Introduction

Early in Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet there is an exchange between Almeetra, a wise woman, a seeress, of the city Almustafa is visiting. The people of the city have asked Almustafa to share his wisdom with them ‘to tell us all that has been shown you of that which is between birth and death’. The prophet says he can only tell them ‘what is moving within their souls’, prompting Almitra to say ‘Speak to us of Love’. The prophet responds:

Kahlil Gibran's prose reminds us of the breadth of love's potential. It seems love, in Gibran's sense, carries almost simultaneous possibilities for both joy and destruction. This chapter seeks to foreground the reflections and experiences on intimate life among young people with experience of road life. We will be introducing the concept of ‘tainted love’; one which seeks to validate the possibilities of love persisting in marginalised spaces, but which reflects the ways it can be tainted by complex histories and processes of structural violence. Often its hue is shared with wider societal issues, but in marginalised spaces may at times become more acute – exacerbated by issues such as ontological, economic and existential insecurities.

What the data in this chapter will present is the micro social process in which love is informed by the structural manifestations of race, class and gender. In this way, and although the voices we situate are from both cisgender men and women, weaved throughout is our own and the participants’ reinterpretation of love within the very specific terrain of road life. These specificities are intensified by the patriarchal social reproductions which we explore through the varied experiences of our participants.

Road life, a variant form of street culture, is often constructed as virulently violent.