Author's note: I thank Zeina Halabi, Yoav DiCapua, and Benjanin Brower for their invaluable feedback on this article.

¹ Bareed Mista3jil: True Stories (Beirut: Meem, 2009), 34.

² Gopinath, Gayatri, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Mahfuz, Najib, Hams al-Junun (1938), in al-Muʾallafat al-Kamila, 4 vols. (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnan, 1990), 1:5Google Scholar. My translation.

⁴ For an article on lesbianism in modern Arabic literature, see al-Samman, Hanadi, “Out of the Closet: Representations of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature,” Journal of Arabic Literature 39 (2008): 270–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Massad, Joseph, Desiring Arabs (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Najmabadi, Afsaneh, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005).Google Scholar

⁷ See Ze'evi, Dror, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006)Google Scholar and El-Rouayheb, Khaled, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World 1500–1800 (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2009).Google Scholar

⁸ Amer, Sahar, Crossing Borders: Love between Women in French and Arabic Medieval Literatures (Philadelphia, Penna.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Traub, Valerie, “The Past Is a Foreign Country? The Times and Spaces of Islamicate Sexuality Studies,” in Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire, ed. Babayan, Kathryn and Najmabadi, Afsaneh (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies Press, 2008), 1–40, 2.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Foucault, Michel, History of Sexuality, Vol. I, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York: Vintage Books, 1990)Google Scholar; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); and History of Madness, trans. Jonathan Murphy (New York: Routledge, 2006).

¹¹ “Modernity is a project—or rather, a series of interlinked projects—that certain people in power seek to achieve.” Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 13.Google Scholar

¹² al-Shaykh, Hanan, Innaha London ya ʿAzizi (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 2001).Google Scholar

¹³ Golayyel, Hamdi Abu, Lusus Mutaqaʿidun (Cairo: Dar Merit, 2002)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Mahfuz, Najib, Zuqaq al-Midaqq (1947), in al-Muʾallafat al-Kamila, 4 vols. (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnan, 1990), Vol. I.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Barakat, Huda, Hajar al-Dahk (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1990).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Wannus, Saʿd Allah, Tuqus al-Isharat wa-l-Tahawwulat (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1994)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ al-Hirz, Siba, al-Akharun (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 2006)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ al-Aswani, ʿAlaʾ, ʿImarat Yaʿqubyan (Cairo: Dar Merit, 2002)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Massad, Desiring Arabs, 174.

²⁰ Foucault, History of Sexuality, 43.

²¹ Ibid., 57.

²² Dina Al-Kassim, “Epilogue: Sexual Epistemologies, East in West,” in Islamicate Homosexualities, ed. Babayan and Najmabadi, 297–340, 300.

²³ Apter, Emily, The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Gopinath, Impossible Desires, 13.

²⁵ al-Shaykh, Hanan, Only in London, trans. Cobham, Catherine (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001), 1Google Scholar.

²⁶ For a reading of cultural hybridity and acculturation in the novel, see Fischer, Susan Alice, “Women Writers, Global Migration, and the City: Joan Riley's Waiting in the Twilight and Hanan al-Shaykh's Only in London,” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 23 (2004): 107–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Hout, Syrine, “Going the Extra Mile: Redefining Identity, Home, and Family in Hanan al-Shaykh's Only in London,” Studies in the Humanities 30 (2003): 29–45.Google Scholar

²⁷ Al-Shaykh, Only in London, 2, 5.

²⁸ Ibid., 3. Samir is an unknowing trafficker: the pet monkey he was paid to deliver to its dying owner in London was in fact made to swallow diamonds.

²⁹ Al-Shaykh, Innaha London, 7.

³⁰ Al-Shaykh, Only in London, 3.

³¹ Hayyan al-Samman, Muhammad, Khitab al-Junun fi al-Thaqafa al-ʿArabiyya (London: Riad el-Rayyes Books, 1993), 58Google Scholar. In the context of the Ottoman Empire, the shadow-play character Karagoz could also be mentioned as a site of performative resistance to social and political order and morality. See Ze'evi, Producing Desire, 125–48.

³² ibn Manzur, Muhammad ibn Mukarram, Lisan al-ʿArab, 18 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ihyaʾ al-Turath al-ʿArabi, 1988), 3–4:217–21Google Scholar.

³³ See, for instance, Rouhi, Leyla, Mediation and Love: A Study of the Medieval Go-Between in Key Romance and Near-Eastern Texts (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 148–49.Google Scholar

³⁴ Allen, Roger, An Introduction to Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Al-Shaykh's use of the monkey in the novel is reminiscent of George Michael's 1987 song “Monkey.” The chorus goes as follows: “Why can't you do it? Why can't you set your monkey free? Always giving in to it, do you love the monkey or do you love me? Why can't you do it? Why do I have to share my baby with a monkey?” See http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/george_michael_lyrics_138/faith_lyrics_701/monkey_lyrics_7949.html (accessed 1 May 2010). Furthermore, the expression “having a monkey on one's back” characterizes a drug addiction. In this context, Samir's sexuality, which he tries to tame through sedatives on the plane, coincides with addiction. While London operates as the junkie's paradise, the addiction characterizes an all-consuming passion that must be expressed, like Majnun's.

³⁶ Al-Shaykh, Only in London, 3/Innaha London, 8.

³⁷ There are many references in the text to the monkey as majnūn; see, for example, Only in London, 44.

³⁸ Ibid., 88.

³⁹ Ibid., 91.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 91–92.

⁴¹ Foucault, History of Sexuality, 78.

⁴² Al-Shaykh, Only in London, 92–93.

⁴³ Ibid., 150.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 89–90.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 149.

⁴⁶ See Harvey, Keith, “Describing Camp Talk: Language/Pragmatics/Politics,” Language and Literature 9 (2000): 240–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁷ Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), 185.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ al-Shaykh, Hanan, Hikayat Zahra (Beirut: Dar al-Adab 1980).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ In one instance, and realizing the precarious nature of her situation, Zahra decides to act by committing an act of junūn: embarrassing her husband at a dinner party by dressing up in a flamboyant manner and dancing for the guests. This performance alienates her husband and leads him to divorce her. From junūn's association with depression to junūn as an act of resistance to social norms, Zahra, in this one instance in the novel, appropriates a form of drag to protest social normativity and propriety. See al-Shaykh, Hanan, The Story of Zahra, trans. Ford, Peter (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 91.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Golayyel, Hamdi Abu, Thieves in Retirement, trans. Booth, Marilyn (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2006), xiv.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Mahfuz, Najib, Awlad Haritna (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1962).Google Scholar

⁵² Once he bought women's clothes, including a “blūzah [body] bidūn akmām” (sleeveless body: “body” is left in English in the Arabic text), but was prevented from wearing them by his brothers and especially by Gamal. Abu Golayyel, Lusus, 19.

⁵³ Abu Golayyel, Thieves, 12.

⁵⁴ Abu Golayyel, Lusus, 28–30.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 14.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 16.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 28. For the etymology of ikhtifāʾ, see Ibn Manzur, Lisan, 5–6:116–18.

⁵⁸ Abu Golayyel, Lusus, 27.

⁵⁹ Foucault, Discipline, 3.

⁶⁰ See P. N. Boratav et al., “DJinn,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs. Brill Online, http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_COM-0191 (accessed 15 October 2007).

⁶¹ Abu Golayyel, Lusus, 85.

⁶² Ibid., 28.

⁶³ Abu Golayyel, Thieves, 12.

⁶⁴ El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 85.

⁶⁵ Hassan al-Imam (1919–88) was a prolific Egyptian filmmaker who adapted to the screens such Mahfuzian novels as Midaq Alley (1963), Bayna al-Qasrayn (1964), and Qasr al-Shawq (1967).

⁶⁶ Lagrange, Frédéric, “Male Homosexuality in Modern Arabic Literature,” in Imagined Masculinities: Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East, ed. Ghoussoub, Mai and Sinclair-Webb, Emma (London: Saqi Books, 2000), 178.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Mahfuz, Zuqaq, 660.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 686.

⁶⁹ Ibn Manzur, Lisan, 3–4:225–26.

⁷⁰ Mahfuz, Zuqaq, 684.