That Lovin' Feeling

September 12, 2008

I confess (my ignorance!): I came here with the utterly false and naïve impression that my interactions with men in this Muslim region were going to be devoid of any sort of feeling akin to love, or any chemistry of that sort. Instead, I find that the situation is exactly the opposite, that the...whatever you call it...is much more intense here than I've felt elsewhere. I feel it when I walk down the streets of Ainkawa, when I do my food shopping at one of the malls, when I talk with the workers here at the school, and even among some of my colleagues. I guess I should not be surprised, after all, the more it is repressed- culturally, religiously- the more intensely it will come, this feeling, in whatever form- lust or something deeper.

'Abdullah Nasih 'Ulwan claims in his book “Islam and Sex” that Islam is not a religion of sexual repression, and that in fact Allah rewards those who, um, act on it. The catch is that you have to do it within the bounds of His laws- meaning in matrimony and not in the act of adultery. I don't whole-heartedly disagree with these ideas, especially the part concerning adultery, but Islam, the way it is described in 'Ulwan's book, does come off as an agent of sexual repression for those who “do not have the means to marry”, or for those who are too young to marry, or choose not to marry for a while, if ever. These unmarried ones are expected to resort to such tactics as “bathing in cold water” and “avoiding spicy foods” and “sleeping on the right side, not on the stomach or the back” and avoiding “intermingling” with the opposite sex (especially the non-Muslim ones) in order to “ease inordinate sexual urges” that would be condemned by Allah if acted upon. Is this one reason why people get married so early here? Hell if that were true about spicy foods, then Koreans would be the horniest of them all...(snort).

I don't know how pertinent the 'Ulwan interpretation is to the lives of Muslims here, who tend to follow a milder form of Islam. It is only clear that the whole range of this feeling- from purely physical sexual attraction to genuine attraction- is not amiss here, and on the contrary, there's a lot of it going around both in the school and on the streets. As for the teachers, well, like I've said so many times so far, we are a group of grown men and women stuck in a compound in the middle of nowhere with only each other's company. And simply put, we are human; when meshed together, we feel the pull of love or lust like we feel the pull of gravity. It's a major part of the human condition, I think, and I was naïve to think that I would be escaping it here in Kurdistan.