FYROM/Macedonian Bellydance?!!!

I love bellydance or oriental dance. I think it is a great exercise for women. Marvelous for the figure!

Here in my town there is one place which regularly offered bellydance classes on different levels. Places like the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association) and The University Georgia's Continuing Education Center occasionally offers classes.

I own bellydance exercise video cassettes and a DVD by bellydancing twins Veena and Neena Bidasha and Suhaila Salimpour . I think bellydance should be learned by all women in America. Too many of us have been come so liberated that we lack that grace and femininity and Romantic aspect that I feel a woman needs in the way she moves. I have noticed graceful aspects in women while living in Turkey and Botswana. You rarely see it here.

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is a Balkan nation bordered by Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. The country's population consists of Macedonians who are Slavic people, Albanians, Turks, Romani people (Gypsies), Serbs, Valachs (similar to the Romanians) and others. I never expected that Macedonia has a tradition of bellydance. Usually when one thinks of bellydance the Middle East, Turkey, and on slim occasions India are thought of. Bellydance is rooted in these countries, but it also has roots in Macedonia and Greece.

Bellydance probably was brought to the Balkans by the Romani people. The art of bellydance is thousands of years old originating from tribal, temple, ritual, and social dances and even in exercises to prepare women for childbirth. Two years ago when looking for CDs to add to my collection of Arabic music I ran across this unexpected find. Below I have included two videos of bellydancers in possibly Macedonia. Notice that Balkan bellydance music has slight similarities in rhythm to Middle Eastern bellydance music, but the instrumentation is different. Brass instruments like trumpets, saxophones, trombones, and clarinets are played in this form of bellydance music. Macedonian bellydance was a refreshing surprise for me. If you notice in the two clips at the end, there is a kind of vivaciousness in Macedonian bellydance that you do not see in its' Middle Eastern or Indian counterparts.

I learned in Turkey that though there are plenty of places to see bellydance especially in cities like Istanbul, Turks are not interested. Why? Their answer is, "That is for the tourists."

I have not gone to a bellydance performance yet in Turkey, but in 2006 I went to a bellydance charity performance here in my town to benefit African children. The dancers performed mainly Indian forms of bellydance.

Kenize Mourad: A Romantic Heritage Discovered

From time to time here I will continue to compose posts about books that have made a profound impression on me. In her bestselling memoir on books, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Iranian author and professor Azar Nafisi wrote about the freeing power of books in an oppressive society. Books can free us and change our lives.

A few years back before a planned trip to Turkey I decided to read Regards from the Dead Princess: Novel of A Life (1989) which I had taken off the shelf several times at our public library over a two year period, but had not pushed myself to reading. One day I finally decided to check it out it and read it. Once I got it home, I devoured the novel.

The author of Regards from the Dead Princess is Kenize Mourad. Kenize Mourad is a French journalist and writer with an extraordinarily Romantic background that she learned about when she was 20. She discovered that she is the daughter of an Ottoman princess named Selma who was the granddaughter of the last Sultan of Turkey, Murad V. Mourad's father was an Indian rajah. Regards is Kenize Mourad's fictionalized effort to sort out her background. It must have been earth moving to find out as an adult that one is descended from royalty and one of the longest ruling familys in world history, the Ottoman or Osmanli family who ruled Turkish for 500 years.

Mourad's mother Selma grew up in Ortakoy Palace in Istanbul. She is pampered and spoiled by family and servants. Her mother is a princess, and her father is her mother's second husband, a magnificently handsome man which Selma's mother picks for his manly beauty. Inside this insulated environment, Selma is unaware that her country is in turmoil. She hears of a man whom everyone is hoping will be Turkey's saviour, a general named Mustafa Kemal. People call him "the Golden Rose," because unlike most Turks he has blonde hair. Selma dreams that one day she will marry Mustafa Kemal who will become known to world history as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern day Turkey. Little does she know that in a very short time once he assumes power, in order to drag Turkey into the modern world and the west, Mustafa Kemal will erase from his country most links the Turks have with their Ottoman past. He sends Selma and her family into exile. Selma and her mother go to Lebanon. Her father decides to seek his fortune alone and becomes a drifter and adventurer cutting all ties to Selma and her mother.

As a young woman, Selma discovers that she can rather relate to the French community in Lebanon. Still there is the aching feeling that she is an outsider. Her mother retreats further into herself and her memories. Though they are losing their wealth fast, she is determined that Selma makes a good marriage. First she looks to European nobility. When hopes there fade, she turns to a Muslim rajah in India. During this time, Selma lives with the hope that her beloved handsome father will return. He writes occasionally, promising to see her, but he never keeps his promises and never sees his daughter again. Feeling rejected and the emptiness of the exile, Selma suffers a nervous breakdown. She eventually recovers and goes on to India to marry a man she has never seen before.

Her Indian husband is handsome and kind, but for years Selma had lived freely, going out to parties and socializing in western dress in Beirut. Though her mother lived the life of a recluse, she allows Selma to have a degree of freedom. In her husband's house, Selma is put in purdah. Though her husband is kind and patient, she is sexually frigid. She tries with all her power to adjust to being in this restrictive world. She learns about the poverty and squalor of so many people who live near by and dreams of helping the poor. In her own way she tries, but she is so terribly unhappy and restricted that her husband agrees to let her go to Paris on a vacation. Selma does not tell him she is finally pregnant because she knows he might not let her go and breathe if he knows her secret.

In Paris the Nazis are near and they finally occupy Paris. Selma meets an American business man who falls in love with her. She decides to never return to her husband. But under the occupation it becomes a struggle for survival, and Selma has her baby one day. She dies nearly alone with only the baby and an aging black eunuch who had become her surrogate father.

Being only a few days old when her mother died, Kenize Mourad, of course, does not remember her beautiful, auburn haired mother. However, after writing Regards, she later had the opportunity to meet her Indian father, and writes about him in the second half of her family's life story, The Garden of Badalpur, which has apparently not been translated into English.

Regards From the Dead Princess is a magnificent portrait of several cultures, and a tragic tale of a young woman who is never really able to find her place in the world.