ABSTRACT
While conducting a medical anthropological study of male infertility in a busy in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinic in Beirut, Lebanon, I met Mohsen, a Southern Lebanese Shia Muslim man who had fled to the West African country of Cote d’Ivoire in 1977 to escape the ravages of civil war in his home community. Mohsen agreed to participate in my study, with assurances that his ethnographic interview would be private and confidential. Literally hanging and hiding his head in shame, Mohsen described to me how he and 11 other young Lebanese Shia Muslim refugee men had had serial, group intercourse with a West African prostitute. Following this episode, he contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI), which was quickly resolved with an antibiotic. Nonetheless, both Mohsen and his close hometown friend, Nabil, who had also participated in the group sex, had gone on to suffer from long-term infertility in their subsequent marriages, of 15- and 20-year durations, respectively. In Mohsen’s view, it was this zina, or illicit sex act, that had caused his infertility. He lamented: ‘Only God knows if this is the reason, but I think so. I feel guilty. But all of us were like this back in Abidjan [the capital of Cote d’Ivoire], because there were so many prostitutes.’
