Uh. Latvia and Uh.

I wouldn't say it was the strangest, but definitely one of the strangest experiences during my trip.

Mahmoud, our felucca captain, lowered the sail and eased the boat towards a sand bank.  8 pm.  A fire roared as shadows danced against a short bluff and palm trees. The stars tried to outshine one another.

I jumped off and headed towards the nearest available natural toilet. When I came back:

6 or 7 Nubian men were dancing around a crackling radio.  Another felucca moored next to ours, and a woman peeped her head out and darted back inside the cabin when she saw me and the other passengers on our boat. She was naked.  A couple of Nubian men walked on the boat and then strolled back off.

A man, white-skinned, walked towards us. "It's my wedding," he said softly.  And where was he from? Latvia. And was that his new bride, naked in the boat? Yes.

Ah.

The Nubians continued to dance around the fire. Then they hushed and stopped. Out of the boat came the Latvian bride, in her glorious if ill-fitting belly-dancing gear.  Her belly flowed over, as did her gi-normous... assets. She held a glowing box and slowly presented with a regal pose to her husband.  The cardboard fell away, and the Nubians began to chant, "Happy Birthday to you...."

Ah. 

What to do but to join in?  We had cake and glanced at each other as the radio crackled again and this time, the Latvian bride joined the Nubian men and started to wriggle and jiggle and twirl, arms high up with a veil that she slid across her face, then her chest, then in a final ecstatic moment, draped over her new husband's and current birthday boy's head as their eyes and nose and mouths came together underneath.  Around them the Nubians swayed and danced and shouted and brayed.

Where were we? Lord of the Flies?

We finished our cake and politely rejected offers to join the dance.

As we piled onto our felucca, the dance and music and cavorting rewound and started again.  I was half-curious to see how it would all turn out, but then again, we had to make Kom Ombo by 9 am.

Man. My idea of Heaven. Do you have photos? Times like this words simply don't do the visuals justice.

See, key difference between yuppie nomads and performers. I would have jumped in and whirled better than the entire clan. And then they would elected me king, but then the husband-cum-birthdater would get jealous and there would be a fierce showdown of heterosexual superiority through the most basic expression of the male body: male belly dancing. And of course I'd win. And then, you know, orgies, duh...

Hmm... maybe I need to lay off the porn a bit.

And you go from Proust to Clancy?! Short on reading material in Cairo?

Posted by: kdawg | November 02, 2006 at 12:32 AM

Short of reading material indeed.

YupNo has pictures. I'll post them as soon as we get them on Flickr.

Posted by: j.fisher | November 04, 2006 at 06:45 AM