My
Secret Life as a Belly Dancer in Cairo

This
might sound strange, but here in Cairo, I lead a secret life. I’m not a spy or having
an affair or doing anything nefarious. I’m just a belly dancer. But I make
great efforts to hide this from people. When Egyptians ask me what I’m
doing in Cairo, I tell them I’m writing a book about Egyptian art. I keep
things vague, but not untrue. I am, after all, writing a book, and its subject
is belly dancing, which is an Egyptian art. Never do I mention that I’m
a practitioner of this art, however. Doing so would unleash a series of
unfavorable consequences, not the least of which is being thought of as a
whore.

You
might be thinking, So what? Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but words
will never hurt me. Unfortunately, this is true only to the extent that I won’t
be stoned for being a belly dancer. But I might…oh, I don’t know… get kicked
out of my apartment.

Oddly
enough, this is exactly what happened to me last year (in fact today marks the
one-year anniversary of my eviction!). My landlord kicked me out of my
apartment upon learning that I was a belly dancer.

This
is what transpired. In September of 2009, I was apartment hunting for the fifth
time in one year. (Yes, you read that correctly.) After weeks of searching, I
finally found the perfect flat in a middle-class area called Doqqi, not too far
from Downtown. The flat was on the fourth floor. It had three bedrooms, two
bathrooms, a large reception area, and an extra room that could be converted
into a dance studio. Most importantly, the price was right. I told the real
estate agent that I would rent this apartment and would like to sign a lease
with the landlord. The landlord, the agent informed me, was living in Kuwait,
but his sister Wiam would act on his behalf. So I met with Wiam and her two
young sons a day later.

My
meeting with Wiam was cordial enough. We made it through all the forced pleasantries
that usually characterize interactions between Egyptians and foreigners. But
then she popped the question. THAT question. “What are you doing here in
Cairo?” (Mind you, Wiam had just made a point of saying that she was very
religious, and that her whole family was conservative.) “I… um…I’m writing a
book about Egyptian art,” I blurted. “Oh, so you attend the American University
in Cairo?” she asked. “Um… I guess you could say that,” I answered, hoping my
countenance wouldn’t betray my guilty conscience. And then, we signed a six-month
lease.

Fast
forward two months. I’m hired to belly dance at the Paradise Hotel in a city
called Ras Sidr. It’s a three-hour drive from Cairo. Upon arrival, I did my
usual 45-minute show with three costume changes. I think it was the first time
the hotel hired a foreign belly dancer, and the audience was loving every
minute of it—they were clapping, cheering, whistling, and even screaming and
throwing roses at me. I left the stage feeling so good about myself…

…until
two young boys approached me as I was walking to the changing room. “Excuse
me,” they said. “Aren’t you the girl who lives at 22 Doqqi Street?” “WHY YES I!—…am.
Wait, how do you know that?!” I asked. “Because our mother is Wiam,” they
replied. “She was sitting inside with us watching you dance. She said you dance
really well.”

The
boys’ words fell upon me like an avalanche of dung. Fresh, hot, Egyptian donkey
dung. The joy that I experienced just two seconds before seeing them completely
evaporated. Just my luck, I thought. Wiam catches me belly dancing in a random
hotel three hours away from Cairo, and now she’ll tell her brother, who will
surely evict me from the apartment.

Sure
enough, my thoughts materialized. Mohamed came back to Cairo from Kuwait in
March of the following year, and the first thing he did was inform me that he
would be doubling the rent. When I said I would not be able to pay the
increase, he said rather sharply that I must have lots of money being a
belly dancer and all. 

So
that’s what this is about, I said. You’re uncomfortable renting your apartment
out to a belly dancer. He admitted that I was correct—that he did not want a
dancer living in his flat because he and his family were “people of God.”

There
are a couple of reasons for this way of thinking. In Egypt and the wider Muslim
world, public belly dancing is considered a sin. It is not art. This is because
Islam, which is the dominant religion in Egypt, places a very high premium on
female modesty. It teaches that a woman’s beauty must be reserved for her
husband and her husband alone. Displaying hair and skin in the presence of men,
therefore, is sinful. As such, the belly dancer (ra’assa in Arabic) is
no more than a lowly whore. She flouts Islamic mores by entertaining strange
men with half-naked wiggles and jiggles.

The
second reason is that belly dancing is synonymous with prostitution. Historically,
some Egyptian belly dancers doubled as sex workers. It is thought they most
likely used their performance venues to collect customers, including French and
British soldiers stationed in Cairo. This behavior became so widespread and
problematic that Muhammad Ali, the founder of what is considered “modern Egypt”
(1805 to 1848), famously banished all the belly dancers (awaalim) from
Cairo—apparently, the dancers were spreading venereal disease amongst the
soldiers. Apparently.  

Though
I had been aware of this reality since I started belly dancing in New York, I had
adopted a “not my problem” attitude toward it. Now that I live in Egypt,
however, it has certainly become my problem. This is why I try my best to
conceal the fact that I’m a belly dancer. I keep my makeup to a minimum when
traveling to and from work. I wrap my sequined Saidi sticks in a black
garbage bag, and I play the music low when I practice dance in my apartment. Barring
acts of God such as the one I just narrated, these measures are usually
sufficient.

Nevertheless,
my secret manages to escape from time to time. In fact, more often than not,
people find out that I’m a belly dancer. One week after I moved into my next
apartment, for example, the entire building learned of my work. That was due to
accidentally locking myself out of my apartment and subsequently asking a
neighbor to climb into my apartment via our connecting balconies to let me in.
To do this, he would have to find the key in one of my purses and unlock the
door. Unfortunately, he was unable to find the key in any of my bags, so he
turned them upside down and emptied their contents. Out flew the key from one
of the bags, along with more than forty photos of me in my belly dance costumes.

Ta-da!
My neighbor was newly privy to my secret. No, he didn’t have the authority to
kick me out of my flat. But in Egypt, when one person knows something, the
whole country knows. Indeed, it wasn’t long before the bawabeen
(doormen) started looking at me funny as I entered and left the building. They
also started scrutinizing all the men my two female Canadian roommates brought
up to our apartment. At one point, they even threatened to call the police on
me for having male visitors. In Egypt-think, this is the equivalent to starting
a whorehouse. (Amazingly, unmarried mixed-gender households are technically
legal in Egypt, however Islamic sentiments vis-à-vis gender segregation always
trump legal technicalities.)

As
difficult as things have been for me, Egyptian belly dancers have it worse. Not
only must they hide their lives from landlords and neighbors, but they have to
contend with their families as well; most Egyptians would never accept their
daughter/sister/mother working as a belly dancer. My heart goes out to these
women. It is only by working as dancers that these unskilled women escape the
merciless clutch of Egyptian poverty. But it costs them their dignity. What
I’ve learned through my interviews with dozens of ordinary Egyptian belly
dancers is that they believe dancing is sinful (haram) and want to quit
once they’ve saved enough money to live comfortably. In that respect, their
conflict is not just societal, it is internal. It is one that I, as a citizen
of the secular West, do not struggle with.