This post was submitted by John "Jolly" Bavoso

“I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.”

This line, from E. M. Forster’s novel Maurice, has long been my favorite literary euphemism for declaring one’s homosexuality.  For Moroccan writer Hicham Bouzid, author of the forthcoming novel Kafavis’ Syndrome: An Odyssey of a Bisexual Moslem (Publish America, May 2010), when searching for the proper reference point for examining the struggles bisexuals face in the Muslim world, he went all the way back to origins of epic poetry itself.

He did make one important stop along the way, however, in late 19th and early 20th Century Greek poetry. The title of his book is a reference to Constantine P. Cavafy, aka Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, a homosexual poet who lived in Alexandria, Egypt from 1863 to 1933 and was himself deeply affected by Homer’s Odyssey. These layers of historical and literary references all help Bouzid to tell a story that is actually quite modern.

Born in Rabat in the mid-1970s, Bouzid found himself in a deep rut following his graduation from university. It was reading that helped him through this difficult time.

“Due to my insomnia and depression, I had to stop what I was doing and became no one, doing nothing for a long time,” he recalls. “I read and did nothing else.”

After moving to Italy and working odd jobs in both agriculture and industry, he rediscovered a passion for one particular type of literature.

“I am a great fan of Greek mythology, though it sometimes makes for boring reading,” he admits. “But when I started applying the principles of psychoanalysis I learned in school, the Greek mythology became a treasure that can tell us a lot about ourselves.”

It was while he was in Italy that he first stumbled upon Kavafis’ poetry dealing with Homer’s original work, which inspired Hicham to write his own book with both men in mind. Boudiz is now married and living with his wife in Germany, but he chose to make the central story of his novel one that has gone largely untold: The plight of bisexuals living in the Muslim world.

He describes Kafavis’ Syndrome as “a story about an unhappy man, who lives as a pariah in his own mind and community.” This man’s life is characterized as “an odyssey that lurches him from pedophilia to impotence; homosexuality to fleeting moments of himself.”

“Bisexuality can be both a curse and a blessing, which is often hidden in the midst of the other problems facing gay men or lesbians,” Bouzid explains. “The bisexual can be seen as a hypocrite as he can fool both the heterosexual and the homosexual world.

“But the character in my book is honest and as a result he suffers for this honesty. He sees the world either black or white – there are no mixed hues in his world, and for that he suffers. I feel attracted to the subject as I personally find it unfair that one should suffer for what he or she didn’t choose.”

While his book tells the story of a highly individual internal and external struggle, it does so by referencing a work that should be extremely familiar to anyone who’s taken a high school or college English class and one that includes themes that are staggeringly universal.

“The Odyssey appealed to me for its trials and tribulations that any of us can face in this world,” he says. “The challenges are many, and I think a man is born of iron but as challenges come he melts, and if he holds onto that the process of melting turns him into another shape, another quality, that of becoming steel.”

Kavafis writes of this same process, also through the lens of the Odyssey, in his poem entitled “Ithaca“: “Always keep Ithaca in your mind/To arrive there is your ultimate goal./But do not hurry the voyage at all./It is better to let it last for many years;/and to anchor at the island when you are old,/rich with all you have gained on the way,/not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.” In other words, it is the journey and its powers of transformation that is actually the destination.

And so, while we all have our personal struggles, Bouzid is hoping to shed some light on one easily overlooked type. In terms of his own journey, Kavafis’ Syndrome will be publish on May 10 and Hicham’s next project will be a book about LGBT rights in Morocco – the non-fiction companion to his fictional narrator’s struggles.

Ultimately, however, Bouzid describes his own “Ithaca” is a simple place, yet one that can be difficult to reach: “I only ask people for tolerance.”

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