WestMeetsEast

Tomorrow is the big day. My favorite Egyptian co-worker, Rania, whom I have written about before, will be married by this time Sunday.

She rejected three previous fiancés after a few months because she did not love any of them. She does not love this one either. But she is 31 and it is time. She cannot disappoint her parents again. They did after all, find someone who “looks good on paper.”

On Thursday she went to get her hair done and she freaked out. She cried and pleaded with her mom that she is not ready and that this marriage will be a mistake. Her mom and her friends calmed her down and told her it’s OK, all women freak out before their weddings and that it is normal to think that you are making a mistake. But you get over it. You accept your fate.

Of course none of us have met her fiancé. Her closest friends have met him once and they say is that he is a catch because he will allow her to keep his job. I have my doubts.

Thursday night I was invited to her henna party. A henna party is the Western equivalent of a bachelorette party — minus the booze and naked boys. An African woman is hired to paint henna designs on the women.

I was the only foreign woman there and of course I showed up too early (I arrived on time; I should have known better). You could hear the Arabic music from the streets, pouring out from Rania’s upper-middle-class family flat.

The room was filled with female family members from newborns to grandmas. The moms and older women lined the walls and watched the younger girls dance. And dance they did, from about 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. They bumped, grinded, twisted, twirled, dipped and spun with wild abandon. Did I mention there was no alcohol?

They grabbed the bride-to-be. They threw her in the air. They spun her around. She was giddy with excitement.

If you were an outsider looking in with your Western eyes, you would have thought this was a lesbian party.

Imagine: Covered, veiled, draped women walk in, deposit their babies into the arms of the Saidi-born help, run to the closest bathroom and emerge sparkling, hair down and luscious, midriff bare, shoulders glittering.

And the dancing. Hips swaying, pelvic grinding. Hands touching, grabbing, reaching for each other.

The whole scene was extremely exotic to my eyes. But for these women who left as they came — covered, modest — it was a normal rite of passage.

And it occurred to me that maybe this is how they deal with the fact that they are entering a life-long union with a stranger, one to whom they will feel grateful if he shows leniency.

The henna party is a release like no other. Here they can display their sexual sides that they cannot show while married. A married lady is too respectful to dance this way for her husband. Who else can she be sexy for? Her friends, her sisters, her mom. The safest, most free place.

And Rania was radiant. She wore a sexy red dress and high heels. With her shiny, long black hair, she looked like Snow White. She said to me she has simply decided in her mind to stop fighting it and accept it, like so many before her.

Her friends made bets on how soon she would give birth, as they laughed about how they each got pregnant within months of the wedding night. Her boss is secretly looking for her replacement, despite her promises that she will keep working.

I am considering not attending this wedding out of moral objection. Not that it would matter.

I just don’t want to see her face smiling out of duty, not of happiness, and pretend it’s OK.