A sort of Stag Night: Pre-wedding party

Weddings are very frequent at this time of year. Everybody wants to get married in the summer, and every time there is a wedding there are pre-wedding parties. Since socialising is very sex segregated here, there will be parties for the bride attended by women only, and parties for the groom, for men only - a kind of stag night. Except that 'stag night' doesn't do justice to the party I was invited to last night. It was elegant, beautiful, joyous, not at all gross, and I was going to say all done without the aid of any artificia stimulants, apart from Arabic coffee, music, and the wonderful exuberant atmosphere

(I have in fact since found out that some people had been drinking in their houses. My informant, one of my students tells me that alcohol, which is officially haram here of course, can be obtained 'in secret' - so many things here are done in secret. You can get alcohol in Jerusalem if you have a pass to get there, in Ramallah where there are Christians, or there is also a place to get it in al-Eizaria next village along.)

Anyway it was a beautiful evening. The party is taking place in an open square which is part of the university complex. There is a stage on which there are amplified musicians: an Oud (Lute) player, keyboards, drums of course and a singer. An open space for dancing and then tables and chairs. Most of the students from the community centre are there. They all want to talk to me which we do in a mixture of Arabic and English, they pull me from one table to the next. There is an atmosphere of great excitement.

There is going to be a performance of the Dabke, the Palestinian national dance. Students from our community centre are going to perform. Before that the band starts up. Very frenetic and off-beat rhythmical. The basic rhythm is 4 in the bar: a quaver, crochet, quaver, and two crochets. da - daa - da - Da - Da da - daa - da - Da - Da. That's the basis of it, the rhythmic elaborations, the melodies, the words are built up over that. Some of the boys get up and dance, they stick out their stomachs and swivel their hips. I know what is going to happen. They are going to ask me to dance. They do of course, and I get up, they are in a circle around me, I let go of my inhibitions and dance with them clapping in rhythm around me. They are over the moon that I am doing this.

Suddenly some of the crowd rush towards the entrance. 'Al Aress, Al Arees', the bridegroom is here. A crowd of the grooms friends come in carrying him on their shoulders. They come to the front of the square in front of the stage, dance round him, still on the shoulders of one of his friends. The band singer sings a song of welcome. We sit down and watch. A gloomy faced man comes round giving each guest a cup of Arabic coffee, then throughout the evening another man, ornately dressed in red with a Turkish looking fez and a strange device on his shoulders (which looks like a shisha pipe but in fact dispenses drinks), comes round pouring out from the container a sweet tasting drink.

Then our student Dabke group comes on and does a performance that lasts for over twenty minutes. They are dressed in identical black shirts, and round their waists are tied a different coloured kaffiyeh - Arab headscarf. They do this dance and it is beautifully co-ordinated. The dance is led by Nadeem, one of the chief volunteers at the centre. The dancers link hands, sometimes they are in a circle and sometimes in a line. The lop-sided syncopated rhythm of the music seems to force their bodies outward and sideways. They kick their legs out and then sideways, first the left then the right in unison. They swivel their waists. Everything is beautifully choreographed. They surround the bridegroom, dancing round him. At one stage, Nadeem takes off his kaffiyeh and wraps it round the shoulders of the bridegroom. The dance is very physical very athletic, but not aggressive.

It is really hot tonight. When they sit down, the kids are perspiring heavily. There is more dancing. People do their own individualised versions of the Dabke, it is not like the beautifully co-ordinated performance we have seen, but there is fantastic energy and joy. Most of the music is up-beat, but there are some occasional slow romantic songs. I leave at eleven o'clock and walk down the hill back to my flat.

Next day, I talk to Sarah about it. She has been to the female equivalent, pre-wedding party for the same wedding, this time attended by women only. Their one has taken place inside a hall, with no live band, only recorded music. They have also been dancing. Sarah, who studied dance at university and is a dance teacher in London, thinks that the Dabke is similar to Irish dance, both have been used as ways to express national identity in a situation where people are occupied or oppressed.

In a way, I feel sorry that socialising is so segregated by sex. It is very different to the west. All men together and all women together create a particular kind of solidarity, strong emotional ties. It would be easy to misinterpret this, it is not the same as in the west, it is a different system. I am also sure it is very different in Israel too.