Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes (25 page)

It has dawned on me that, despite the passage of time and the different specifics, what my family has been experiencing lately is but a replay of the troubles that started with our expulsion from Aden in 1967. History is repeating itself, but this time without my father to take the family out of harm’s way and find temporary shelter. With my more comfortable income in Canada, I am in fact the best situated of all my siblings to play my father’s role and airlift them to Cairo, which, despite its own post-revolution growing pains, remains the only relatively safe option. I can’t believe that I’m even considering that possibility. Another relocation? And to Cairo?

Even Farida, who lives there, thinks that an exodus to Cairo is not a realistic option, given that there’s no chance any of our siblings or their children will find work. The ongoing clashes between the army and the protestors, and the new outbreaks of sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, mean that certain parts of Cairo are as dangerous as Sana’a.

Still, I feel they’d be safer in Cairo, assuming they’d be willing to budge on their resolution not to move. With twelve nephews and nieces and four spouses in addition to my eight siblings, moving the family would be much more difficult than it ever was for my father. And to move some of them and leave others to face their uncertain future would be unacceptable. “Either we all leave together or we stay together,” Raja’a told me on the phone.

I became even more worried about them when news of the capture and death of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi broke in October 2011. Saleh and Gadhafi had a strong bond, and Gadhafi’s death could strengthen both Saleh’s resolve to stay in power by any means possible and the protestors’ determination to oust him. To my family, the final outcome of the revolution isn’t their main concern. All they want is to be able to live in their own home without waking up to gunshots or explosions. A home where running water and electricity are the norm and not the exception. It’s great that a Yemeni revolutionary, Tawakel Karman, won the Nobel Peace Prize and that a handful of women burnt the veil—while fully veiled—in an act of defiance. All that plays well in Western media and helps advance the narrative of the Arab Spring. But none of it is keeping Yemeni families safe in their beds at night.

As a testament to their endurance and to prove that life must go on, even in the middle of a civil war, my family called with some good news: in late October, my nieces Yousra and Nagala had accepted marriage proposals from two eligible bachelors. In early December, the family enjoyed not one but two engagement parties. I’m relieved that the family can focus for now on new beginnings and happy occasions. In a recent phone call, my sister Hoda said that she’s learned to sleep through late-night explosions. In the past, she’d get up and stay awake. Now she just goes back to bed as if she was woken up by a slamming door or the garbage truck.

After decades of periodically trying (and failing) to banish them from my thoughts, I think of my family all the time now. But I also think of how lucky and privileged I have been to come to Canada and make a home for myself here. The worse the situation gets in Yemen, the tighter I cling to my life in Toronto. The paranoid side of me still thinks that somehow even my Toronto existence may one day be taken away from me. The Middle East has a way of catching up with you no matter how far you run. I find it surreal that I’m writing about it now when in the past I didn’t even want to speak the language or work on an Arab-themed art exhibit. And after decades of turning my back on Arab culture, I have rediscovered its music as if I’d never listened to it before. I love walking around Toronto streets with old Egyptian music playing on my iPod. It has to be music from the 1950s to the early 1970s, a period that conjures up the glory days, when the family felt optimistic and protected even as the world around us was rapidly changing. I can’t listen to any Egyptian music from the last twenty to twenty-five years, as it makes me think of nothing but cultural and emotional decline.

To me, the music I tried to escape is now a form of escapism. The ‘60s music of Abdel Halim Hafez, Shadia and Nagat play so well against the backdrop of the vast and safe streets of midtown Toronto, especially as I take my dog, Chester, for his long evening walks in the summer. “Why do you keep listening to that funny music?” a dog owner I often ran into in the park once asked me, as Shadia’s voice filtered out of my headphones and into the warm summer air.

Long story.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I
ntolerable
is about, for and because of my family. My late parents and sister Ferial will never get to read it, but I know that they’ve shaped my life and this narrative distillation of it. My remaining nine siblings and fourteen nephews and nieces have suffered silently for so long, but civil wars, crushing living conditions and political suppression have failed to change their close bond or love for one another—or for me, the proverbial black sheep, the one who left them behind. To them all,
salamati
and
hobbi.
I think of them every day.

My gratitude and admiration go to my gently tough editor, Jim Gifford, at HarperCollins Canada. In 2010 he was the first to react positively to my book proposal and he maintained that upbeat spirit for two full years. Jim was patient and understanding when I fell behind schedule and thorough and exacting (in a good, even great, way) whenever I handed over sample chapters or successive drafts. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better editor for my first book. I asked him for some (platonic) handholding during our first in-person meeting, and he delivered. I’m also grateful to the incredibly meticulous Alex Schultz for copyediting—more like rescuing—the manuscript with such intelligence and sensitivity. He even corrected my spelling of Arabic words, a language he doesn’t speak. Awesome. Thanks also to Lisa Rundle for her faith in my story and Noelle Zitzer for making the production stages of this book so easy on a nervous, habitually late and occasionally too-sick-to-work writer.

My agent, John Pearce, is another patient soul I’ve kept waiting while working and reworking my initial ideas for this book for over two years. He believed in what I wanted to write even when I had my own doubts. He urged me to open up and share my stories, and I’m so glad I took his advice. Our long lunches in Toronto’s Boulevard Café on Harbord Street made me feel like a writer for the first time in my life. (Full disclosure: Moderate amounts of alcohol were consumed, possibly explaining that writerly feeling.)

The first person I ever discussed this book with was playwright and director Lee MacDougall during a summer afternoon chat in Stratford, Ontario. Thanks, Lee, for listening, encouraging and for suggesting Michael Ondaatje’s
Running in the Family.
Pam Shime read an early draft of the proposal and tore most of my content to shreds. I couldn’t be more grateful. My dear friend and role model Laurie Lynd, a gifted film and TV director, also read the proposal and added his visual panache and strong sense of story structure to it. His advice stuck in my head during the writing process. His later comments about the manuscript were equally insightful. I gave the manuscript to my brilliant friend Noreen Flanagan to read. She encouraged me to open up more emotionally, and I’m so glad I did. Her comments made me see parts of the story I, as a man, couldn’t before.

The
Globe and Mail
’s Focus section, and particularly its editor in 2010, Carol Toller, commissioned the first outing of
Intolerable
as a two-thousand-word article, “From Bikinis to Burkas.” I’m indebted to Carol not just for picking up my pitch but for giving the final piece its shape and emotional texture. The forty-eight hours we worked together were the most intense and rewarding in my life as a journalist. In a career with over fifteen hundred bylines, the final story was by far my most read and discussed. As it went viral, I felt part of a worldwide conversation about Islam, the Middle East and social change. Thanks to everyone who emailed me, sent a message on Facebook or added a comment on the
Globe
’s website. Thanks to Stephen Northfield, Jill Borra and Gabe Gonda, also from the
Globe and Mail
, for commissioning a piece about Cairo in early 2011, and to Rachel Giese and Alexandra Molotkow from the
Walrus
magazine for the opportunity to write about Yemen in the spring of the same year. Excerpts from all three pieces appear at different points in this book.

My colleagues at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism deserve special thanks for supporting this book, which I first mentioned as a dream project in my job interview in May 2007. While much of that support was emotional and intellectual, I was also fortunate enough to receive financial aid from the Faculty of Communication and Design’s Creative Grant program, which covered part of the cost of a trip back to Cairo and Beirut in 2010. Thanks to Dean Gerd Hauck and associate deans Abby Goodrum and Gillian Mothersill for the financial assistance.

My many students, especially in the master’s of journalism class in magazine and feature writing in winter 2011, have heard me talk about the struggle to write a book while holding a teaching job. Thank you all for listening and for being such wonderful, resourceful and talented journalists.

As the book’s dedication to Toronto suggests, I’m in love with this city (and this great country), but it shares my affection with another place thousands of miles away: Hong Kong. I don’t think I could have finished this book without a two-week working holiday (and fourth visit in seven years) to Hong Kong in the spring of 2011. Maybe it’s the former-colony thing, or perhaps it’s just the city’s seductive buzz and optimism that proved so inspiring. Either way, I’m thankful and lucky to have such a gorgeous home away from home.

Finally, I’m extremely fortunate in having so many lovely and kind friends in my life in Toronto and elsewhere. I made a decision not to list any by name for fear of forgetting someone, but they all know who they are. Thank you for being not just my friends but my second—and, at many times in my life, only—family. Almost all of you are reading about my pre-West life for the first time, which is an indication of how difficult it’s been for me to discuss the past—and to write about it here. I hope
Intolerable
will explain why I’ve often stayed silent or avoided the subject of my (and my blood family’s) history.

Love, peace and freedom of choice to one and all.

—Toronto, January 2012

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

K
amal Al-Solaylee, an associate professor and undergraduate program director at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University, was previously a theatre critic at Canada’s national newspaper the
Globe and Mail.
A former staffer at
Report on Business
magazine, he has written features and reviews for numerous publications, including the
Toronto Star, National Post
, the
Walrus
and
Toronto Life.
Al-Solaylee holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham and has taught at the University of Waterloo and York University. He lives in Toronto.

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PRAISE FOR
Intolerable

“[Al-Solaylee] reaches back to his parents’ history, from Yemen in the 1960s through Beirut, Cairo and then back to Yemen through the Arab Spring, in agonizing, heart-wrenching detail. Along the way, he illuminates the complex struggles and historical moments that have shaped the region, all through his very personal vantage point.”

—The Globe and Mail

“[A] forthright and engaging memoir. A gifted storyteller…. Deftly interweaving the personal and the political, and covering more than fifty years of Middle Eastern history, this memoir is anything but nostalgic.” —
Quill & Quire

“Brilliant and utterly mesmerizing…. The book is informative and emotionally satisfying and a credit to Al-Solaylee’s heart-baring skill. It is enthralling, entertaining and a must-read.” —
FAB

“[A] touching account of a gay man’s journey to self-awareness…. The story gains in poignancy against the backdrop of a Middle East beset by conflict, economic decline and the rise of political Islam…. There’s much to commend and like in this book. It’s often a joy to read.”

—Literary Review of Canada

“An important and captivating read for those interested in issues of immigration and homophobia in the shifting social and political cultures of the Middle East. It’s also an inspiration for those who have changed their lives, or will one day, in order to live more openly with their sexualities.” —
Xtra!

“[A]n inspiring story…. Al-Solaylee captures the historical moment in a way that’s real and compelling.” —
In Toronto

“Despite its light-hearted tone, this beguiling memoir tells an intensely emotional story of one family’s eroded dreams…. Unembellished and heartbreaking.” —2012 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize jury citation

“A wonderful new book.” —
Metro Morning
, CBC Radio

“
Intolerable
is a heartbreaking memoir of a man out of place and time. Tracing the Middle East through the 1980s and ‘90s, this is a personal coming-out narrative with a difference.”

—The Sun Times
(Owen Sound)

“An astounding read.” —
Canada AM
, CTV TV

“A fascinating personal story and a history of a once-liberal family transformed by the politics and turmoil of the Middle East.”

—The Next Chapter
, CBC Radio

“This is [a book] about survival and identity on many levels. The whole story is so singular and unlike any biography I have ever read. I could not put it down.” —Macleans.ca

“For anyone interested in the Arab World, for anyone interested in the intellectual formation of a theatre critic and scholar, for anyone interested in gay issues in alternative geographical contexts, this volume is a unique contribution to the field as well as an emotionally powerful read.”
—Critical Stages