That love cannot thrive in an environment of coercion is a basic Kabbani axiom. The coercion he rails against is not just social but explicitly political. Freedom, equality, and dignity are prerequisites for erotic joy, as Kabbani sees it. After June, I lost my lust and fell between my sweetheart's arms like a ragged flag Political oppression from outside the bedroom as well as the traditional social strictures that render women as hunks of meatBor mensaf , as Kabbani likes to put itBmake true love and true sexual delight impossible in Kabbani's book. Once the glass around the Self is shattered in this experience, there is no going back to repressive boundaries and hierarchies.
Love makes resistance an existential necessity.
We can see the integration of the erotic and the political vision in the figures who people Kabbani's poetic universe. The Sultan's Wife is the woman complicit with the repressive political-sexual order. She sleeps with the brutal Sultan, derives privilege from her position with him, and dies to the truth of freedom and to her own beauty and warmth within. The Sultan's Daughter is an ambiguous figure. The river of beauty has not dried in her.