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Like Lebanon, he is on the brink of a new and exciting relationship with the rest of the world but like Lebanon, he has difficulties breaking with the traditions of his ancestors. After 15 years of a devastating civil war, the Lebanese are trying to leave their dark age behind by making Beirut once more the hippest place to be in the Middle East, a sister city to Paris. Beiruti nightlife, which runs seven nights a week, is comprised of underground grave-like nightclubs and bars whose lifespan is measured in months. It's a world full of smoldering young girls smoking and trying to maintain looks of casual disinterest as they talk to their equally young suitors. They may look and act like their Parisian counterparts, but the Lebanese still inhabit a world in which everyone is identified by religion-and no self-respecting Lebanese religion makes room for gays. Even today, if you ask most Lebanese on the streets what they think of homosexuality, they will tell you that it does not exist in their country. Growing up, Mousbah was torn between his need to dance and respect for a conservative mother who could never approve of such a thing. In a country where both concubinage and homosexuality are still illegal on paper, Mousbah wanted to be sure that his mother would not find out. Not only about his job but also about his sexuality. He still hasn't told his mother that he's gay. "When I was little I thought I was the only one in the whole country being gay-you think people will hate you," says Mousbah, whose father died without knowing that his son was gay. Raised in the conservative town of Sidon, the dancer was brought up in a Muslim household in which the possibility of being gay, no less a gay dancer, was never discussed. Next Page... ...Previous Page