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from LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2019
When you were alittle girl, playing with your neighbour's discarded dolls,you looked up into the deaf sky, and wished that when youwere all grown up, you would be a belly dancer. The starsteased your secret out of you. They could be trusted not towhisper pungent rumours. They weren't your neighbours. Theywould never tell.
Your thoughtfulbody couldn't help itself. It had the knowledge no-one gaveit. Your knees knew that only they could instigate the mostvibrant of hip shakes; the incline of your buttocks producedthat perfectly undulating stomach roll; and the see-sawingof your shoulders tilted your breasts to mechanicalperfection. And when the beat of the tablacame at you, you didn't think to fight it. You allowed it inbecause it was part of you in a way that your familywasn't.
When you gotyour period you thought you had injured your core. Yoururban mother didn't share her womanly knowledge. Just likeher rural mother. They only passed on recipes. Theydiscounted the body that wouldn't listen to them anymore.But your body listened. It heard the taqsimof the tabla, the fanciful misdirection ofthe ‘oud, and it played along. Your eyesdevoured the old black and white Egyptian movies of SamiaGamal and Taheya Karioka. Their beauty and their gracemesmerized you; and it brought all the ugliness in your lifecentre stage.
You lockedyourself in your own room – the only privilege of being theeldest daughter – and replayed the beats in your head whiledancing with abandon to decaying walls. When your parentsasked you each passing year what you wanted for yourbirthday, you made something up that was well suited totheir world. You never said a professional belly dancer'scostume. Although you could feel its sequins on your curiousbreasts, the rough netting rubbing at your honest belly, andthe faux gemstone crowning your navel. You imagined thesequined hip band directing your movements while the daggingon the generous tulle and muslin flirted with your thighs.Your bare feet, sometimes gliding, other times shouting tothe world: you are alive.
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