WHIRLING DERVISH, BELLY DANCERS, & SHISH KEBAB, SAHARA CITY, EGYPT 1964

Monday - Dr. & Mrs. Ishmael and their two sons (Cassa's brothers) and cousin picked us up and brought us to their home for a lunch of chicken; we learned how to eat mangos properly.  We returned to the hotel, had our hair done (???) but didn't have time to finish because we rushed off to see the Klines (Director of Fulbright there) and their daughter Vicki who was attending the American University of Beirut (AUB). They asked us to stay for dinner but we didn't because we had to go back and pack and the boys picked us up at 10, (despite the fact that they were told that we weren't there because the hotel was trying to protect us from strange young men!) We went to Sahara City through the desert via the pyramids. 

Tuesday, August 25 -- Assuming a day begins at midnight, there I shall begin.  For this day had no real beginning.  At midnight, then, Gail and I found ourselves at a table about 5 yards from the dance floor of Sahara City, finishing off a 'small' order of shish kebab (under a tent, no less) with the two young (one actually not so young) Egyptian men -- Haani and Moustafa.  Dinner, belly dancers, whirling dervishes, African dancers, a girl with candles on her head and a table in her mouth, the congo line and the whirling dervish (who, by the way, invited Gail to dance with him -- she foolishly said no).   Indeed it was more like a carnival or a circus than a nightclub.  The belly dancers were more covered than any public dancers we had ever seen. Boston's El Morocco belly dancers supercede in face, figure, dance and costume.

The one good dancer at Sahara City was African (5 years ago the religious of Egypt clamped down on scanty, bikini like costume and now the belly dancing outfits resemble 1950's strapless evening gowns with straps.)  The whirling dervish whirled about 2,000 times for us (interested by a dead drunk 'belly dancer').  The Africans performed a cross between a mock battle and the American 'twist', and the finale consisted of every performer grabbing a customer, jumping around on the stage, and finally forming a congo line around the room.  (I cringed when one of the dervishes asked me to join the line!) The little children joining in made the whole fete seem a bit like a degenerate orgy, but the dance was saved by a young sporty mid-Western strawberry blonde girl who happily and innocently danced with the whirling dervish.  After this display, Gail was sorry she had refused when the Dervish asked her to join.

The above was taken directly from a journal entry written during my 1964 trip to Egypt.  Tomorrow read the last of my journal entries written in Egypt in 1964.

Photo Credit:  Egyptian dancer Ashea Wabe, performing as "Little Egypt", photograph by Benjamin Falk circa 1896, courtesy of Wikipedia. Note that belly dancers were more scantily clad in the Egypt of 1896 than in the Egypt of 1964!