Berlin's Arab Queers Build Space Against Racism

The ADIRA Drag Festival brought queer Arab* performers and audiences together in Berlin for its third edition in late October. Co-founder Hassandra described the racism Arab queer people faced after a deadly attack during the city's Christopher Street Day pride parade in July. “We are sad over what happened, but that we also reject any of the racism that comes from that,” Hassandra said. “There's place for everyone. It's a huge country.”

Making room for queer Arab culture*

ADIRA is a Berlin-based collective that curates events and club nights celebrating queer Arab* culture. Its asterisk includes non-Arab ethnic minorities and people with diverse identities and roots in Southwest Asia and North Africa. Hassandra and Syrian-German DJ and cultural producer Zuher Jazmati, also known as xanax_attax, founded the collective in 2023. Through panel discussions, performances and music events, they foster participation and build community.

The festival's third edition took place in late October under the theme “Who's Your Diva?!” Performers paid tribute to Eastern Mediterranean figures regarded as queer icons, including Egyptian music legend Umm Kulthum, Turkish star Bülent Ersoy and Lebanese pop icon Haifa Wehbe. Hassandra performed as Lebanese pop star Elissa.

“It is very important for me to bring my Lebanese Arab identity and culture into what I do, because I think it's a very beautiful culture,” Hassandra said. “And there's a lot of campy, glamorous, beautiful divas.” Before the October 30 show, they described Elissa's “whole discography” as “very romantic, raw, soft, kind of like very Adele vibes.” They called the singer's personality “the extreme opposite. She's very feisty. Very blunt, very unfiltered.”

Elissa has publicly voiced support for LGBTQ+ communities in the Middle East and spoken out on political issues in Lebanon. Her positions on other political issues have also sparked controversy across the Arab world. Hassandra said the performance engaged with that complexity by “tapping into her sort of controversial political opinions.”

No one gets a blank cheque

The festival's theme questioned the impulse to treat pop stars as flawless heroes. “As queer people, we tend to idealize a lot of pop divas. But these pop divas are very imperfect in their nature,” Hassandra said. They linked that critical approach to public life: “Never follow anyone in life blindly. No one should follow any politician, any political party, any pop diva, any activist blindly.”

Born in Beirut in 1994, Hassandra studied theater and stage acting at the Lebanese University and moved to Berlin in 2017. They called the move “a very sort of impulsive decision at the age of 22.” Lebanon's economic situation “was really bad,” they said, and “continued to become even worse.” In Berlin, they became increasingly involved in independent art and queer nightlife. Their performances bring together theatrical intensity, political humor, grotesque aesthetics and tenderness, while exploring home, nostalgia, displacement and queer Arab culture.

Solidarity after the attack

After the deadly Islamist terrorist attack during Berlin's Christopher Street Day pride parade, Hassandra said they felt caught between identities. “As an Arab queer person, you fall in this position where then you start receiving a lot of racism,” they said. They added that “the Arab community” was being used “as a punching bag for a lot of things that are happening.”

The article reports that ADIRA's community support has taken on greater importance as Islamophobia and homophobia rise alongside the far right. Hassandra said people should “make Germany a safer place for everyone to live in,” rather than let the attack fuel hatred and racism. The collective's performances, discussions and music events give the community space to gather and speak in its own terms.