Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

I am right now in the middle of watching the Egyptian movie Fatma, starring Um Koulthum, and one of her songs/monologues just gave me a complete breakthrough with regard to understanding why Arabic love songs are by and large tragic.  She sang something like her love and her self is hers to give, but her honor is not hers, it is her family's, so she cannot give in to what she wants unless the man she has fallen for (mrzero and atalanta, a man really named Pasha Bey!) makes a formal offer of marriage to her.  It struck me then that falling in love for an Egyptian woman is a tragedy, because you will be torn by the conflict between desire to give everything to your loved one and the knowledge that you must be true to your family--but there is more to it than that.  It seemed to me from her song and words that she was saying you will lose something of yourself even if you do things the right way when you fall in love, that you will sacrifice some part of who you are by loving another.  And suddenly all the songs made perfect sense, the songs about losing your soul and his eyes stealing your heart and how love makes you suffer.  Not that long ago I read the book Khul-Khaal:  Five Egyptian Women Tell Their Stories, and there too it seemed that even those women in a happy marriage knew that they had given up something to be in love, whether it was their independence or their economic status or their previous safe and happy homes.   You want to be in love, you want to indulge your heart and your body, but at the same time you don't want to lose your independence and your pride and honor.  This is why love songs are sad.  You cannot give yourself away without really and truly giving something away.

Back to the movie now--I have a feeling things are going to go badly for poor Fatma, but at least now she is enjoying what she thinks is her honeymoon in Iskanderia...

(p.s.:  you can take the anthropologist out of the discipline, but you can't take the discipline out of the anthopologist)

The thrifty New Englander in me is full of stern disapproval over my turning on the heat in April, which is nearly May, which is nearly summer, but I just can't get warm, and it was only 63 degrees in the house, and I'll hurt myself if I dance in the cold, especially trying to do warm-up exercises while sitting on a cold floor.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, you internal puritannical yankee purveyor of guilt!

Lovely weekend thus far.  Friday night I had a quiet evening by myself, which is a good thing to have once in a while.  Saturday was dance marathon day:  a one hour private lesson on cane with Seyyide (it went well and I'm glad we're working together; one excellent thing I learned were some slow patterns you can use for fast Saidi music), then scamper over to the Dance Complex to catch the last 10-15 minutes of a Jewels of Jamal rehearsal, then off to Casa Nia for a Sekhmet rehearsal.  I'm so excited about the Sekhmet thing; everybody was picking up on the choreography and steps that were new to them really quickly, and some parts already look awesome with six fabulous women stalking across the floor.  We're going to rock!  After that, an excellent dinner at Mr. Sushi with some excellent company.  I had the sashimi bi bim bab, to which photiq  had introduced  me--I think that's one of my favorite meals ever, luscious raw fish combined with various fresh raw vegetables and all the little side plates.  Belly full, home to hang out with Mathew for the rest of the evening until I conked out surprisingly early for someone who had had ten hours of sleep the previous night.  I can't imagine why...

Today, once the floor warms up a bit I'll work on my meleya piece.  I think I'll leave cane aside for a day, to give my wrist a chance to recoup a little.  Then yoga class later in the afternoon, ooze on home and chill for the rest of the evening.  It feels like utter luxury not to have to perform at the Middle East tonight, since I've performed three out of the last four Sundays.  A relaxing Sunday evening at home, I'm not sure I can remember what that's like...  I needed a weekend like this, where I could work on dance stuff without immediate performance pressure and have plenty of down time as well.  I even remembered to record some of yesterday's Derby prep racing, I can watch that after yoga.  I'm woefully ignorant about this year's three year olds, but on a name basis, I favor Discreet Cat.  I just picture him making his way through the herd, "excuse me... pardon me... just coming through here on the left... excuse me..." and sneaking through to win.