Sam Hall 1 January 2021
The problem with “The Tale of Ahmet” is that it’s in the wrong publication. It’s a gay fable, so rather odd that it formed the centrepiece of an inaugural boylove mag.
Kemal’s gift of sorcery is synonymous with exclusive homosexuality, something his mentor Abdallah reinforces: “Witchcraft and magic ought never to come within reach of women or girls...”
Our gay wizard is “surrounded by a selection of the most beautiful boys in all of Islam” but cannot find true love, a boy who can give him “eternal devotion”, or, as it’s more piously known today, “gay marriage”.
So once he finds Ahmet, a boy of ideal beauty, Kemal sets him upon a stereotypical gay rights of passage. Ahmet is cut off from any connection to his family, is taken in hand by a manipulative fairy who snuffs any hetero-impulses he may have had, and is then sent on a rather gruelling sexual underworld odyssey which seems inspired by 70’s gay bathhouse culture: forging an identity through promiscuous homosex.
The boy’s entire adolescent journey, his sexual awakening and development, is of no interest to Kemal. He’s happy to remain on the sidelines, completely uninvolved, waiting for his idealised finished product. Which he gets in the end: an experienced youth worthy of being admitted to the separatist cabal of gay wizards.
I was reminded of the British TV series Queer as Folk, where 15yo Nathan, confident of his gayness, was trying to work his way into the local gay community. He was met mainly with amused disdain, not taken seriously, not thought capable of being truly gay—get back to us, sonny, when you know your way round a nightclub. Even a gay teenager, it seems, would fare better with a genuine boysexual.
“The Tale of Ahmet” celebrates the modern libel aimed at boysexuals, that they desire to recruit a boy into an underground life of homosexuality. Talk about a misuse of the magic of boyhood.
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