Cairo, the 23rd May, 2009
“Interviewed for arab magazine…why you should never quit your dreams for the sake of any man!”
*** Lately, I was interviewed by two wonderful arabic magazines, one Lebanese and one Algerian. Both were focused in my work in Egypt and outside plus some feminine, kind of personal questions about being a foreigner woman in this highly complex arabic world and other girlie stuff with which I am not very comfortable with. Despite all appearances, I am not the typical feminine prototype crazy about shopping, gossip and diets! That´s just not me, thanks God.
*** One of the questions hit a deep wound and, coincidently, a recent experience I had in my life: Would you quit your dance career for the love of a man?Wow…this is quite a question and it couldn´t have been made in a worse timing and yet there I was facing the question and I had to answer as honestly as possible.The formula of the question should be corrected though…and I recently found that out thanks to a very painful disappointment according towhich I learnt for good that the man who may ask you to quit your dreams for his sake is not worth of you and the one who doesn´t, in fact, really deserves the kind of sacrifice he didn´t even asked forin the first place.The question should be remade.There´s no such thing as quitting of your career for the love of aman. It ´s easy to fall in this illusory romance trap but this sacrifice has nothing to do with real love. That I have learnt on my own skin, as most everything I´ve learnt until today.You may quit for the sake of his will, his wish, his possession sense and jealousy, his worries of what other people might think of him for marrying and building a family with a dancer.I was even told that by someone who used to sware his love that he wouldn´t accept his children to hear at school the insult of being called “son or daughter of a dancer”…please write this one down: it´sa classic! Arabic men refusing their women to work as dancers is so common and well-known in the Middle East as mosques and shishas.
In reality, the one who asks you to quit does it solely for himself and his own prejudices and desire to make you fit into what society,his family and his own perception of what a woman should be. There´sno LOVE in the equation at all.Love is understanding, trusting, respecting and accepting of one´s choices and aspirations. Real love means an equally real man facing reality and society with his woman by his side, no matter if she´s adancer, an actress or a singer. The shame associated to these professions is not invariably in the artists themselves but in people´s minds.
*** My answer to the magazine question was sincere and disarming :“Yes, I have considered once to quit my career for the sake of love and family but, thanks God, I realized, just in time, that the person who demanded that from me was not worth that sacrifice. I regret ever thinking like this, specially when I now know that, if a man really loves you, he will not impose conditions to be with you. He will just be there by your side and everything else will not matter. I´ve learnt my lesson and thank God for that!”
*** I also learnt that the demand many arabic men do to dancers to stop their work is not but a way to avoid compromise (an excuse toavoid marriage and formal compromise) and keep sleeping around with them as they don´t expect them to really quit. As soon as the dancer may agree on this condition, they run away like mice in the middle ofa ship wreck. Watch out for this one: it´s also an ancient classic!
*** I also start to understand most arabic women fox strategies to use men as much as they use them. No victims, just two adults playing the game they know too well…both winning on different sides of the battle and knowing, from the beginning, the rules of the dirty game.Most arabic women stick to their real and imaginary goodies and ripe off every jewel, money and job opportunity from men time after time and, in the end, they are seen as great ladies and warriors who know what they want and are not afraid to get it. The most “decent” ones pretend to be humble and loving just in time to get a diamond ring ontheir finger and a marriage who will assure them a life of leisure,comfort and stability as society demands. Millionaire marriages from where women get huge sums of money and assets after a bunch of kids and divorce may be seen as condemnatory at european standards and atmy own eyes but, knowing arabic men as I now do, I may start to admire these fortune hunters who play with their men quite in the same way they play with them. Game for game. Sex for money with a contract in their hands to legalize it and revert the men´s temporary property –his wife is seen as his property – into a financial sponsorship after separation. A lot of men reach the point of keeping a dead marriage just to avoid the expenses of a tricky divorce and the aftermath of it all (paying ex-wife and children´s pension can be a dreadful perspective when the woman was clever enough to make sure her marriage contract defended her and compensated her in case of separation). It´s common knowledge that older women from a generation that still saw ladies as obvious meat merchandise and rich ugly men with moustaches as the owners of the world used to tell their daughters – until today!– they ought to have as many children as possible to assure their husbands would not leave them or take a second (or third, even fourth) wife. As Tina Turner would ask in her song:“What´s love got to do with it?!”
*** Suddenly, this dirty game doesn´t seem to difficult to swallow anymore. I would still die before selling myself for money or compromising with a man I don´t love. Truthfully speaking, I am nothing but a poor apprentice of arabic feminine haunting clever games. After all I´ve been through and even seeing how most arabic men don´t deserve a second of our attention, by the rhythm I´m taking onmy “arabic viper technique” intensive course, I may as well be 80 years old and not know how to seduce a man for my own profit. I guessI´m a lost case in this department and, yet, I am proud of being one. Contrary to what most strange people might think about me, I´ve never used my body, looks or sexual power to manipulate men into doing what it´s convenient to me. I was stupid enough to separate love from ambition all the time and refused to ask for moret han…well…(stupid!)…love! I had more chances to do it than any woman I´ve known and the irony of it all is that I´ve never felt good at the simple idea of using my seduction power to get whatever I want from men and, in the end, I see how I´m seen as a fool, a poor dumb girl with no wit or brain. Not using all the guns I have at my disposal do get where I want is not seen as honesty and a quality but as a sign of stupidity. I am finally getting the point.
*** Who is right? Me, with my stupid love fool fundamentalist attitude and extreme honesty or the masters of extortion I see everyday who get what they want through the guns they have, using men as much as they use them?!
*** Not a long time ago, my answer would have been clear. Right now, Idon´t know anymore. All my certainties and values are being reconstructed by recent life experiences. This is how we build ourselves aiming maturity and, sometimes, get lost on the way.
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