Traveled to Kuwait during to interview queer and lesbian-identified Kuwaiti women and their expatriate partners. Topics discussed include community-building, social lives, and family dynamics in a country where being LBGTQ-identified is illegal.

Final ethnography was submitted for the 2018 Kenneth W. Payne Student Prize. All names have been changed.

Excerpts

As the taxi driver wove in and out of ten o’clock traffic, half-lit buildings flickered past. Mansions sprawling behind gates eventually gave way to apartment complexes in need of repair. “Ebrehimi Copy Center please, Baghdad Street.” When we pulled up to my partner’s apartment building, reality began to set in. I had flown halfway across the world to see a woman I had been dating for nine months, and designed an entire project around the trip. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The question that led me to Kuwait was deceptively simple at the start: how did queers expats find community in Kuwait? Unsurprisingly, the asking produced more questions. My partner was a sample size of one. The expat women she knew to were dating Kuwaiti women, would I be interested in speaking with couples? Her friends wanted to meet me, and were interested in talking about their lives. Suddenly the question of community was being approached from standpoint of expat and citizen, and four more women in Kuwait wanted to speak with me.

Just a few feet past Ebrehemi Copy Center, with the perpetually boarded windows and drawn gate, there is a butcher shop with the door wide open. This is a popular location for flies. Today, a ginger cat leans against the butcher shop stairs. Stiff legs are at attention to the dusty sky, back against the ground: every joint is locked in place by rigor mortis. There’s no sign of trauma, no blood, no obviously broken bones. It’s still there when we come home from the gym. That night it rained mud for the second time in two days. The ginger cat is gone in the morning.

Deena laughed. “Go to the mall here, guys are constantly holding hands. So people don’t say anything. She’s my best friend.” Amirah, however, blushed. “I do have to watch my body language around Deena. I mean, look at her. She’s gorgeous.” Amirah and Deena are less cautious with physical affection than Sofia and Rehu— who only hold hands while in the car when other drivers can’t see — and refer back to their thirteen years of friendship, and the high prevalence of “wifey” friendships as the reason. Young women are often seen holding hands in the mall and calling each other “fake girlfriends,” and Deena and Amirah find it easy to fade into that space. They identify as best friends first, and girlfriends second, and their body language shows it. Their relationship started in friendship and a cautious, awkward, dance between “fake girlfriends” and “real Valentines,” until explicitly deciding to change their Facebook relationship statuses. The space between Deena and Amirah on the couch closes as they get more comfortable with our conversation, but they are never close.