The society’s ranks, meanwhile, continued to thin. You have everyone in the same room dancing.” It breaks down as many walls as possible. Though the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society tended toward balkanization, Abraham said: “Habibi blends everybody. Thought what was natural was to do something fun, have people dance, have fun,” Abraham said. The cookies-and-tea meetings, Abraham said, “got a little boring.” The first Habibi party, in early 2002, was a fund-raiser for the society, held in an Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side. “This is always a problem you have with Arabs.” “The Egyptians want to hang out with the Egyptians, the Moroccans want to hang out with the Moroccans, et cetera,” he said. Like others interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition that his last name not be used. “It got big, which is not always a good thing, because you have all nationalities of the Middle East,” said Abraham, who is of Syrian and Palestinian descent, grew up in Kuwait and now lives in Astoria, Through the 1990s, the group met at the LGBT Center in the West Village.
Gaze and smoky accent, was one of the society’s co-founders.
Abraham, a former accountant in his 40s with a shaved head, steady Habibi, the Arabic word for “my beloved”, is a sort of stepchild of a more serious-minded group called the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society. Night, shy, lithe, silken-haired young men trickled upstairs to ogle the mob of Arab men dancing to Middle Eastern pop, spun by the party’s founder, a practicing Muslim named Abraham. Its downstairs neighbor there is one of the city’s few “twink” parties the word describes particularly boyish-looking men. Lately, Habibi has made its home at Club Rush in Chelsea. Joshua Bright for The New York Times Abraham, Habibi’s founder and DJ, at the controls. In its nomadic nine-year history, Habibi, which rests only during the holy month of Ramadan, has inhabited straight and gay clubs and hookah bars all over Manhattan - Flamingo, Boom, the China Club, Club Duvet, “In New York there’s nowhere I can come to and cry, so to speak,” said Amir, 27, a registered nurse from Saudi Arabia who lives in Brooklyn and has been coming to the party for six years. Only opportunity in New York for gay people of Middle Eastern descent to interact openly in an organized setting. In a city that seems to offer activities for everyĬonceivable gay subculture - one 700-entry directory lists support groups for, among others, gay vegans, pilots and sailing enthusiasts, along with 62 religion-based groups - Habibi is perhaps the This was a recent Saturday night at Habibi, a floating monthly dance party of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Arabs in New York. “I can understand so many conversations going on right now,” a Fashion Institute of Technology student shouted over the music, coiling his wrists and shaking his hips to the belly-dance beat. A man in the crowd removed his kaffiyeh, the traditional headdress worn by some Arab and Kurdish men, and whipped it around in the air. When the strobe lights flashed, they revealed a sea of raised hands. Joshua Bright for The New York Times The Habibi dance party at Club Rush in Manhattan in November.Īround midnight, upstairs in a small club on Avenue of the Americas, the pitch-black dance floor resounded with the rapid stomps and warbling, high-energy cries of the dabke, an Arab folk dance performed at weddings