Even if the topic of gender equality is touched upon time and again in Western fictionalisations of the Arab uprisings, it is mostly present as a visible absence. As in this quotation from Adam Thirlwell’s short novel Kapow!, the issue is mainly broached through an allegedly affect-driven and anxious male gaze: suffering from his non-conformance with predominant ideals of masculinity, Rustam, one of the characters in Kapow!, tries to disguise his own sexual insecurity by reasoning with his wife Nigora to wear the burka. On the stylistic level, the gender problematic finds its expression in the free indirect discourse which is used to render Rustam’s speech. Although the greater part of his utterance remains unchanged in its free indirect form, the personal pronouns are adjusted. As a consequence, gendered personal pronouns (‘him’, ‘he’) dominate Rustam’s monologue and underline how he approaches Nigora not in the roles of a ‘you and I’, but in their social gender roles as ‘he and she’. One of the many footnotes in Kapow!, set at different angles from the main text and used to diversify the reading experience, further highlights that Rustam’s repressed sexuality is the actual undercurrent of his new-found fundamentalist beliefs: just before he starts lecturing Nigora, the text’s focalisation shifts towards Rustam to show how he stops listening to his wife and thinks about having sex with her: ‘All too clearly, Rustam could picture Nigora lifting the hem of her dress, in the way he liked, with gentleness’ (Kapow!: 68).