“Are we not allowed to love?” Yusef, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy living in a Gaza refugee camp, asks his mother. She laughs lightly, then responds, “In our time, love only existed in movies.”
This exchange appears in Tale of Three Jewels (1995), the first film ever shot entirely in Gaza. It follows the story of Yusef, a young boy who falls in love with Aida, a young gypsy girl, and embarks on a mission to find her grandmother’s lost jewels in an attempt to win her heart.
What Yusuf was asking was not whether love was forbidden, but whether it could have space in his heart when it was weighed down with other emotions, such as the pain and grief brought on by conflict. In asking his mother, what he was truly wondering was, “Can we make room for love in our hearts?” He wanted to show that the younger generation is willing to open their hearts even further, allowing love to take root despite all they have experienced and endured.
Even though he is burdened by the First Intifada, which was a series of protests carried out by Palestinians, and the sorrow of his father being in Israeli prison, he still wonders if his heart has space for love, and if he can even take the time to think about it.
Many years later, Yusuf’s question still lingers, echoed in the recent Habaytak (I Loved You) exhibition in Paris, which delves into the complexities of Arab love. In many ways, the exhibition embodies the legacy of Yusuf’s inquiry, highlighting how young Arabs continue to carve out space in their hearts for love. It shows not only their capacity to feel love, but their determination to pursue it, treating it as a goal as vital as any other in their struggle for survival.
Organized by Kalam Aflam to celebrate its second anniversary, which is an association based in Paris that creates space for young and emerging Arab artists from the MENA region, the exhibition provided a curated program of short films, photography and music performances to show a cinematic reflection on intimacy and heartbreak in the Arab world.
It also featured live performances by Hasna, a Moroccan-Algerian artist based in London whose music draws from raï, jazz, R&B, and neo-soul to tell stories of emancipation and vulnerability, and Rita L’Oujdia, a France-raised Moroccan musician and producer whose hybrid sound traverses languages, genres, and borders.
”What we tried to do was show all the different facets of what love and romance look like for youth from the Arab world and in the diaspora,” Hayat Aljowaily, founder and director of Kalam Aflam, tells Egyptian Streets.
”Whether through photo series or short films, the idea was to show that Arab love is joy, Arab love is beautiful, and so many other things. But it’s also linked with pain and sorrow, unlike the rest of the world, due to exile and conflict. We wanted to highlight the different angles and the nuances that exist,” Aljowaily adds.
Growing up surrounded by a deep appreciation for love, influenced by traditional Arab cultural experiences, Hayat has come to understand that love plays a central role in Arab culture. “I’ve always been obsessed with love since I was a kid, and I always attributed that to the American rom-coms I watched growing up,” she shares.
“But when I started preparing for this event, I realized it was actually my Arab upbringing that made me infatuated with love,” Aljowaily notes.
Aljowaily discovered traces of Arab love throughout her childhood, in small, scattered moments that shaped her understanding of what love means. As she grew older, she began to see how deeply love is ingrained into the fabric of Arab culture.
For Aljowaily, love could be tasted, heard, felt, and even watched in Arab culture. She watched love through black-and-white movies as a young kid with her grandmother, or through the Egyptian series Awza Atgawez (I Want to Get Married, 2010). She tasted love in the sweet sharbat passed around at engagements and weddings, which is a popular drink in the Arab world made from fruits, herbs, as well as flower petals, and heard love through her aunt’s burst into zaghareet, which were joyful cries that filled a room with celebration.
But most of all, she felt love as she watched her grandfather shower his grandmother with kisses well into his 80s, and in the glances between young couples hiding away on the corniche or inside their cars.
“I realized that yes, the American romcoms made me discover love, but it’s my Arab upbringing that made me fall in love with the idea of love. It’s the songs of Um Kalthum, of Fairouz, and of Abdelhalim,” Hayat adds.
Love in the Arab world is not only shaped by personal emotions, but also by the weight of family, displacement, and war. It is a story that never really ends, always unfolding, and always evolving, which is why the exhibition brought together a wide range of films and photographic works to show the many ways Arab love can take shape.
For example, the exhibition included Kisses from Cairo, Greetings from Baghdad (2022) by Paula Edward, which portrays Arab love as tender and poetic, captured through the simple beauty of roses and handwritten letters. In contrast, I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face (2020) by Sameh Alaa explores love under pressure, where a young man, separated from his girlfriend for 82 days by their families, is driven to desperate measures just to be with her again.
The exhibition also showcased films that explore the pressures surrounding love, focusing on how young people carve out space to feel, express, and experience it on their own terms.
One such film is Sahbety (My Friend, 2022) by Kawthar Younis, which follows an Egyptian couple as they navigate strict social boundaries. In an attempt to avoid raising suspicion from society, the man disguises himself as a woman to spend time with his partner. The film examines how public spaces shape, and sometimes suppress, the expression of love, celebrated openly at weddings, yet deemed inappropriate or shameful in everyday life.
Whether it is hidden, embraced, forbidden, or fought for, love in the Arab world still circles back to Yusuf’s question: “Are we not allowed to love?” The exhibition responds with a clear and resounding “yes”. Yes, Arab youth should be allowed to love freely and fiercely, even when their hearts are already heavy with pain and sorrow.
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