Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 23, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, August 18, 2006 Page: 32 of 72
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view points
In the middle of conflict, a personal truce
War in the Middle East prompts cease fire between
conservative father, gay son — but will it last this time?
It seems to take a Middle East
war for me to be able to call a
cease tire with my father.
That is because there has been
a personal, more private war
going on between Sabir, my
Palestinian father, and me, his
gay son, for nearly two decades.
Our war, of course, does not
involve bombs or bullets. But in
it, there have been plenty of
explosions, lives have gotten
ripped apart, and in its wake there
has been more than enough suf-
fering.
The battle between my father and I began
more than 20 years ago, when my parents acci-
dentally found out their only son was gay.
My mother, an American raised in the South,
progressed from thinking I was mentally ill, to
eventually volunteering for AIDS organizations
and helping drag queens get dressed for their
shows and marching in gay Pride parades.
But the leap was too big for my father.
As the years went by, a Cold War of sorts set
in between us about my sexual orientation. He
refused to talk about it. I refused to stop talking
about it.
When Sabir retired in 1988 and moved with
my mother back to the Middle East, I couldn't
help but think it was at least partially to escape
me.
But he could not escape the knowledge that I
would not give him a grandson.
Soon after their return to the Middle East, the
news came that after 30 years of marriage, Sabir
was divorcing my mother to marry a woman half
his age. If his only son would not produce the
obligatory grandson, he reasoned that the burden
of carrying on the family name once again
became his.
My mother, left heartbroken and penniless,
moved back to the United States to live out her
final years with the gay son she had come to
embrace.
And at the age of a grandfather, Sabir became
a new dad again.
He eventually fathered four more children,
two daughters and two sons. But as far as I was
concerned, he had lost his oldest son, me, forev-
er.
Mubarak Dahir Currents
Strangely enough, throughout
this entire time, Sabir continued
to write me letters, professing he
loved me, but insisting that I was
sick and needed mental help.
Out of a sense of loyalty to my
mother, I never answered those
letters. But I did save them, and
still keep them tucked away in a
filing cabinet, tied together by a
rubber band as fragile as the bond
that holds together a father and
son who have not seen one anoth-
er in 17 years.
Then, a few years ago, after my mother's
death, I somehow felt compelled to answer one
of those letters and strike up a tenuous relation-
ship with Sabir. Perhaps I hoped that maybe time
had worn us both down enough that we could
find some sort of compromise relationship,
44
The battle between my father and I
began more than 20 years ago, when
my parents accidentally found out their
only son was gay.
55
Sabir seemed happy to hear from me. But he
showed no remorse for what he had done. And at
some point, I finally accepted he would never say
he is sorry.
And Sabir put an unconditional demand on
our truce: He does not want to hear the gay
details of my life.
After sacrificing so much to be openly gay, I
doubted whether I could accept this stipulation
for a cease fire. It wasn't long before I lost heart
in our fragile, faltering, and flawed peace
process. Our contact dwindled to the occasional
e-mail.
But now, once again, there has been a horrible
war in the Middle East, and suddenly, in the face
of so much destruction and bloodshed, the years
and obstacles separating me and Sabir seem
smaller.
Despite all the hurt and anger, I still worry for
his safety whenever Israel flexes its military
might with typical hubris and disregard for civil-
ian life. No matter what happened between me
and Sabir, I do not want him to end up a casual-
ty of war. How more than ever, that seems like a
tangible, constant fear.
Most of the news these past few weeks has
focused on the horror of Lebanon. But there is
also another front, the forgotten front with the
Palestinians, primarily in Gaza, but also in the
West Bank.
Israeli soldiers have killed close to 200
Palestinians since June, mostly civilians, accord-
ing to the BBC. Several hundred more
Palestinians have been injured, and the devasta-
tion and destruction to homes, buildings, roads
and power plants has been colossal.
Though there is now a shaky cease fire in
Lebanon, no such agreement exists in the
Palestinian territories, and observers fear the sit-
uation there could get worse. So this time, I skip
the e-mail to Sabir and instead pick up the phone.
The connection is tenuous, and it is hard to
hear Sabir's voice when he answers his cell
phone. Yelling over the static and the years of
estrangement, Sabir tells me that he and his fam-
ily are fine, though life has become very difficult.
There are more military checkpoints, and it is
more and more difficult to get past them, even
when going from the small village where Sabir
lives to the closest major town just a mile away.
Israeli soldiers from the nearby army base con-
tinue to conduct military exercises in the streets
of the village. Sabir believes it is a scare tactic, to
remind people that the occupation is still there,
that the war goes on.
It works, Sabir says. He is scared.
I think about our own, personal war as Sabir
fills in the details of the larger one that engulfs
him. He talks about the prospects for an end to
the war, the political one on the ground there, not
the personal one that sits uncomfortable and
unspoken between us.
The Israeli government has said that as early
as next year it may move some of its troops and
settlers out of the West Bank. It is most often
described here as a "withdrawal," but Sabir says
Palestinians see it as a finalized land grab.
When we hang up the phone, I do something I
haven't done for 17 years: I cry over a peace I
know will never come.
Mubarak Dahir is editor of the Express Gay
News in Foil Lauderdale, Fla.
E-mail Mubarakbah@a0l.com
44
44
"I believe we can get it down at least a "I believe that we can get there on the
knowledgeable
sources "
penny before we hit
you with the
increase on the
bond package."
Mayor Laura Miller
about her plan to cut city
properly taxes
55
one-cent reduction, and
I'm going to help her
do that."
City Council member
ttd Oakley about his
support of the mayor's
tax-cut plan
55
44
"Here! was there.
It just wasn't accessible."
Gary Underwood, communidations director for
I ime Warner Cable's North Texas Division, about
the problem viewers had locating Here! on the
.com pa ny's-.d ema nd service
55
32 I dallasvoice.com I 08.18.06
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Vercher, Dennis. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 23, No. 14, Ed. 1 Friday, August 18, 2006, newspaper, August 18, 2006; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth238922/m1/32/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.