Kreuzberg has been home for decades to large populations of Turks and Kurds, many of whom have very conservative religious values. Outside the boom of loud firecrackers can be heard, the first test rounds for the annual cacophony here that leaves New Year’s revelers ears’ ringing. “We take care that religion is not mixed in here, not in the music either.” Souad said, and an intentional distance from anything Islamic. The space is decorated with bright yellow wall hangings depicting elephants, camels and even a flying carpet, with an intentional degree of kitsch, Ms. for six years and performs all over the world.
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She has been a full-time professional D.J. Ipekcioglu spins everything from Turkish and Arabic music, to Greek, Balkan and Indian, a style she calls Eklektik BerlinIstan. When several circle dances halay in Turkish broke out at once, the floor began to shake from the stomping.įatma Souad, a transgender performer and Gayhanes organizer, before dressing for a Gayhane party last week. Beats from traditional drums crossed with electronic ones, as melodies from flutes and ouds intertwined. Under flashing colored lights, guests, some with dreadlocks and others with carefully gelled coifs, moved to songs by the likes of the Egyptian Amr Diab and the Algerian Cheb Mami. Dancing, she was all fluid motion, light on her feet, expressively twisting her hands and swiveling her hips. Souad mixed a white turban and white net gloves with a black tuxedo with tails and a silver cummerbund, her face made up with perfectly drawn eyeliner and mascara. The club was packed by midnight and still had a line out the front door. Souad started Salon Oriental, her first belly dancing theater, in 1988, and threw the first Gayhane party hane means home in Turkish in January 1997. She studied to be a dressmaker and played in a punk band, but discovered Middle Eastern music through a friend and began teaching herself belly dancing. Souad came to Berlin in 1983 after leaving home as a teenager. Souad, 43, a transgender performer born in Ankara as a boy named Ali, has put on the party for over a decade. “Depending on which part of Berlin I go to, in one I get punched in the mouth because I’m a foreigner and in the other because I’m a queen,” said Fatma Souad, the event’s organizer and master of ceremonies. To be a gay man or lesbian with an immigrant background invites trouble here in two very different ways. Safety and secrecy come up regularly when talking to guests, who laugh and dance, but also frequently look over their shoulders.
“When you’re here, it’s as if you’re putting on a mask, leaving the everyday outside and just having fun,” said a 22-year-old Turkish man who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear that he would be ostracized or worse if his family found out about his sexual orientation. That is more difficult if one is both Muslim and gay. They were there for the monthly club night known as Gayhane, an all-too-rare opportunity to merge their immigrant cultures and their sexual identities.Įuropean Muslims, so often portrayed one-dimensionally as rioters, honor killers or terrorists, live diverse lives, most of them trying to get by and to have a good time. Nothing unusual given the German capital’s large Muslim population.īut most of the people filling the dance floor on Saturday at the club SO36 in the Kreuzberg neighborhood were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and of Turkish or Arab background. BERLIN Six men whirled faster and faster in the center of the nightclub, arms slung over one another’s shoulders, performing a traditional circle dance popular in Turkey and the Middle East.