Do you remember that childhood story “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll? On a rather ordinary day, Alice chases a talking rabbit, falls down a hole, and ends up in a world where she can’t quite seem to make sense of what’s going on sometimes. Last night, I had one of those moments. The kind that makes you say to yourself, “What’s going on? Is this really happening? Am I dreaming this?”
My friends and I had decided to take a short boat ride on the Nile. We paid five Egyptian pounds apiece to be on a boat that was adorned with crazy lights. There were gyrating heart-shaped lights that kept in time with the blaring music. Star-shaped and circular lights adorned the bough of the boat. The top of the boat was open to the night sky, but had poles that went across so that it could be covered at a later time. The poles were decorated with rope lights and colored bulbs. A camel-shaped light (I think that it was a camel) perched in between two twinkling crescent moons on the stern. The lights gave the boat a carnival-type feeling.
The boat’s occupants were about 85% unattractive men. There were two families (one with small children) and us three foreign women. Everyone sat on this strangely upholstered bench around the dance floor. At first people sat stiffly despite the loud Arabic pop/techno/defies classification music. It was like being at a middle school dance where you want to be asked to dance, but then you remember yourself and decide that it would be better not to be asked. Then these three scrawny guys got up and shaking their butts. The little kids were jumping around. Some other men got up and were holding hands dancing. They tried to encourage their other friends to dance, but no one would do it. There were some other guys who were talking to each other and touching each other on the shoulder and the stomach (in the tradition of affectionate Middle Eastern men). Towards the end of the ride, this woman got up and was belly-dancing. All the men clapped and cheered for her.
For the duration of the ride, the only semi-cute guy on the boat kept staring at me. Meanwhile, one of my friends was getting Blue Toothed random phone numbers from guys on the boat. The grandma from the family with the little kids kept scolding them. There was this guy in his fifties, wearing an outfit that the dad on “That 70’s show” would have wore, who kept trying to take our picture. The half an hour that we paid for seemed never-ending. The music just kept going and the boat went back and forth in a line on the Nile. I started to feel sick.
Then I felt mystified. Why do you need to have loud music on a boat? Why would strangers want to dance to that kind of music with other strangers? Wasn’t it enough that we were “cruising” the Nile? Wasn’t it enough to just look at the city lights in peace? Speaking of lights, why were there so many lights? And suddenly, the strangest thought of the night hit me. I was actually having a good time despite all of the seemingly discordant elements.
aww amy i like this entry. you talk about how mystifying the experience is and i kept wanting to read bc your writing, too, mystifies, but in a good way!! it sounds like people there are generally more outgoing and interactive with one another than in the US. no one even looks at each other in this country lol. i dont know which i would prefer... but i must hear this Arabic pop/techno/defies classification music!
ReplyDelete