qabḍ (n.) contraction, constriction, constipation jinsi (adj.) generic, sexual, racial
- A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
Qabḍ jinsi- sexual repression, a phrase you learn pretty fast in a first year Arabic class taught in Cairo in 1979. The city of 8 million, reduced by age cohort, let us say adolescents and unmarried adults, half of them shabaab (n.) male youth, and half of them shaababaat (n.) female youth, but seemingly with only the boys on the streets, is still very full of repressed desire. Especially at the movies.
I remember going to the Italian Cultural Center in Zamalek for the afternoon screenings of uncensored new releases. One was Visconti’s last film L’Innocente with Giancarlo Giannini as a married aristocrat, Laura Antonelli as his wife, and Jennifer O’Neill as his demanding mistress.
The IMDB website has the following parental advisory…”Two scenes feature female frontal nudity--both also with a man--though in one the man is naked, the other he is clothed. In the first the couple is obviously making love--it lasts about 1-2 minutes. The second the man pulls a nightgown off the woman and feels her breasts. About the same length as the other scene.”
About midway through at the close of the second nude scene, very tame by my standards, all the young men got up to leave. I asked one of them, Why are you leaving"? He answered, khilis al-jins, the sex is finished. How do you know, I asked? He said, we only stay for the sex. We all saw it yesterday too.
I didn’t know what was more dangerous- a roomful of horny boys, or those same horny boys, still half cocked, out on the streets of Zamalek.
