Who we can desire & who has the right to desire are neither “white” nor “Western” concerns. They are there in my heritage, as a woman born in Egypt to a Muslim family, whose first language is Arabic.
Conversation
Listen to the open, unabashed desire of I’timad Arrumaikiyya, an 11thC Arab poet:
"I urge you to come faster than the wind to mount my breast and firmly dig and plough my body, and don’t let go until you’ve flushed me thrice."
Arab & Muslim female poets speaking desires! 👇🏽
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My essay My Desire, My Freedom is available as an audio essay here
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And here is Hafsa bint al-Hajj Arrakuniyya, a twelfth century poet who was considered one of the best Andalusian poets, free with her desire:
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Read my essay to find out why so few of the works of those boldly and freely desiring Arab and Muslim female poets, who so fearlessly speak about their desires, are available today
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Who among us is raised to desire freely? When desire is surrounded by silence & taboo, the most vulnerable who are hurt-esp girls & LGBTQ folks.
To desire & to be desired is political. How we fuck & who we fuck is political. Always the goal: to be free.
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The most subversive thing a woman can do is to talk about her life as if it matters. Because it does.
Her desire, especially when she is not supposed to desire or to be desired, is especially disruptive.
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Have you read Rings of the Dove? Highly recommended because it's highly entertaining. It's primarily male oriented, but the gay stuff is also delicious. I used some stories in Hakawati.
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Will definitely look this one up. I know The Perfumed Garden, which begins "I praise God for the cock and the cunt" or something like that! Sheikh Nafzawi!
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Ooh that's good. But now I'm thinking maybe it was Ahmad al-Tifashi, The Delights of Hearts that I was thinking about. Both are good. Hearts may have the chapter that explains sleepwalking, which is how you fuck another guy and pretend you were sleepwalking!
And it opens with one of my all times favorite openings:
Praise be to God, Who has so disposed matters that pleasant literary anecdotes may serve as an instrument for the polishing of wits and the cleansing of rust from our hearts.
Ahmad al-Tifashi, The Delights of Hearts
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That’s beautiful

