The Possibilities of Peddling: Imagining Homosocial and Homoerotic Pleasure in Arab America

In his 1962 interview with Alixa Naff, Elias Lebos discussed some of the characteristics of his Syrian peddling community: “In our community, we kept our traditions: eating, singing, drinking, and enjoying ourselves.” Lebos went on to describe some of the living conditions for peddlers, people of all genders and marital statuses, up to twenty of whom might sleep in the same room together. In Lebos’s telling, these circumstances seemed to aid the traditions he talked of, rather than simply marking a hardship or even a disruption of those practices. “We used to cook together and enjoy life and laugh,” he