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Now you may frown and say, the brothers or the men controlling
the girl etc…. etc… but before you do that, please ask me one
very vital questions:
Q) Who, or what are women to an Egyptian / Arabian man?
A) A woman to an Egyptian man is either: Mother, Sister, Daughter,
Aunt, Grandmother, Cousin, Fiancee, Wife or Work- mate. Well,
the Egyptian man can NEVER say no to any of these ladies. They
fully control his life. What he eats, what he will wear, where
he is going to sleep, what job "THEY" will be proud to have him
do, and THEY CHOOSE FOR HIM THE WOMAN WHO HE IS GOING TO MARRY.
I know of many a disaster when some poor man married a girl who
was not liked by the women in the family. It was hell on earth.
Believe me, my brother did that 30 years ago, and lives to regret
it. But, the ladies themselves have their own moral codes of conduct
and what they consider to be a good woman or not good enough.
She has to have qualities and traits that they approve of. Well
you see, she will be their door and special agent to him, convincing
him, in her way, to do what the rest of the women want him to
do.
I am not here to beef about anything; I am only fascinated by
the way, this chess game is played. It is a game of life, and
the Egyptian women play it to the full.
I recall once when I was young in Cairo, I had a best friend who
was also a drummer called Tareq; we both came from very "SOPHISTICATED"
(woooops), high class families. My family was Pashas and in the
cinema industry and his were very rich diamond and gold merchants
from Khan El Khalili. One day Tareq and I were in El Hossein,
and we were walking behind This Baladi woman, she must have been
about 28 years old, we were about 16 or 17.
She was dressed in a long Galabeya that was loose but when the
Melaya was wrapped, you could see that magnificent "Coca Cola"
(standard disclaimer) (just joking) shape of her body. There was
a certain part of her backside that moved independently like two
ferrets fighting in a sack, ……so rhythmically Tareq and I started
singing the Maqsoum to her walk: Dom tak Trrrrrak Dom Retitak……..and
after a few bars of that we broke out laughing. But I will never
forget that day. She was walking like there were no other women
worth looking at in the God Forsaken planet but her. As far as
she was concerned, she was IT. Proud, strong, pleasant and very
respectable, and full of feminine power. Imagine this was Zeinab.
By now Zeinab's little sister, Souaad is getting married, this
is probably the happiest day of Zeinab's life, even more than
her own wedding night. To her, now her family's duty is complete,
and her father and mother can start having a bit of a life for
themselves too. Don't you think she is going to dance that night,
you bet your last hip drop she will. And in PUBLIC too.
How is she going to do that without breaking the traditions of
never showing off too much of her femininity in public and shaming
her husband, who has to be respected and given the idea that he
is the "LION" of the family if not of the The whole neighborhood,
so that he can shut up and do what he's told, and go to work every
darn day and bring the money, and give it to her? She's going
to have to do it slowly, and bit by bit………A small taqsim on an
Oud, or as in recently on an Accordion or Saxophone or nowadays
the keyboards, is a great way to do this.
She will have to dance it on the spot, small movements, very Contained,
but full of feeling for the music, and expressing the music. If
the music does a long note, she sways with it for as long as it
does like the reeds from the bamboo plants along the Nile banks,
swaying with the force of the breeze. But if the music is small
choppy sounds, or even tremelendo, she shimmies with it.
The Bamboo reeds are also called Oud, from which the Taqsim introduction
got it's name as well as from the fact it used to be done on the
Oud instrument This is why it is called AWWADY. This part is like
a Mawwal (free non rhythmic nostalgic singing) on an instrument.
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