Gay Girl In Damascus, Tewdwr Moss and 'his' Moon Child: A letter from a visitor to Syria

Dearest Madame,

Your blog on the inequities of reporting between the disappearance of Gay Girl in Damascus and the fate of Robert Tewdwr Moss piqued my interest as always, but for a couple of reasons. [See posting below this to catch up]

Gay Girl in Damascus, as an internet text, is an inspiring document, but also very zeitgeisty. The author, a US-educated woman who made a conscious decision to return to Damascus knowing that she would face oppression, is a middlebrow American movie heroine in the making. In fact I'm waiting for someone to option the blog for a film in which Megan Fox will play said Damascus Gay Girl in a dead-eyed bid for an Oscar.

I rather fear that while Gay Girl from Damascus faces torture and rape at the hands of the Syrian secret police we will be turning what she left behind into the new Kite Runner.

Secondly, I was in Syria for nearly three weeks last year, and spent five days in Hama, where a lot of the political unrest is centred (this is nothing new - it was the stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood many years ago and al-Assad levelled all but a single street of what must have been a beautiful old town to get rid of dissent). We also spent four days in Aleppo, where Tewdwr Moss recounts [in Cleopatra's Wedding Present] meeting a young gay man whom he named "The Moon Child" on account of his wide round face and startling green eyes.

I'm happy to report that Moon Child is very much still with us and working with his brothers in the souks of Aleppo, which have as yet not quite been turned over to the tourists and remain somewhere you can buy the polyester bedspreads, coffee whitener and pleather mules that form the backbone of commerce across the Islamic world. Just don't, if you ever go there, buy the macaroons, as they taste of the diesel on which the baker runs his oven.

Ever yours, C

Robert Tewdwr Moss: A (dead) Gay Guy (once) in Damascus and A (missing) Gay Girl

Robert Tewdwr Moss and his pussy cat

As the world (ie a few cock-cunting or cunting-cock journalists) wonder about the identity and whereabouts of the A Gay Girl In Damascus blogger - apparently disappeared while the actual proud owner of Gay Girl's faked face came to life boo-hooing on BBC2's Newsnight about internet stolen identities (the perils of) - let us not forget A Gay Guy In Damascus.

He's dead now and he wasn't Syrian. His name was Robert Tewdwr Moss and he wrote a classic travel book called Cleopatra's Wedding Present. For an insight into the repressed cock-cocking realities of Syria, order your copy now. British author Robert lost his life not in some dusty souk but in grimy London. His murder was greeted with near-universal indifference by the British media - because he was a grown-up cock-cocker - and in one instance, with chippy mockery by one of the Duncan Campbells (in the Guardian).

So let us celebrate the British media's sudden interest in Syria's Gay Girl. Whoever she/he/it is.

Cleopatra's Wedding Present, buy here.
Excerpts can be read here (click cover image)

Vogue listens to Madame Arcati and removes Asma al-Assad interview

US Vogue has removed its shameful interview with Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad from its website after my April 26 post drawing attention to its continued online presence. Since the indentured guttersnipes of the press had forgotten all about this I thought I should say something. Why the piece remained up as the Syrian government kills and tortures its restive people is a complete mystery.

Somebody's finger is not on the global pulse at Conde Nast. The magazine should now remind itself who thought it was good idea to run the fawning piece of tripe on the glamorous Eva Braun of Syria.

Vogue keeps up Asma al-Assad interview as Syria burns

While the Syrian government massacres its revolting peasants, I see that US Vogue has still yet to take down its recent ghastly and fawning interview with Asma al-Assad, Syria's 'dynamic first lady' who is on a 'mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism.' She should import the BBC's resident proselytising atheist Prof Brian Cox to help her out.

'Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East,' writes the unpsychic author Joan Juliet Buck. It is 'a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings.' Joanie makes a big thing of the secularism as if it's some sort of bar to state persecution and murder. I assume she never majored in history.

It seems odd that a magazine so supposedly in touch with the zeitgeist is deaf to Obama's condemnation of Syria. To read the shameful piece click here.