Unicorn

by Amrou Al-Kadhi

  When it came to finishing my make-up, I thought a lot about my mother’s face. I wanted to emulate her regal beauty, and her unparalleled levels of glamour, and to capture the idea I had of her from before everything became difficult. For my entire life, my mother has drawn on a beauty spot with a brown pencil, and as a child, I became fixated as to its positioning. Ninety-nine per cent of the time the spot hovered above the left side of her lip, like a little signature that authenticated her star power; every now and then, she positioned it more on her cheek, as if the exaggerated placement were a little act of defiance, telling the world that she was unapologetically here and on her own terms (it was a tiny, but empowered moment of her political defiance). I went for the second option, and after I placed it and closed my eyes, it felt as if Mama was embracing me. As I took a deep breath, I could almost smell her, as though I was wearing a piece of her. When I opened my eyes, there was Layla in front of me, telling me in Arabic that I looked beautiful.

  The shoot was one of the most enjoyable and moving experiences I’d ever had. Being in a queer space but dressed in an ensemble so rooted in where I came from allowed me to feel much more present in the experience – I wasn’t simply hiding one side of myself to allow the other to succeed, but performing multiple facets of my identity simultaneously, like the quantum electron that moves through two holes at once. I felt a kind of cohesion I hadn’t ever experienced before. There was so much about that weekend on set that reminded me of the Middle East – in a positive way. It was a collective experience, with every member of the drag troupe and our team coming together to create a joint piece of work.

  This sense of community is something I missed acutely when I was living in London. Much of Western ideology is rooted in the pursuit of individual success (at the expense of others), whereas, while the tribal quality of community in the Middle East has its issues, there is also a joyous sense of warmth, kinsmanship and constant buzz to it. When I was a young child, every meal was an event, with relatives and friends coming together to feast and gossip; in the UK, I ate lonely ready meals, shivering in front of what seemed like endless period dramas. The Egyptian-inspired costume I wore was almost like a magical totem, merging the present room around me with memories of my past, including memories that I had only ever remembered as traumatic. As I danced in my costume, the beads smacked together to create a percussive soundscape, turning this white studio in East London into a Middle Eastern magical wonderland. The fabrics that Layla had put me in were remarkably tactile, as if each textile was a lost but happy memory from my past, hugging me here in London. This weekend catalysed the start of a journey – not to a new destination, but back to the very place I had started.

  In drag, I could be the mama I had once idolised as a young child. I no longer wanted to think of my mother as a villain who wanted me shot – it was too painful to carry this around everywhere. I wanted to see her as a queen, as the fairy godmother she was during my stint as a gecko in Cinderella.

  Most drag queens will tell you that they have a ‘drag mother’. This is the queen who teaches you drag make-up and the delicate art of tucking away your penis, and who offers you a shoulder to cry on as you navigate the emotional turbulence of being a peacock in a world of lions. I never had a drag mother, and immediately assumed the role of drag mama to other fledgling queens without any real idea as to what I was doing. My drag mother was undoubtedly my own mother (even though she had no idea what she was teaching me). My mother could probably out-drag RuPaul; for her, every social event is an arena of external display, a battleground of designer garments, with every Arab woman trying to surpass the other with the most ostentatious and extravagant outfit.

  She had the rare skill of holding the room’s energy in the delicacy of her gestures, able to produce a laugh at very specific moments in the anecdotes she delighted with – and the more I worked with Layla on constructing Middle Eastern costumes, the more I looked into my memories to borrow my mother’s behaviours for when I was entertaining a crowd onstage. The more I emulated her, the more success I had onstage too. What started as a sartorial shift quickly unlocked a whole perspective that allowed me to view my mother in the same way I had seen her in early childhood.

  Around this time, there were two specific incidents that made me see how much more of a drag queen Mama was than me. Both of them happened around family weddings. Arab weddings usually send me into a spiral of self-loathing; none of my relatives can hide their pity for me, as if I will never be one of them because I’ll never be married to a woman, have a regular job, or raise kids in a way they would deem acceptable. Usually I hide in a loo cubicle for three hours and answer all my emails. When that’s finished, I watch porn.

  I hadn’t seen my parents in about six months, and we were all required to attend Majid’s son’s wedding. Majid and I still weren’t talking, but the need to keep up appearances meant we swept the feud under the ever-bulging carpet. The day got off to a terrible start. My parents asked to meet me in a department store so they could purchase me a shirt that would disguise all my nonconformism. I loathe wearing plain suits and shirts – they feel like heterosexual prisons, the ties like death-penalty nooses. I often feel such an aversion to them that I can develop a rash around my neck. But I had learnt to just grin and bear it. So I agreed to wear the straitjacket, and dress up as the heterosexual son they all needed me to be.

  When I went home to shower before the wedding, I applied my tattoo brightening soap to the unicorn on my chest as I always did. Caressing the unicorn’s rump is remarkably soothing, and I can’t leave the house without performing this ritual. I got ready for the wedding and left the house, and it was only after meeting my parents that I realised the soap had reacted to the painfully dull blue shirt and caused a bit of a stain. Mama’s reaction deserved an Oscar nomination.

  ‘Amrou! What is that?! We cannot show our faces with that!’ It’s barely visible, Mother. And anyway, they already think we’re all damned because I practise anal and wear heels. Mama collapsed on the couch, breathing deeply. She was wearing a flowing black dress held together by a delicate metal circle frame around her neck. ‘This is the last thing I need today. Of all days, today you do this.’ Mother, Trump is president. A slightly patchy section on an otherwise spotless shirt won’t impair anyone’s life. ‘Do you know what I have been through today?’ Fuck, maybe it’s serious, and this dirtied shirt is the final thing that pushed her over the edge. ‘This Valentino dress I’m wearing … it broke this morning. The metal neck fell apart. I had no other designer dresses that everyone hasn’t already seen.’ OK, this is serious. ‘I was at my wit’s end’ – my parents sometimes like to throw in a British saying to show they belong here too – ‘and I wouldn’t have been able to go tonight if I hadn’t found a welder to fix the dress for me.’

  I felt a surge of euphoria as she said this. ‘Why are you smiling like that?’ my mother asked, apparently offended that I didn’t empathise with the gravity of what she was saying.

  ‘Are you telling me that you had to locate a welder to fix you into a designer dress so you could show your face at this wedding?’

  ‘Yes, Amrou. It was very stressful. And now you come wearing a shirt that will make you seem like an orphan?’ A welder. A WELDER. Even the most avant-garde and exciting drag queens I know have never done anything as unashamedly drag as incorporating WELDING into their costume. The only thing I could respond with was, ‘Oh Mama … I love you.’ I gave her a hug, to which she was half resistant, no doubt fearing that I might render the welder’s hard work null and void.

  My mother’s behaviour at Arab weddings would make the perfect audition video for RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the next one we attended together only confirmed her as the clear genetic foundation for my drag career. It was a cousin’s wedding, and this time it was happening in Mykonos in Greece. (Side note: am I the only one who thinks weddings abroad are an absurdly selfish expectation on the part of the bri
de and groom, not least because they cost an absolute fortune?). The wedding took place over three days, the first of which was a ‘tropical’ themed party. The three-event itinerary meant that my mother was strategising months in advance, the trip more an opportunity to present a hat-trick of award season red-carpet ensembles than to actually celebrate the happy couple. Mama decided she needed a tropical themed headpiece to give her first place at party 1, but was struggling to find designers who could create one in the way that she had envisioned for her outfit. This is when she called me.

  ‘Amoura … I was wondering … do you know where I can get a hat with fruits and plants on it? For the wedding?’ Yes, obviously. I basically sleep in such attire. Now, the only thing I had ever heard my mother say about my drag was that it was the root of all her unhappiness; other than that, she pretended it didn’t exist, and we never spoke about Denim or what I was up to. I knew that she’d never come to a drag show, or publicly show any support for it. But her calling me to ask if I knew any milliners with a flourish for the Copacabana … well, I interpreted this as some kind of silent acceptance.

  ‘Why, yes Mother … I do. I have a friend who specialises in such things. Do you want me to take you to her studio?’

  ‘OK. Why not.’

  With the espionage tactics of one of Charlie’s angels, I called my friend, telling her that I would be bringing my mother to her studio, but that all conversations about drag were strictly prohibited, and that the fact that she had worked with Denim in the past could not be brought up. I dressed in what was probably the dullest ensemble she had ever seen me in, and took Mama to her studio, a magical Narnia of hats bedecked with neon signs, Barbie dolls, and many other fabulous additions. The milliner and I acted like faint acquaintances, and I pretended that I was seeing these hats for the first time ever (when in fact I had already humped the floor in many of them).

  Watching my mother try on hats that I had only recently performed in was pretty disorientating. It felt like a scene from an Almodóvar film, where many different layers of performance were occurring simultaneously; my mother, walking around the studio, was someone who I effectively impersonated onstage, wearing the same hats that she was now trying on, and she right now was like a version of Glamrou but in real life, with all of this left unsaid in an entangled merging of realities. Very quantum. Mama eventually selected a leopard-print hat that had a huge tropical leaf towering above it like a skyscraper, and which had to be placed in a box as big as an adult human.

  To save money, we booked our flights on easyJet (even though the absurd hat cost more than our return flights). Mama hadn’t got the memo that easyJet didn’t offer first-class service, and she arrived at the airport with a different suitcase for each separate outfit. The foliage-centred hat had its own altogether. So when it was time to check in, Mama was utterly baffled that she was being charged through the roof for all the extra baggage. With no respect for the British passengers all grumbling in the queue behind her, Mama threw a gloriously melodramatic strop that made me want to get my popcorn out. The engrossing heroine monologue ended with Mama shouting, at full volume and with her arm raised in the air like a barrister going in for the kill: ‘This is not easyJet. THIS IS DIFFICULT JET!’ At this, she got a round of applause from everyone waiting behind her, and the faintest hint of a smile creased her lips. What a queen.

  As I started to understand how much of my drag vernacular was passed down to me from my mother, I decided to investigate this artistically (and no, not through another canvas where my mother crumbles in front of the collapsing Twin Towers). Inspired by the nickname Layla and I had given each other, I made a short film called Run(a)way Arab, which is about a young Arab boy watching his mother get ready to go out, spliced with this same character twenty years later, preparing for a drag performance while reminiscing over their mother. The entire experience was trippy beyond belief. My parents own a property in London, which they use whenever they visit (especially Mama, for work). I was not allowed a key to the property, for fear that I might upset the perfectly arranged interior with my queer anarchism. I was paying for the short film myself, and so the budget was basically non-existent, and it was a struggle finding an authentic Arab interior, not to mention a wardrobe befitting the character based on my mother. I begged my parents to give me a key so that I could occasionally use the house as an ‘office space’, and after some hard negotiation, I was given one. As soon as my parents were out of town, we raided the interior.

  The shoot weekend was one of the most stressful creative experiences of my life. Almost immediately after my parents drove to the airport, a truck of camera equipment and a twenty-person crew rocked up and marched their way into this aesthetically refined opulent interior. We took pictures of absolutely everything – even the way the jewellery was laid out on the table – because my mother’s obsessive eye would be able to discern if even a stitch was out of place. Then a hefty crew of film people, with all kinds of obtrusive equipment and scaffolding, marched into the house, moving everything about, while I pretended to be as calm as a cucumber (when actually I had to go and meditate in the bathroom every hour to stave off panic attacks).

  We had already filmed the drag sequence, and the day in the house focussed on the young Arab boy watching his mother get ready. The mother character asks her son for advice on her outfit, (as my mother used to ask me in our private ceremonies in the Middle East), before leaving to greet some guests. When she goes out, the young boy imitates the make-up of his mother as a way to feel close to her, but when his mother discovers this, she is mortified in front of her guests and this makes her furious. The actress playing my mother looked like my mother, and wore my real mother’s clothes in my real mother’s bedroom; the young boy playing the young version of me actually looked like my child self. I watched most of the scenes in my mother’s closet on the director’s monitor, as if I were viewing footage from my past, and every layer of what was real or what was constructed collapsed in on me. Layla, who had designed the costumes for the film, was by my side holding my hand, and I wouldn’t have been able to get through the day without her.

  Watching the child gaze on his mother in fascination, putting on make-up out of love and curiosity, only then to be scolded, was completely illuminating for me. As I watched the little boy respond on the monitor, it became utterly clear – he was only a child. I was only a child when I was being made to feel that I was a problem. Watching this encounter from an objective distance, it was so obvious. In the lucky (and probably unlikely) event you have access to a willing cast of actors and a set like a scene from your childhood frozen in time, I would genuinely encourage any of you trying to work out your feelings around a difficult childhood to re-stage it with actors and watch it on playback. Otherwise, trying to see your memories is like trying to get a full view of a hand that’s planted on your face. Your perspective is all over the place.

  For all my life, I have carried around a deep sense of blame – my parents are sad because of me. One of my biggest fears is that I’ve upset people. If someone is slow getting back to me on a text, I rack my brain, wondering what I could have possibly done to upset them and lose their friendship. Is it that time I was a bit tired and seemed cold after that play? Is it because I didn’t give them enough eye contact at their dinner party? Do they somehow know that I lied about liking that film? Have they figured out that I’m a total imposter?

  Even after years of being represented by wonderful, endlessly supportive agents, every time I get a phone call or an email from them, my immediate assumption is that I’ve done something that’s warranted me getting dropped. Every. Single. Time. The belief that my problematic behaviours caused my parents to reject me means that every possible scenario I enter is an opportunity where something that I do might cause me to be rejected. Even when I go on stage, the prospective audience is never a potential source of support, but an inevitable well of disappointment in me. But, as I watched the mon
itor in my mother’s closet, I began to see something different.

  The boy who was cast as my mini-me had never acted before. He had one of those expressions that was so innocent it made you want to bundle him up and protect him from all of the infinite horrors of the world. His eyes were large and curious, taking in everything around him with a totally open sensitivity. Directing kids can be challenging, but when the stars align, I find it can be a lot easier than directing an adult. They can be far less self-conscious and concerned with their decisions as an actor, and just perform the task of the scene, totally unfiltered, and completely in the present scenario.

  He was one of those actors, and in every single take, he responded to the woman playing his mother with complete sincerity, as if it were really happening. Observing the monitor, it seemed that the boy watching his mother put on make-up was observing only out of love and awe; and when he went to try on the make-up, it was with an utterly innocent curiosity. I had imagined this scene to have more dramatic gravitas, but as the boy played the scene with complete naturalism, his applying make-up felt completely playful, and not at all transgressive.

  I had internalised the feeling that my penchant for make-up was an aberration, but watching it from one step removed, it felt like anything but. Wearing make-up was an act that caused extreme conflict within my family – but here on the screen the act was utterly pure. When we got to the scene in which the young boy is berated by his mother for trying on her make-up and clothes, I saw, from my seat in Mama’s closet, how confusing this was for the young boy. When I asked him what he was feeling in the scene, he said: ‘Confused. Just earlier she wanted me to give advice on her clothes. So why did she get angry all of a sudden?’ I then asked him why he thought his character put on the make-up. After I asked this, he looked at the floor for such a long time that I started to think that he might have pooed in his pants and was trying to formulate an escape plan. But then he looked up at me and said, ‘Because he loves his mother and wants to be like her.’ I excused myself, locked myself in Mama’s closet, and cried all over her furs and embroidered textiles. All I could think was: None of this was my fault.