The conversation wasn’t the same after that came up. He took the hint and moved on in the conversation. “Well that’s an awfully personal question,” I told him. Like how this is the Middle East and they don’t take too kindly to LGBT folks! I had no idea what to say, l so I clammed up and gave an answer I never thought I’d give. Did this Nubian guy I’d just met just ask me if I was gay? A million thoughts ran through my head.
“I see on TV that in America some men don’t marry women, they marry other men. Most people would stop at that, but he continues. He gets to asking me the basic questions that I’m used to hearing when I travel. His purpose here? Selling tours, he had explained, but we’d already moved past the point that I was not going to buy one. Instead he spent his time living in this tiny house that he shared with several other families. He was married and had children, yet his wife and kids lived in a different village. After chatting a bit and quelling any initial fears of his ulterior motives, he felt comfortable asking me to join him at his house for tea.Īs we sat there on a wooden bench in his rather barren-looking front yard, he told me a bit about his life.
I noticed mostly the way he was dressed: he wore a full length shirt that extended all the way down his legs. This man did not look like the other Egyptians I had seen. So I was understandably skeptical when a tall, slender, middle-aged man asked me “Have you been to the Nubian Village?” I’d spent the entire day fending off overzealous vendors across the river, many of whom approached people with a certain level of desperation thanks to the fact that hardly anyone is visiting Egypt these days. It all started when I was wandering along the west bank of the Nile River. But what if you knew that there could potentially be a fairly violent reaction to such a revelation? Would you still be so “out and proud?” That was the thought going through my head one warm afternoon in January in Luxor, Egypt, known for being the site of the Valley of the Kings. I never thought there would be a day where I’d hesitate to tell someone my sexuality. Read on for one glimpse of what gay travel in Egypt is like.ĭid you know that people are commonly arrested for being gay in Egypt?Īs an out gay man, I’m used to living a very open life. In this guest post by our friend Aaron of Aaron’s Worldwide Adventures, he tells a story of his time in Egypt, highlighting what he perceived as a possibly dangerous situation and his mixed feelings about so quickly jumping right back in to the safety of the travel closet.