a day in maadi, a night in zamalek

One afternoon we met with an Egyptian movie director in Maadi. Apparently he mostly does documentaries. He seemed cool, and was wearing a light-red shirt that I definitely would have bought. We were there to talk to him about the movie version of the book Yacobian Building (a fabulous book, I'm told); unfortunately, about half the group was still under the mistaken impression that he himself had directed the movie. Kindof awkward.

After that, the director of the program that was hosting us invited us back to her home, and three of us took her up on the offer. It was great having home-cooked food again--I've been missing my host mother and aunt's cooking. She's a really fabulous person, and she spoke to me in Arabic to the degree that I could understand, which rocked. (Oh wait, isn't that what my host family is supposed to be doing?) Her degree is in Hebrew, believe it or not; her thesis was on Jews in Al-Andalus. (Her father was a jeweler, and thus had many Jewish friends--in the first half of the century.) It was really interesting hearing her reflections on Nasserism. Obviously I can't repeat everything she said, but her main point was that she was impressed with his sincere love of his country. I have to say, it was amazingly refreshing to hear someone express something about Israel other than blind loathing--like, you know, dismay, criticism, or a recognition that there are actually people who live there. She's clearly a reconciliation-minded human.

We went out that night, which was fun. My Arabic teacher came with us to a bar in Zamalek (even though she doesn't drink), but they wouldn't let her upstairs to the more bar-like part because of her hijab. We were pretty upset about it; I wanted to walk out entirely, but we ended up taking a table all together downstairs with her. We were told it was like that everywhere, but we still don't know whether it's legally mandated or not. Ostensibly it's to protect her something from something. Umm, yeah.

Anyway, later she came with me to meet some friends who had gone to see a belly-dancer. My friend is an anthropologist who studies dance, belly-dances professionally in the States, and had lived in Egypt for a year, so there was pretty much no way I was going to miss seeing a belly-dancer with her. Apparently, though, good ones don't start until the middle of the night, because starting later is a status symbol. We waited for her to come on until almost 3:00 am. She was really great. The singers before her had recorded music, but they brought out a live band for her. The thing about belly-dancing is that the rhythms are distinctly different from what I'm accustomed to. There are frequently movements that I wouldn't have picked as particularly impressive or aesthetically appealing. So yes, in case you didn't know, it's a genuinely different aesthetic. Also, it requires a degree of precision in movement unlike anything else I've ever seen.