We’re forgetting everything. We’re forgetting that it’s we Arabs, we Muslims, who shocked the West with our erotic texts in the fifteenth century. We invented the realm of the erotic. We’re suffering from collective amnesia.”

— Nabil Ayouch (Moroccan filmmaker) in ‘Sex & Lies’

A page from a book featuring the title 'Fascinated' with the author's name 'Rana Tawil' and the editor's name 'Caline Nasrallah'. There is also a small illustration of traditional Middle Eastern art showing three women, one sitting on a cushion, within a decorative frame.
Reverse-glass painting in mirrored frame depicting a maiden with a glass of wine, mid-19th century Persia.

“Muslims can turn to a long written tradition, led by scholars, that saw no incompatibility between the needs of the body and the demands of the faith. From the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, when Islamic civilisation reached its apogee, literature and the erotic arts flourished.

From the nineteenth century onwards, the intellectual, political and economic decline of the Arab world seems to have proceeded in tandem with increasingly puritanical views about sex. With the advent of the twentieth century, colonisation was in any case set to impose very restrictive laws in this domain. The aim was to establish a barrier between immigrants from the West and the native women, and so to contain the ‘unbridled’ sensuality of the local population.”

— Laila Slimani in 'Sex & Lies'

Why literature?

Literature offers a vessel to enter what may otherwise overwhelm us when explored in real life before we are ready. It is a deeply safe space to question, to be curious, to observe, to live in the place of our body that feels safest, and yes, for some women, that may mean the mind. I believe you can still have an embodied experience of the erotic within the intellectual corner of the body. Somatic healers who mean well are often inviting us to jump off the ledge of the mind and into the vast, unknown ocean of our bodies, and while there is much beauty and healing there, I also believe the mind lends itself to a lot of play & pleasure that is not so different from embodied erotic experiences.

And when it comes to sensuality, desire, the body, and the erotic, many of us find ourselves stumbling awkwardly into them without much understanding and certainly without the community and space we need to support us. Literary gatherings that are intentional about entering the unfamiliar together and holding space for honest discussions allow us to expand our capacity for what has overwhelmed, confused, or frightened us before. In titration, we enter new territories of our lives and desires through the invitational vulnerability of the writers we will be reading.

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What to Expect

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  • “The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know they are not being met.”

    — Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

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About

Register the in-person course offered in Midtown, New York on Tuesdays 6-8pm

Register for the online course offered on Wednesdays 7-8:30.

Join us in this summer journey into the erotic literature of the SWANA region. In this multi-media course, we will study and discuss a wide range of artistic and literary works, such as the writings of Ghada Samman, Salwa Neimi and Joumana Haddad, the history of Islamic erotic art, the poetry of Forugh Farrokhzad and Nizar Qabbani, the films of Nabil Ayouch and Maryam Touzani, and the art of Yumna al-Arashi and Rotana Tarabzouni, and more. Our discussions on the erotic will be paired with a study on the cultural and religious history and context of the SWANA region. 

The intention of this course is to offer readers a chance to encounter (or expand their knowledge) of the SWANA region within an intimate setting that centers a sensual approach to Arabic art and literature, offering a space for experimental encounters that lend a far more complex and truer portrait of the Arab people.  In this space, the speaker and the one being spoken to are the same: of body and breath. In this neutral and mirroring territory, and perhaps only there, we are able to make far more space to receive the layers, contradictions, and depths of the Arab existence, most of which has long been overshadowed, simplified, or erased by dominant political narratives, even among our own. 

This course offers a somatic approach to literature. We will explore embodied ways of reading that bring together the book and the breath, the words and the body’s response to it. We will begin each session with breath and body work before delving into the week’s reading. In this extended position of survival and trauma, we are often left without the time and somatic ability to make space for narratives that are not urgent and existential. It is a privilege, but a deeply necessary one, to intentionally open to deeper narratives that allow our people to be received by a gaze and body that can experience us beyond our long history of oppression, colonization, and erasure. 

Even the setting of the course is intentional. Literature tends to be studied indoors, within serious settings, using predominately academic language rather than the language of the body —embedded in the space of nature. As an artist, I have independently organized several exhibitions and poetic gatherings that took place outdoors by the river, to begin challenging and questioning the conventional use white spaces that often speak to the status of the artist being received. Outside of academic lecture halls and uptight gallery settings, does the writer, artist, speaker bare no value? And while I have a deep love and respect for academia, and I have encountered many life-changing artworks in gallery spaces, I realize that it often leaves out the body, the divine, and the natural world. The most important elements of life do not participate with us in the knowledge. This severance normalizes rather than questions the relationship (and responsibility) between art and the surrounding world from which it was created from and which also wants to be spoken to and invited into the experience. The past events I have hosted outdoors have taught me just how vastly different art and poetry can be received by the body in the natural world.

This month long course will meet once a week from 7-8:30 EST each Wednesday evening, online [register here for the in-person course on Sunday afternoon in NYC]. By the end of the course, you will have extensive knowledge on the erotic works of SWANA artists. Additionally, participants will be invited to a [separate] writing workshop in which they will have the space and feedback to explore the influence of the assigned reading and group discussions on their own relationship with the body and the erotic. Through prose, poetry, and nonfiction writing, participants will have the chance to examine their beliefs, conditioning, and perspectives on sensuality and desire, supported by the intimate study of vulnerable and revolutionary art and literature.

This course is open to everyone, but I particularly invite those who know very little or nothing about the region to consider this course. Provided you attend with respect, openness, and a willingness to learn, to contribute, to be honest, then you are most welcome, no matter your level of involvement, knowledge, or awareness. 

***You will be assigned to read one book a week and will be emailed a curriculum upon signing up for the course. Please consider the time and commitment you will need to attend. Please do not hesitate to reach out below or at my email with any questions you may have, and I look forward to meeting you soon!

aiyah.sibay.wfp@gmail.com

Schedule

[coming soon]

A woman dressed in a yellow gown sitting on a wooden chair surrounded by open books and papers, with a decorative blue and gold patterned wall and a black tile stove in the background.

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“The space where she meets her god is intimate and womb-like, and profoundly personal. ”
— Wildy Mercy, mirabi starr
A woman dressed in traditional Ottoman attire, kneeling on a patterned rug, with an ornate table in front of her, in a room with vibrant blue tile walls and a window showing greenery outside.
“The undoing of what we never knew was done might be the greatest journey of our lives: the long walk back to the beginning. ”
— Kristin Diable, New Orleans Musician
meet your instructors
A woman holding a book titled 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' while standing against a plain wall. She has long curly hair, is wearing a white top, and has her left arm raised with her hand resting on her head.

Aiyah is a Syrian-American artist, poet, and researcher.

She explores the inherited politics of the Arab woman and her position in the world through her combination of poetry, textile, and audiovisual work. She has spent extensive time in the past three years researching SWANA literature on religion, sexuality, and testimony and has documented her work through her journal ‘Woman and God,’ an online space that brings together personal narrative, autobiographical works, and collective research. She is a student at PIMA and is developing her current project, Brooklyn Bedouin, a collective space for experimental encounter with Arab poetry, history, and art.

Get in Touch

If you have any questions or comments about this course, please complete this form and we’ll get back to you within 48 hours.