An album cover featuring a photo of Masoud El Amaratly, an Iraqi trans man, on top of a photo of marshes and boats, with red text reading "Masoud El Amaratly". El Amaratly is wearing draped clothing, including a head scarf.

اغاني مسعود العمارتلي ١٩٣٣ (Songs of Masoud El Amaratly 1933)

Music

1933

Iraq

Masoud El Amaratly, an Iraqi folk singer, was born female and lived as a man; a Mustarjil in Ahwari culture. This compilation features eight of his songs.

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Masoud El Amaratly is an Iraqi singing legend. Born at the turn of the 20th century, in the lush marshes of southern Iraq, El Amaratly captured Iraqis’ hearts with his powerful renditions of Rifi folk songs that evoked a sense of lament, melancholy and longing... El Amaratly is not only one of Iraq’s most famous singers; he is also one of the Arab World’s most well-known transgender icons... While working as a shepherd at a town elder’s home, El Amaratly would start his day at dawn singing rural folk songs. One day while he was out in the fields, two men followed Masoud in an attempt to harass him. He stopped them, bound them, and led them to his employer’s home, where they confessed.

The town’s people praised his courage for stopping and standing up to the harassers. At that point, Masoud’s appearance was still feminine-presenting, but his job as a shepherd, as well as his actions which were perceived by his community as “strong” and “masculine,” created the perfect opportunity for him to begin expressing his gender identity on the exterior. From that moment onwards, he reportedly began donning traditional male dress (Shemagh and Agal). It was also around the same time that his singing began to gain praise too, and he was invited to perform at various occasions around town.

He later moved to Al-Amara, in south-eastern Iraq, where he would sing in cafes... After serenading his adoring fans for years, Masoud El Amaratly later returned to his hometown and married a local domestic worker. He then got married again to a lady called Kamila.

-Marwan Kaabour.

Mustarjil is an Arabic term meaning “becoming [a] man.” Although it can be used derogatorily to refer to women who are perceived as having a masculine appearance and/or mannerisms, in Iraq’s marshes, it existed as a gender identity. Within the context of the Ahwari community, Mustarjil was a common gender identity, where people assigned female at birth decide to live as a man after puberty, and this decision was generally accepted in the community.