I Am You (Ana Hiya Anti): A Novel on Lesbian Desire in the ...

Some sparse representations of homosexual relations (but not identities) by feminist writers such as Hanan al-Sheik and Nawal Sadawi do exist and recently the Saudi writer Sabba al-Harz’s novel al-Akharun made a forceful addition to the scarce literature on the subject. And yet, whether it is Sadawi’s Janat Wa Iblis,³ or al-Sheik’s Misk al-Ghazal⁴ or even Harz’s al-Akharun,⁵ these depictions are lacking in the representation of a lesbian identity. By lesbian here I mean those individuals who are not exclusively driven to such relations due to a patriarchal society in which women are left unsatisfied by their men, but rather because of a seemingly transcendent desire within the subjects themselves (constructionist theories of sexual identity notwithstanding). Siham, the protagonist of I Am You, is a remarkable character because unlike previous literary depictions of lesbianism in the Arab world, she exhibits her interest “in the female form” (page 178) from an early age (that is not to say that this is the ultimate criterion for what makes a lesbian), and her sexual orientation is a fact of her being that she is unable and eventually unwilling to alter. Her orientation, so to speak, is not primarily incumbent on social factors. There is no cliché of deserting husbands or a harsh environment that makes women turn to each other for comfort as we see in Misk al Ghazal, for example, or in the Niazi Mustapha film al-Muta’a wal Azab (c.1971). There is also no evacuation of the representation of such relationships of the sexual desire itself, as we see in al-Akharun; the sexual desire is there and real and very much a driving force.