Midnight in Todra Gorge

Midnight, that time when dreams are shattered, when waking and sleeping are nothing but myths. When boys that you once thought of as brothers try to take your hands and hold you under the starlight, which might be romantic if it weren’t so wrong.

I wish that there were some way of saying that there’s not a snowflake’s chance in the hottest hell that I would ever get together with any guy here. I can’t believe that Mohammed of all people tried to pick me up. I’ve told him that I have a "boyfriend". He asked about my "boyfriend" when he saw me today, right when I came in. So he knows that I’m with someone, even if he doesn’t know the whole truth about that person. Why should it matter if they’re half a world away? My heart belongs to someone else, and that’s the important thing.

There are bugs flying around my room in Taborihte, where I lie on the bed in my underwear to avoid the heat, smelling of rosewater and frustration. After Mohammed tried to hold me on the terrace I fled (meaning that I calmly said that I needed to leave now), and then I went to the terrace in the new part of the hotel, where I stood on the unfinished roof and railed against the universe for making these boys a recurring theme in my life.

Why do men fall in love with me? Or rather, why are they attracted to me, since I can’t very well call whatever they’re feeling “love”. I don’t know why, I just know that they constantly do so, and it ruins what could be perfectly nice friendships when people try to bring sex or romance into the mix. I don’t like boys. I don’t even really like girls either. I like androgyny, which is difficult to find and hard to explain. I might describe myself as a lesbian or bisexual, but they’re simplistic labels for something more complex. I like people who fall into the middle of the gender spectrum. In general I prefer them to be female bodied. I have found some male bodied people to be attractive, but attraction is as far as it’s ever gone. My partner is female on the outside (except when in drag) and genderqueer on the inside, which is how I like it. I like people to be complex.

A while ago there was a night in the desert much like this one. Mubarak took me on a walk in the Sahara at night, wanted to get together. When it became clear that nothing was going to happen he said in frustration that he didn’t understand what was so complicated. “You’re a pretty girl,” he said, as though it was as simple as that, as though the simple fact that we were male and female in the moonlit Sahara should make me fall into his arms and swear that I would be forever his. As though a queer American female with a liberal arts education and literary ambitions and a straight Moroccan Berber man who lives as a semiliterate nomad in the desert should suddenly be perfectly compatible. As though our differences must suddenly make no difference at all. And it’s not that I don’t respect him as a person or think that he doesn’t have value. We could have immense amounts to teach one another. The problem is that he wants it to be in the context of love or lust. And, as many men in Morocco are coming to find out, I’m really a heartless bitch when it comes to men. They throw themselves at me and they mean nothing to me, so I toy with them without meaning to. I’ve probably broken several hearts. I’m really not entirely displeased. It’s retribution in kind for angst.