After waving a rainbow flag at a Mashrou’ Leila concert in Cairo a young woman is tortured. The band are censored and harrassed right across The Middle East for their support of queer rights.
It was September 2017 and 35,000 fans at Cairo’s Festival City were dancing to the music of Mashrou’ Leila, a Lebanese band. Hamed Sinno, the lead singer and openly queer activist, described the atmosphere as being ‘thick with love and abandon as all the audience were singing along with every word so loudly that we couldn’t hear ourselves singing.’ He noticed two people in different parts of the audience that climbed up on friends’ shoulders and unfurled rainbow flags. The audience cheered. For the rest of the night, Hamed said ‘The crowd felt safe, they felt seen and they felt loved.’ One of the people who had unfurled those gay pride flags was Sarah Hegazi.
Things took a turn for the worse after the concert concluded. Hamed explained that: ‘Egyptian news stations were saying that thousands of perverts had gathered for a gay satanic orgy in the heart of Cairo and that Al-Azhar University had issued a fatwa. Death threats and insults were flying everywhere.’ In fact, as they were leaving Cairo the band heard that there was a warrant out for their arrest.
Then came the audience arrests; over the course of a week after the concert, 75 people were locked up. Some of them were arrested after showing up to fake dates set up by undercover police officers. The media frenzy continued for weeks. Pictures of Hamed and Mashrou’ Leila holding rainbow flags at the concert circulated on social media as proof of the ‘depraved forces threatening to invade Egypt.’ Queerness in the Arab world is always framed as an external threat, corroding the infallible core of Arab morality from the outside in. Video testimonials appeared showing alleged concertgoers confirming it as a demonic orgy. Fake news was everywhere.
A week after the concert 30 year old LGBTQAI+ activist Sarah Hegazi was arrested. The charges initially were “membership of an illegal group… [and] promoting the ideas of the group.” Throughout her three months in detention, Sarah was repeatedly electrocuted, she was beaten, sexually assaulted and tortured. She was eventually released and was given political asylum in Canada.
Three years later Sarah Hegazi took her own life She had previously written of suffering from PTSD, depression and loneliness. She left the following suicide note.
“To my siblings – I tried to find redemption and failed, forgive me. To my friends – the experience was harsh and I am too weak to resist it, forgive me. To the world – you were cruel, to a great extent, but I forgive.”
Her note reflects the unbearable trauma of the violence and the injustice she faced for her sexuality. In her suicide note, Sarah apologised for being “too weak to resist” the freedom that death would give her.
Hamed Sinno and Mashrou’ Leila were devastated by what happened to Sarah. In an interview with Lebanese podcast Sarde after dinner, Hamed was asked if he felt guilty about the arrest of Sarah Hegazi and her subsequent suicide. Hamed, who was clearly deeply troubled over the tragedy, said he had thought about it a great deal and despite a lot of despair said he “shouldn’t feel responsible for the institutions that oppress us.”
He also told the Sarde podcast that: Many a queer Arab has lost lovers, chosen family, friends and comrades. But Sarah’s death cut differently. Grief swept through the queer community and the diaspora faster than the pandemic, and we took to doing what we’ve done for generations: we mourned.
Mashrou’ Leila were banned from Egypt immediately after the concert where Sarah had raised the flag. Then, like falling dominos, other Arab countries also banned them. So the band resolved to perform outside the Arab world. They did several concerts in the US including a Tiny Desk Concert in Washington DC. They were extremely well received in the UK and Europe also.
Mashrou’ Leila sang about love between men in a place where it cannot flourish
Their bold decision to sing about sexuality in a region where this is disapproved of was unprecedented. Take Shem El Yasmine (“Smell the Jasmine”), which is a ballad about a gay relationship where the lovers must abandon each other for a prescribed marriage. It is sung by Sinno as though he is torn between pain and ecstasy. The lyrics in translation are “I would have liked to keep you near me/Introduce you to my parents/have you crown my heart/Cook your food, sweep your home/Spoil your kids, be your housewife.”
In the interview with Sarde after dinner Sinno describes taking inspiration for this song from his first kiss in an alley in Beirut under graffiti challenging the government. The graffiti read: It is forbidden to smell the jasmine. This line reflected how constrained and disenfranchised young people in Lebanon felt at the time.
Hamed Sinno’s powerful lyricism won him adulation across the Arab speaking world and won incredible strides for queer visibility. Another of the band’s controversial songs is Fasaateen, which admonishes a lover for not being strong enough to stay in the relationship but rather buckling under society’s expectations.
The Origins of Mashrou’ Leila.
Mashrou’ Leila are a Lebanese four-member indie rock band: Firas Abou Fakher, Guitarist Carl Gerges, Violinist Haig Papazian and Hamed Sinno as lead singer and lyricist. The band formed in Beirut, Lebanon in 2008 at a music workshop at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Organisers posted an open invitation to musicians looking to come and jam to vent the stress caused by college and the unstable political situation.
It was during this time at the AUB that Sinno came out as queer and began experimenting with subversive lyrics. When Fakher, Gerges, Papazian and Sinno first began jamming together, they had no idea they would receive such adulation and meteoric popularity in the Arab world.
As Sinno said, “we were in the right place at the right time.” It was a time of protests calling for political reform. People were sick of the inequality and the sectarian fighting. Many could relate to Sinno’s lyrics expressing their desires and frustrations, both socially and politically.
It was inevitable that Mashrou’ Leila would garner criticism in Beirut for the candour of their lyrics. They began to raise the ire of conservative and corrupt elements fomenting inequality. This is shown in their track called Lel Watan. The lyrics criticise the ineffectual government. The words are accusatory asserting that whenever one dares to ask about the worsening situation in Lebanon, you are silenced with politicians’ pithy slogans and fabricated conspiracies.
Lel Watan (For the Motherland)
Others have tamed hurricanes to control/steer fate
But by a breeze we’re blown away, and to ruin we abate
And when you dare ask about the deterioration of affairs
They silence you with slogans and conspiracy theories
The masses (literally: herd) accuse you of treason when you demand change in the motherland
They made you despair so that you sell your rights to save the lost motherland
They told you,
“Enough preaching, come dance with me a while”
“Why are you frowning? Come dance with me a while”
They taught you the anthem and said your struggle is good for the motherland
They sedated you in the artery and said your lethargy/apathy is good for the motherland
They told you,
“Enough preaching, come dance with me a while”
“Why are you frowning? Come dance with me a while.”
Mashrou’ Leila return to Lebanon
After ten years of performing together Mashrou’ Leila were back in Beirut in 2019, scheduled to perform at the Byblos Festival. Sinno detailed to Sarde after dinner the hate speech that was posted on his Facebook page the day before the Byblos concert. Online, the campaign against Sinno and the band was being led by right wing Christian militant groups like Jounoud al Rabb (Arabic for ‘the Lord’s Army’). The group, along with other social media users, cited several memes shared by Sinno that they claimed mocked Christian and Muslim faiths. Sinno says that they “were accusing me of things which were completely untrue. They were spreading lies, saying I was a blasphemer and deserved to die and so did any queer people at our concert.”
Philippe Seif, a popular vlogger and advocate of the right-wing Maronite Kataeb Party, said in a post that the band’s “legs should be broken before they try to set foot in Byblos,” adding that the musicians have “insulted both Islam and Christianity.” The band were accused of being satanists. The festival organisers cancelled their appearance ‘to prevent bloodshed and maintain peace and security”.
Mashrou’ Leila condemned what they called a “defamatory campaign with the following statement: ‘We are four Lebanese men from different faiths bonded by our love of music and studying architecture at the American University Beirut… Our goal is to promote our art and shed light on human causes, not more not less… while respecting all faiths and their symbols’.
Mashrou’ Leila have not played together since that concert in 2019, but Sinno has continued a solo career in the US. His latest project was called Westerly Breath and was performed in New York in January 2024. It was an opera commissioned by the MET. The work weaves Ancient Egyptian myth, architecture, immigration, autobiography and the history of speech synthesis to explore the voice as the site of political embodiment.
Kathy Raheb is a teacher and member of the PEN Sydney committee. She has an interest in freedom of speech in The Middle East.