saturday night

The night is young but Lisa is tired and getting ready to sleep. It has been a slow day centred around a large, extravagant mezze lunch with stuffed vine leaves and fuul and roasted eggplant. We could sleep as well, but instead Joel and I decide to go out.

We take the towla board under arm and head back behind the house, through the quiet streets, past the gutter heaped with garbage, under the canopy of leaves and past the school, with its high brick wall. Here the roadway is like a constant carnival. We pass the glowing kushari store, its huge silver pots sitting plump in the windows. We pass pistachio sellers, pushing lit-up carts towering with leaning columns of paper cones and streams of smoke pouring from little chimneys. The kids ride bikes and chase cats. A little girl, head and shoulders covered by a clean white khimar runs out of the mosque clutching a one pound note, looking like a trick or treat ghost trawling for booty.

We sit at the qahwa and set up the board. Around us the clatter of dominoes, the chatter of school boys, the babble of voices from an arabic movie. The air is electric. We order shai and karkadai (hybiscus drink), glass after glass, and two shishas with glowing coals. The dice are rolled.

The play four or five games, pay and promise the man we will come back often. We walk back slowly, our heads buzzy from the shisha smoke. On the way we stop to talk to young teenage boys about whether we are Muslim or Christian ("Neither." "Jewish?" "No, not Jewish. No religion" "Muslim? Christian?"), where we are from ("Australia and USA". "Oh, USA, towers, crash, fall") and whether we like thrusting with Egyptian girls ("These ones good! Hey girls!" they say, about some passing young ladies in headscarves, at least 5 years older than these boys).

But we are back home and it is only midnight and we are two young, restless men in a very large city. How Cairo swells and flows into the evening! How its buzz beckons us out! We put on shoes and shirts and take a taxi downtown to Casino Palmyra.
Palmyra is not a casino in the gambling sense of the word, but it is, rather, a belly-dance and show bar. It is also one of the strangest places I have ever visited. We walk down a little alleyway of Sharia 26th of July, which opens up to an undercroft behind the shoe shops and fast food joints on the street. Four men approach us, eyes wide, sparkling: "Palmyra?" they ask, "This way!" ushering us through the doors at the far end of the courtyard.

Inside: we sit, at a small table with a dirty tablecloth. This is an old, cavernous, dilapidated dance hall, its former glory long faded. Red curtains hang over the doorways, bowtied waiters hover around by the stained walls, the lighting is bright and white. And on the round stage, slightly elevated, is the band, five guys playing loud and distorted music on keyboards and percussion, screeching, piercing. And the singer, pacing with his cordless mic, an old guy with sunken cheekbones, singing passionately, almost hauntingly, arabic ballards reverberating and echoing through the speakers.

Weaving around him as he strolls the stage is the dancer. She wears a lime green skirt and top combination, the skirt hiked up to her navel and split to her crotch to reveal a pair of black latex bike shorts. Pockets of flesh spill out at her waist. Her make-up is heavy and thick, her teeth crooked, her peroxided hair bursting like a geyser from the top of her head. She wears no shoes. She is in no way what could be considered remotely attractive by either Joel or myself.

Her waist is jiggling, slightly, throughout the next hour. Her movements range from a stand-still shake to a frantic twist, skip and twirl, like the spasmodic dance of some dionysian devotee.

She is in a moment of reserved movement when the mnan at the table next to us gets up and starts dancing himself, wobbling and shaking his large frame while mouthing the words and using his hands to simulate his heartbeat. He makes his way onstage. He, like most of the men here, has been sitting alone, smoking shisha, drinking beer and eating from a plate of fruit, and now it is close to the end of his night. He is shimmying up to the dancer, and shaking over her, towering above and staring down at the ripples waving through the tops of her pushed up breasts. She looks uncomfortable and tries to slowly move away from him. No one else really blinks.

Later, he is sitting down again, and he begins throwing grapes from his platter at the drummer. He throws about seven before he makes a hit. Joel and I cannot stop laughing.

There are about fifteen customers in the big hall. Two of them are older guys in casual suits, plump in their chairs. They are the special guests tonight, they are getting the special attention. They are removing wads of 5 pound notes and pealing them one by one to shower the dancer and the singer with them. The notes fall off her head and float to the stage, carpeting it for a few moments before being collected by a young man in trainers. Or the guys will tuck the money in her straps, the notes spread like fans, and she will, herself, throw them one by one at the singers crotch. Then she will offer to dance with the men, or she will shake in front of them. They look away, embarrassed. They keep on throwing the money though. They must throw about 1000 pounds (US$200) this way.

We are cradling our first drinks to try and wait it out until the next dancer. We are getting tired and the show is getting monotonous and the talent is underwhelming. We have giggled and laughed for an hour but now we are getting restless. The next dancer comes out and she is a better dancer, slightly, but is even less attractive than the first, her crimped, dyed bangs hanging square across her eyes, her smile snaggletoothed and creepy.

Money is thrown and collected. The singer's wails echo like something out of a David Lynch film. Her arms move like snakes.

The drinks run out. We get up and leave.