of a bar that cemented Gemmayzeh as a go-to street in the 2000s. Try nightly concoctions like the Aromatic Smash. (+961–71–127–773)
BARDO MEXICO ST., HAMRA: The only full-time long-running (mostly) gay bar in Beirut is also a stylish spot for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (+961–1–340–060)
BO18 KARANTINA: The (literally) underground club that put Beirut nightlife on the map is still a must-see for its wartime-bunker vibe and a roof that famously retracts to reflect passing traffic on the highway. (+961–1–580–018)
TRAVEL
EAST OF BEIRUT: Friendly English-speaking drivers for City Car (+961–1–780–000) will take you to the Roman ruins of Baalbek, the Ksara and Massaya vineyards for wine tastings, and up into the breathtaking Qadisha Valley to explore its stone monasteries.
NORTH OF BEIRUT: A day trek to Tripoli, with its ancient mosques, souk, and soapmakers, will show you a Lebanese city less westernized than Beirut. Mira’s Guided Tours (+961–70–126–764) will take you in a minibus with the saucy and bohemian young Mira as your host. Summertime? Go to the laid-back coastal village of Batroun and the nearby beach club Pierre and Friends.
SOUTH OF BEIRUT: Another day trip will suffice to show you the ancient coastal city of Sidon with its medieval castle jutting out into the sea. Head to Tyre to walk the seaside Roman ruins — or stay there a few nights if it’s beach weather.
GOOD TO KNOW
CURRENCY
The country trades freely in American dollars as well as the Lebanese pound (LBP), which is one-third bigger than a dollar unit with three zeroes attached. Hence, $10 = 15000 LBP.
SAFETY
Police raids can happen in Beirut. Before going to gay venues, check with Helem (@HelemLebanon), an organization aiming to protect the Lebanese LGBTQ community. Elsewhere, defer to reliable drivers about where not to visit, such as close to the Syria border (an area heavily defended by Hezbollah) or the south Beirut suburbs of Dahiyeh, where Westerners are rare.
BEFORE YOU GO
Read: the recent novels Guapa by Saleem Haddad and An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine.
Follow: Web sites The Daily Star Lebanon (for news), Blog Baladi (smart local gossip), and No Garlic No Onions (a Lebanese foodie blog).
Watch: the films Caramel, a girl-posse delight that made director Nadine Labaki a star; and West Beirut, the 1998 classic about scrappy local kids in 1975, Year One of the country’s 15-year civil war.
Download: the music of Nancy Ajram (pop star), Fairuz (classic diva), and Mashrou’Leila (indie darlings).
About the Author: Tim Murphy is a Brooklyn-based journalist and the author of the novels Christodora and the forthcoming Correspondents (Grove Atlantic Summer 2019), which is set partly postwar Beirut.
