For years, downtown's Al-Tewfikiya street was synonymous with the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, until a government clampdown on the illegal group shut that head office down in 1995. Nine years down the road, some may find it somewhat ironic that the very same street would become associated with the launch of the largest-ever campaign against homosexuals in Egypt.
-Al Ahram Weekly, 4-10 March 2004
I forget the name of the seedy nightclub in Tawfiqiyya, just west of Ezbekiyeh Garden and north across Twenty Six of July Street. It was downstairs and its street door was unguarded. At the foot of the stairs we were asked where we’d like to sit, in which of the three concentric rings surrounding the stage- the innermost whiskey-by-the-bottle ring, the middle whiskey-by-the-glass ring, or the outer beer ring. Each ring had only one row of tables, so the sight lines were just fine for beer drinkers, so that’s where we sat and drank.
The MC was trying to warm up a sparse crowd, but only one table in the by-the-bottle ring was occupied, by an older gent in western clothes and a young man in dishdasha and flat fold turban, maybe Saudi, maybe Emirati-definitely “Arab”, as the Egyptians call them derisively. The gent kept the bottle closer to him than to the younger guy, but his glass was full too.
A belly dancer came on looking kinda lame. She only had that one table to dance for so she spent most of her time looking in their direction, showing us her rear end. No belly rolls for us. A dombek player and electric organist were already trailing off their trills and beats. The MC had to do something or he’d lose the crowd completely.
He grabbed the cordless mic and stepped forward. “Hayy al Amir Muammar. Hayy al Amir”. Long live Prince Muammar. Long live the prince. The gent followed his prompt and threw a bill onto the stage floor at the dancer’s feet. Another prompt, another thrown bill. Were they 1 guinea bills, or 5s? Either a buck and a half or seven? I couldn’t tell.
The MC kept at it, “Hayy al Amir, Hayy al Amir”, revving us up until we chimed in too. Finally Prince Muammar threw down a few of his own, enough for the MC to start his speech- evidently he had been waiting for this moment, and had it practiced- about how the Prince’s tutor was taking him on a world tour to learn about foreign lands and their customs, so he could go home as a wise man to one day run his father’s country- not quite the story of Candide and Pangloss, more like the Prodigal’s Return
We all applauded the story. The dancer came back, this time facing us so we could see her belly fat roll up and down. Not bad. Kind of mesmerizing. We left before Prince Muammar and his tutor. Maybe back in the hotel he got lucky with the belly dancer. More likely his tutor did, but on the Prince’s guinea, or was it a fiver?.
