Queer Sheik

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In Jeddah, the glass and marble shopping malls of this cosmopolitan and comparatively laid-back Saudi city on the Red Sea have long served as a meeting place for Saudi boys and girls. They slip each other bits of paper with their names and mobile-phone numbers scribbled on them and later meet up in the family sections of the malls' many Western-style restaurants, where mingling of the sexes is allowed.

In recent months, however, Jeddah's malls have also become meeting places for gay Saudi men, who openly make passes at each other. And at a disco north of the city, whose existence is an open secret, gay men gather each week to drink beer (which is also officially prohibited), dance together to Western music, and introduce their partners to friends. Carmen bin Laden, the sister-in-law of Osama bin Laden, recently published a book, in French, in which she tells of lesbian affairs among the kingdom's wealthiest women.

Traditionally, self-identified gays and lesbians who openly displayed their sexual preferences lived in mortal fear in Saudi Arabia. Homosexuality has long been illegal here, and, in theory, the official punishment for sodomy is death. In January 2002, the Saudi interior ministry reported that three men in the southern city of Abha had been 'beheaded for homosexuality,' although one Saudi diplomat said the men were executed for raping boys. Periodically, gay Westerners in the kingdom were fired from Saudi companies. One long-term expatriate says employers have told friends of his, 'You have 24 hours to leave the kingdom, or we'll inform the authorities of your behavior.'

But in some Saudi cities the authorities have started to look the other way. In part, the government has realized that the thousands of Saudis who have recently returned from the United States because of stricter visa policies, and who are relatively liberal-minded, are unwilling to countenance such harsh antigay policies. 'I don't feel oppressed at all,' said one gay man, a 23-year-old returnee from the United States who was meeting in a coffee shop with a group of gay Saudi friends dressed in Western clothes and speaking fluent English.

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