Affective and sexual intimacy are sensitive issues in the Arab World. However moments of closeness between men and women have always been possible, perhaps even more so today, thanks to the spread of mixed-gender social spaces and new communication technologies. Further, while undeniably embedded in gendered relations of power, love is a highly ambivalent field of experience that involves a good deal of negotiation between partners and with family and can stand in tense relationship to patriarchal domination. Often, however, romantic love is contrasted with love after marriage. This book precisely explores the relationship between love and marriage in the contemporary Arab world. By sketching the paths of amorous encounters in the Arab world, it introduces the reader to the conflicting configurations that shape love practices, providing new insights into a still-emerging field of inquiry. It examines notions of gender, intimacy and love through ethnographic case studies that offer an insight into current dynamics in Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

Table of Contents
Corinne Fortier, Aymon Kreil and Irene Maffi
Introduction: Reinventing Love? Gender, Intimacy and
Romance in the Arab World ................................................................. 9
Steffen Strohmenger
Chapter 1: The Art of Playing Tuql. How to ‘Make’ Love in Egypt ..... 33
Corinne Fortier
Chapter 2: The Expenses of Love: Seduction, Poetry and
Jealousy in Mauritania ........................................................................ 49
Mariangela Gasparotto
Chapter 3: Practices of Love in Ramallah. Between Colonization,
Norms and Individualism ................................................................... 71
Marion Breteau
Chapter 4: Pixel Outlines of Intimacy. Online Love among
Young People in Muscat ..................................................................... 91
Laure Assaf
Chapter 5: Who Is the Right One? The Meanings of (Marital)
Love in the United Arab Emirates .................................................... 113
Daniele Cantini
Chapter 6: Romantic Love and Finding a Place in Life:
Jordanian University Students and Their Loving Subjectivities ......... 143
Irene Maffi
Chapter 7: Uncertainties and Shifting Forms of Intimacy
in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia ........................................................... 167
Irene Capelli
Chapter 8: (Im)Possible Matches: Love and Intimacy in the Lives
of Unmarried Mothers in Morocco .................................................. 193