Beirut, the Provincetown of the Middle East

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Dancing goes on until dawn at Acid, one of the citys best-known gay clubs.

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THE pre-party began at 9 p.m. in Bertho Maksos room at the Bella Riva Suite Hotel, and by 9:05 p.m. the air was awash in cologne, hair spray, cigarette smoke and gossip about the night ahead. Would a certain 20-something from West Beirut be at the beach party? Had the two men from Cairo arrived yet? Was the cute D.J. from Bardo, a gay bar here, going to be spinning? And did anyone need condoms?

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The last question came from Bertho, a 28-year-old Lebanese tour operator who was the host of the main event that Thursday night in June: the Bear Arabia Mega Party, at the Oceana resort about 30 minutes south of Beirut. Scores of gay men most of them bears, a term used the world over for heavyset, hairy guys usually older than 30 were coming from across Lebanon and the Arab world, as well as Argentina, Italy, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere. Bertho had been picking them up at the Beirut airport since morning, and he looked exhausted as he handed out fistfuls of condoms to the dozen men in the room.

So many questions today about what gay Beirut is like, he told me. Im just like, Wait and see, youll like it, youll like it!

Tipping back a Red Bull on the sofa was Roberto Boccia, who was in from Rome for the event. In his 40s, wearing a white T-shirt and khaki shorts, Roberto said he was surprised by the brio of Beirut compared with gay life in Rome, and said he was going to spread the word back home. Some of my friends are still scared to come here, because of the wars, and because its harder to be gay here than in Europe, he said. But I say, we have to win this. Were gay, we overcome things.

At that moment Berthos boyfriend, Rob, a very young Justin Timberlake look-alike, stumbled in from a side bedroom. He lifted his T-shirt, which read Maniac 65, to show off a sliver of his toned, tanned torso, and flashed a dazzling smile.

The room went quiet.

O.K., Bertho said to no one in particular, we should probably leave soon.

While homosexual activity (technically, sexual relations that officials deem unnatural) is illegal in Lebanon, as in most of the Arab world, Beiruts vitality as a Mediterranean capital of night life has fueled a flourishing gay scene albeit one where men can be nervous about public displays of affection and where security guards at clubs can intercede if the good times turn too frisky on the dance floor. But even more than the partying, Beirut represents a different Middle East for some gay and lesbian Arabs: the only place in the region where they can openly enjoy a social life denied them at home.

Asu, a 35-year-old gay man visiting from Damascus who, like many men interviewed in Beirut, asked that his surname not be published said that only two close friends in Syria knew that he was gay and that there were no bars, clubs or cafes in Damascus where gay Syrians felt at ease.

I thought I would meet other gay men at university in Syria, but it didnt happen, and then I thought as an adult man living in Damascus that it would happen, but it hasnt, said Asu, who was nursing a club soda at Wolf, a gay-friendly bar near the American University in Beirut. Im 35 years old. I feel very lonely at home. Theres only the Internet for me, to e-mail with other gay men. The Internet, and Beirut. I try to come here every year now, because it is a relief.

While homophobia is not a rampant problem in Jordan, according to Abdul-Azeem, a gay man from Amman, he has not found enough openness to start a relationship with a man. Instead, he said, he has been dating a Beirut man long-distance for the last nine months.

We met on my last trip here, said Abdul-Azeem, who is 25, and spoke during a visit to the new Beirut Arts Center on a 90-degree afternoon in June. I hope we will be in love in the future. But I had to travel here to find a man who maybe I will love. I wish we were together every day.

Gay life in this city is still inching out of the shadows, to be sure, but it seems to have developed a steady forward momentum since the end of Lebanons 15-year civil war in 1990 and especially in the calm that has followed the brief 2006 war between Hezbollah forces and Israel.

Bars have opened, and old ones are into their fifth or sixth year of sponsoring annual parties and music festivals. Some yacht clubs and hotel pools have gained a reputation as popular spots for gay men to hang out and flirt. Internet chat sites like Manjam (www.manjam.com), self-described as a gay social network for dating, work and travel, have taken off; several gay men here had no inhibitions telling me their Manjam profile screen names. And, by anecdotal accounts, gay men and women from other Arab countries and the West are increasingly vacationing here a choice that is all the more sexy and thrilling for some because they feel they are living on the edge and discovering a gay culture that is freshly evolving.

During the mid-1990s, a few small cafes in Beirut became popular gathering places for gay men not only for groups of friends, but also for men who had chatted on the Internet and wanted to arrange a safe place to meet. One such spot, Café Sheikh Mankoush in the Hamra district, also installed computers that gay men used to chat online with others in Beirut, Bertho said.

In the years since, Lebanon has become one of the most liberal Arab counties when it comes to sexuality and sexual behavior, according to Michael T. Luongo, the editor of the 2007 book Gay Travels in the Muslim World, which was translated and printed in Arabic this summer by a Beirut publishing house, Arab Diffusion. (Travel guides to Beirut are not plentiful, particularly ones that might be helpful for gay and lesbian travelers, but one useful publication is A Hedonists Guide to Beirut, published by Hg2 Guides. It can be bought on Amazon for $14.78.)

Whats interesting is that the Arab areas that were once controlled by the French, like Lebanon, are the ones with laws against homosexuality, because the French felt comfortable talking about sex, Mr. Luongo said, while the areas controlled by the British didnt have those laws because they didnt talk about sex. As a result, flowing from that French history is a relative familiarity with homosexuality in places like Lebanon. You have more gay life where the laws exist against it.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/travel/02gaybeirut.html?ref=travel