What knives and dust can do to a person
In Egypt, there are worlds beneath the worlds tourists can see.
There´s the layer of tourists and occasional visitors; the layer of expatriates who live aside/protected from the real country; the layer of the ones who dig deep into Egypt´s bones.
I´ve always belonged to the last layer - there were no buffers, no protection, no intermediary between me and the reality of Egypt. The best and the worst - I saw it, ate it, drank it, breathed it.
One night, I went to a Shaabi Party in "Sayeda Zeinab", one of the oldest, poorest, most traditional and infamous areas of Cairo.
My musicians were with me and so was my boyfriend at the time - I was, according to Egyptian society, protected by my male counterparts.
Although we´d arrived together and I had a strict "no active participation in Shaabi public dance events" policy, something pulled me towards a specific corner of the party.
I sneaked through the crowd and found a circle of men watching a "Shaabi duet" with knives.
That was the first time I´d seen people dancing with knives, live. I´d seen it on television, my musicians had told me about it but I´d never watched it in person.
The two boys faced each other as if they were fighters in a duel but they did so to the sound of fun-funky-and-sassy Shaabi music.
There was a lot of dust - from the desert, from the floor; from our own exhaustion - and I swear the blades of those knives were sharper than Einstein´s mind.
They went towards the floor, then up, the knives simulating attacks that weren´t personal - more like attacks on life itself, a sort of pay back.
A woman in a circle of men in a Shaabi party stands out - a foreign woman who looks like me stands out more; a foreign woman who looks like I do and also happens to be a professional dancer is a light bulb in the darkness. It didn´t take long for one of the dancing boys to notice me.
- Taal´i , ya helwa (come, oh beautiful). - He said, sure that I wasn´t going to reject the invitation.
Without explanation, he handed me one of his knives and gestured to the DJ to play a new song.
I looked around and noticed the multi-colored lights hanging from the buildings; the smoke in the air; the smell of haxixe, incense, cheap perfume, sweat, and life in the air.
Egypt was my home and I knew my home well - some challenges have to be embraced, no matter how weird or tough they may be.
- Yallah, ya wad´! (let´s go, oh boy!) - I told my dancing partner.
We danced without a choreography. I felt like a panther in the wild. No rules, no certainties, no laws, no future.
Our eyes locked, our knives marked the shape of our body, the shape of our anger, rage, frustrations, and sadness, while following the music.
At some point, I found myself kneeling on the floor, dancing with not one but two knives (no idea who handed me the second knife or when), implicitly making sure my dance partner didn´t know what I was going to do next.
I wasn´t a woman anymore, neither was he a man. We were two creatures dancing for our life. About our life. Beyond life.
At the end of the song, I didn´t recall what I´d done. I entered a deep state of "Tarab", a dream-like state, a trip, and improvised in the rawest of manners. But I knew something had shifted.
I had changed.
That improvisation with knives, in the middle of that crazy party in "Sayeda Zeinab", had put me in contact with the wildest part of me, the darkest but also fiercest part of me.
At the end of that dance, as I returned the knives back to the owners, who reclaimed them, and received the applause of the audience, now hysterical asking for "bis", I knew I´d be able to face every battle thrown at me. And I´d be able to do it in style.
Don´t ask me why, or how, but a certainty of Inner-Unshakable-Bad-Ass Strength awakened in me.
What knives and dust can do to a person. Indeed.
Inner Strength, and the ability to awaken our Bad Ass Warrior, are two of the consequences of learning "Modern Shaabi".
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