(Un)famous

‘Do I look like a faggot to you?’ This was Mohamed El-Sobky’s response when I nudged him to the dance floor to avoid entertaining him in the back corner of the club. Mohamed El-Sobky. Butcher turned movie mogul. The man most credited with the demise of wholesome Egyptian culture. ‘Any man who dances is a faggot,’ he elaborated. Well then, the voice in my head said. I’ll just have to dance with those ‘faggots’ over there while you down your whiskey wondering how this belly dancer snubbed you. YOU, Pharaoh of Egyptian cinema, who could make me famous overnight. You expect me to fall at your feet, but I won’t. I’m going to treat you the way I would any other drunken meat hacker – with caution and disgust.

This was how I met El-Sobky. For years I had dreamed of meeting this person, this… ‘legend.’ But Egyptians in the entertainment business advised me against it. ‘Ma balaash,’ they would say. ‘Don’t do it. He’ll make you famous, but not without having you for dinner. When he’s done with you he’ll throw you to the dogs like an old bone as he looks for the next piece of meat. Are you OK with that?’ 



The message was clear. Stardom was for sharameet and mitnakeen, not for good girls. I took that information and filed it with my dreams under ‘forget about it,’ inwardly sulking over the fact that I would never become famous.

I felt like this for years, until I didn’t. After a decade of small successes and many disappointments in the Cairo belly dance world, I admitted defeat. I also had a change of heart. I no longer desired fame. I didn’t even want to dance. I’m done with this, I said to myself. At that point, I was dancing strictly for the money until I got myself out of there. And when I did, I wouldn't be looking back. But that’s when the universe threw me a boomerang. My boomerang. The one I had flung years ago hoping it would come back to me with Sobky. And guess what. It hurt.

Speaking with Mohamed El-Sobky was painful. It's not that I intended to chat with him--having just finished my sixth performance at three in the morning, I wanted nothing more than to vanish from the smoke-filled Five Bells Dinner Club. El-Sobky, however, had other plans. He had his red flannelled back to me when he asked the club owner, Mr. Hesham, to introduce me to him just as I was walking out the door. With a raised hand and a soft whistle, Mr. Hesham signaled for me to come over. The two of them were sitting in the garden area at a tall bar style table reserved for VIPs. I yanked my sequined duffel bag full of costumes further up my right shoulder and approached the two men. Ahmed, the agent who regularly booked me at this club, followed closely behind.

‘Sit down,’ El-Sobky said, pulling out the bar stool to his right. Dressed in jeans, an army green jacket, and black flip-flops, I was in no condition to chat with such an important man. I obeyed him nonetheless. I lowered my bag and took my place beside him, opposite Mr. Hesham. Fathi Abdel Wahhab, a famous actor who owed his entire career to the old producer, sat facing him. Ahmed stood to the actor’s right. To El-Sobky’s left stood a woman running her fingers through his hair, which was unusually abundant for a man of his age. Short, frumpy, and young, she looked nothing like the overaged, over-Botoxed, cleavage-baring women in the club. She must have been his mistress of the month. Or his latest wife. Whoever she was, her presence relieved me—he wouldn’t dare proposition me in front of her. Or so I thought.

‘What is your name?’ El-Sobky asked me, in Arabic.

‘Luna,’ said Ahmed, who answered before I could even recall it.

‘Is that her real name?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘My real name is Diana.’

‘Why don’t you use your real name?’

‘Because I’ve been on television. If my landlord sees ‘Diana’ belly dancing on TV, he will evict me.’ 

Not that my alias is foolproof. People eventually figure out who I am, and I’ve already been kicked out of two apartments because of it. I wasn’t going to get into it with him, though.

‘Your Arabic is very good,’ Fathi interjected. ‘Where are you from, and how long have you been living in Egypt?’

I could have easily answered, but any more answers from me would have been disrespectful. It would have made Ahmed, my agent, and more importantly a man in a hyper-patriarchal society, feel irrelevant. 

Surprised that an American belly dancer had been working in Egypt for ten years, El-Sobky asked why no one had ever heard of me. I pursed my lips and raised my eyebrows, as if to say, ‘that’s a good question.’

‘You’ve never considered acting?’ El-Sobky asked me.

‘No, appearing on the big screen has never been her ambition,’ Ahmed replied.

It was true. Just before getting on stage, I was telling Ahmed how returning to America to work a boring nine to five seemed like the sexiest thing in the world to me. But this wasn’t the time or place for the truth. And honestly, I hadn’t expected it from such a consummate liar as he. Besides, this was only true in the sense that I had been disillusioned, not that I had never dreamed of starring in movies, or that I wouldn’t take the opportunity if it presented itself. Ahmed knew this. In fact he knew me too well. Every time I spoke about quitting, he would tell me I wouldn’t last a day in the United States. I’d be so bored with ‘normalcy’ that I’d come running back to Egypt. He was right. Or not. Maybe he would just miss the commission he made off of his most popular dancer. Regardless, how could he dissuade me from leaving Egypt only to then sabotage the one thing that could make me stay?

Sensing that something was amiss, El-Sobky asked if I had ever done any film work. Ahmed answered yet again. He told him the names of two movies in which I had made brief appearances a few years back. El-Sobky scoffed. In his view, those were not real films. Fathi seemed similarly unimpressed. ‘Do you know who this man is?’ he asked me, pointing at the producer. For a moment I thought this might be a trick question. I mean, who didn’t know who this man was? My initial instinct was to answer that El-Sobky was originally a butcher, but I quickly decided against it. Egyptians don't take well to the whole rags to riches thing. So I played it safe and stuck with the obvious. 

‘He’s a producer,’ I said.

‘He’s not just a producer. He owns fifty percent of the Egyptian media. The government owns the other fifty percent.

True story, I thought, suppressing a chuckle.

And then, El-Sobky presented me with the promise of a lifetime. ‘Diana, I can put you in one of my films and make you the biggest belly dance star in Egypt in less than three months.’ 

Instant fame. Huh.

Now, maybe another dancer in my position would have jumped at the mere thought of this. I, however, kept my cool. Years of empty promises from industry big shots taught me to temper my excitement with unhealthy amounts of skepticism. So I answered with an indifferent ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘What is there to think about? Don’t you want to be famous like Sofinar and Alla Kushnir?’

Everyone’s eyes were fixated on me, waiting to hear what would come out of my mouth.

Nothing, of course. It was Ahmed who answered. He told El-Sobky that he was the first to work with the two dance stars he mentioned before they became famous... that he was the gateway to all the foreign belly dancers in Egypt.

Ha! NOW you lie, when it benefits YOU. And in typical Egyptian male fashion, you use your lies to impress people.. Only in this case, you're dealing with the unimpressible. While you’re at it, tell them you’re a lawyer and a doctor and a professional massage therapist, and whatever else you pretend to be. Tell them you make 100,000 EGP a month. Then drop the name of a government minister, or a prominent judge, and tell them he was your student, even if he is twenty years older than you. Even if he’s long dead. You think they’ll believe your lies the way you think I believe them because I never told you otherwise.

‘So you work with all the foreign dancers?’ El-Sobky asked him. ‘Tell me, who do you have?’

Ahmed proudly recited his list of non-Egyptian belly dancers. Gamila, Samara, this one, that one. He even mentioned Aasl, the Japanese dancer. 

Great, I thought. Make it even more difficult for me by flashing my competition in the man’s face. Perhaps he’ll ask you to bring him one of your other dancers and completely forget about me. You would love that because it would make you feel important, in the way that only an Egyptian man who deals in beautiful foreign women could.

‘You have a Japanese dancer?’ El-Sobky asked. ‘I’d love to meet her. I’m always looking for odd types for my films. Bring her to me tomorrow, same place, same time.’

At this point, my blood vessels would have ruptured had it not been for one simple fact. Aasl was fifty years old. Waaay past the age of stardom. Even if she were younger, nothing would come of it, as the Asian aesthetic doesn’t appeal to the Egyptian eye. Unfortunate as that may be, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the embarrassment wash over Ahmed’s face as he thought of a way to politely decline the producer’s request. He, along with the rest of us, knew he would make a fool out of himself by presenting an older Japanese dancer to Egypt’s top movie producer.

El-Sobky, however, insisted on meeting Aasl. Not because he was interested, but because he was on to Ahmed. The man may have been uneducated and a professional pervert, but he had a built-in bullshit detector that rivaled that of the best intelligence operatives. That’s a useful thing in a country in which lies are woven into the social fabric even more than prayer. In fact, it almost made me admire him.

Mr. Hesham objected. As the club’s owner and manager, he had a responsibility to provide his customers with quality entertainment. That meant no older Japanese belly dance show the following night. Tooz fil Sobky. Fuck El-Sobky.

As it were, Hesham’s objection inadvertently let Ahmed off the hook. Shit. El-Sobky, however, wasn’t backing down. He wanted to knock Ahmed down a few notches. As far as he was concerned, this windbag couldn’t possibly be my representative. 

‘Are you her manager?’ El-Sobky asked Ahmed. 

Ahmed answered honestly this time. No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t have said otherwise in front of me after just having spent ten days with me and my manager at a dance festival in Vietnam. 

‘Good. Get her manager on the phone right now,’ he ordered. 

Ahmed wanted to object-- calling my manager would knock him out of the running. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. There was no challenging El-Sobky. There was no getting out of this.

At this point, I took matters into my own hands. I dialed my manager’s number and let him speak with El-Sobky. They agreed that that the three of us should meet in two days. And only the three of us.

Meeting with El-Sobky in the presence of my manager sounded promising. But something, perhaps a premonition of sorts, told me not to get excited. After all, this was a man who dealt in a currency I’ve never owned. Sex. Or so it was believed. You could imagine my surprise, then, when the old hag asked me for dollars. American ones. Fifty thousand of them. Upfront, cash. Now that was a currency I could deal in. The amount, not so much. Fifty thousand dollars was a new car. A down payment on a house. It was the equivalent of 1,000,000 EGP, the amount it would cost to produce the entire film. Why should I pay to produce this movie? Would I be getting a return on my investment other than fame?

‘I’m sorry Mr. El-Sobky, I’m afraid that is way beyond my abilities,’ I said.

‘Is it? You know that Sofinar and Alla Kushnir paid me in order to make them famous.’

I didn’t doubt him. How much, I didn’t know. But if I were them, I would have paid. That’s the only way to get something in this industry without sleeping for it. Besides, nothing is truly yours until you buy it, either with your body or with your dollars. Not even fame.

‘Did you take $50,000 from those two dancers?’

‘No. I took a fraction of that,’ he said.

‘Then why are you asking me for so much money? Because I’m American?’

‘No. The price I’m quoting you reflects an adjustment for inflation based on the current value of the dollar. And secondly, you can’t compare yourself to either of them. You are neither half the dancer nor half the woman. So you have to pay more if you want me to make you famous.’

El-Sobky went on disparaging me, cutting me up like the butcher he was. I was not as pretty as those two dancers. I was not as sexy. Sofinar had the biggest, jiggliest breasts in town, and Alla raised her leg in an extension in a music video, ‘wil balad haagit 3la cosomaha’ (and all of Egypt got horny for her *mother’s* pussy). But me, if he passed by me in a club, he wouldn’t take a second look. Assuming I’d capture his attention in the first place.

Really. I thought. That’s why you had your mobile camera up my ass as I was doing my drum solo. And that’s why you had your entire entourage videotape me as I shik shak shook in every way possible until you screamed in exaltation.

I could see through him like a spotless window on a bright sunny day. He took a knife to my self-esteem thinking that if he could make me feel inferior to other dancers, I would bankroll his film.

I won’t lie. It hurt. It hurt hearing everything that was supposedly wrong with my appearance and my performance, and from the one person in the country whose opinion actually mattered. Regardless of whether there was any truth to it, the fact that someone could be so reckless with my feelings made me want to cry. But I didn’t. I wasn’t going to let this lowlife piece of shit get the better of me.

It took everything inside me to stop the tears from rolling. Especially when the old son of a bitch sought to demonstrate my unattractiveness by poking my left breast with his finger.

‘You see? You have no breasts,’ he said.

‘You sure about that, mister? I’ve got more than Alla and Samara, who you’ve turned into stars.’

‘No, you have nothing,’ he said as he poked my breast again. ‘If you want me to work with you, you’ll have to get an operation.’

‘She already had one,’ Ahmed volunteered.

Wrong answer, shithead.

‘Mr. El-Sobky, I will not get an operation in order to work with you. And I won’t pay a dime. If this is what it takes to be famous, I prefer to remain unfamous.’

Before El-Sobky could respond, Fathi intervened. ‘Please don’t be upset, Luna. El-Sobky only wants the best for you. If he didn’t think you were star material, he wouldn’t have approached you in the first place.’

No shit.

‘Maalaysh, I can tell you’re a really decent person,’ El-Sobky offered. ‘I really want to work with you, and I think we could go far. Here’s my card. Let’s meet in two days.’

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It was 4:30 am when we finished this… encounter. I let Ahmed drive me home even though I wanted to rip his face off.

‘Maalaysh ya habibi, you know zis beebol is so bee’a (low and unmannered).  I can never work wis zis man. Zat is why I told him we don’ta work wis za dirty beebol like him.’ Ahmed said this as Qu’ranic verses blared from his car’s speakers. I wanted to laugh. A spiteful, vile laugh. Not even the Qu’ran could make him stop lying. To my face.

Just to give you a sense of how cheap a dancer is to anyone in this business, not only did Ahmed deliberately fail to present me in the best possible light… not only did he refuse to defend me, but he further insulted my intelligence by lying about what he said as though I hadn’t been there listening to every word that was uttered. As though I didn’t understand Arabic. And for what? To save face in front of me? He should have thought of that when we were speaking with El-Sobky.
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As you've probably guessed, I did not have my manager follow up with the movie producer. Though he was confident that El-Sobky would be much more reasonable the next time we met, I had zero desire to claim my fame by jiggling my tits on television. At least not at that point in my career. There were plenty of other girls around to do that. Egypt didn't need to see my tits.

I will give the man one thing, though. Ok, two. One, he was a shrewd business man. Nobody has been able to topple his media empire. Not any of his more respectable (and respectful) competitors, and definitely not the government. And two, not only is he brutally honest, but he doesn't care what others think of him. That just doesn't exist in Egypt. Here was a man who in the midst of our meeting admitted to being a whore with no scruples. Granted, when you're as filthy (and)  rich as he is (emphasis on filthy), you can afford to own your mistakes. Morality is for the poor, whereas money somehow buys you impunity from the 90 million self-appointed morality officers in Egypt. Still, it was oddly admirable to be in the presence of someone who was just so real with himself.

That being said, this experience solidified one thing for me. It was time to leave. I was tired of the bullshit. Tired of being compared to other women. Tired of being sought and sold based on whether my boobs were bigger, higher, or rounder than some other dancer’s, or whether my face was prettier. I was sick of the actual meat market that is the belly dance business in Egypt. I’m better than that, I told myself. It’ll take a while for me to actually believe it, but at least I got myself to say it after all these years.

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