We are sitting outside around the dinner table in a tent-like structure in Douz, gateway to the Sahara. There are 18 of us, including our tour guide and our driver, and dinner is actually, surprisingly, very similar to lunch. There is cous cous, because there is always cous cous, and there is soup and there is the hottest pepper I have ever put in my mouth, which means I do not actually taste any of the rest of the dinner.

Tunisian wine has generally been really good, so we are disappointed when we try tonight’s brand. The label looks homemade.

We are not here for the food, however; we are here for the dinner in the Sahara, the bedouin experience and the music.

As we sit and eat several performers come right into the middle of the table and play and dance for us.

And one by one they get us to come up and dance with them, which we all do.

The gentleman in the photo directly above, the one in the middle, approaches me and gets me to come up and dance with him.

I start to do a few little moves, swishy stuff, trying to follow his lead, when he suddenly grabs my arms and places them stiffly at my side. He then walks to the other side of the dance area and faces me, arms at his side.

So of course you know what I’m thinking…

Dance off.

The Arabian music is flowing through the air and, when faced with a dance off, I do the only dance I know how to do.

I do the robot.

I kill it. It is perhaps the best robot I have ever done. Nothing as insanely good as this of course, but still, a pretty damn good robot.

We laugh and we do this weird “how low can you go” thing and we hop up and down and meet in the middle of the dance floor. Fun stuff, innocent stuff, good times.

Apart from the two bands pictured there is also a belly dancer and another guy who, for lack of any real information on him, I call “the owner’s son”. He is slightly cross eyed and goofy looking with thick glasses, dressed differently from the others and it is abundantly clear that everyone else is merely tolerating his presence, as if their jobs depend on it.

Where the others innocently try to get us to clap along he forcefully claps in our faces and seems angry when we do not comply. Not a nice guy.

His dancing is okay but, completely to show him up, one of the drummers in the first band does an amazing routine with his drum that blows him out of the water. Still, the owner’s son does not mind. He looks happy to just have friends.

He tries too hard to be liked, running away between performances and coming back with a cape, showing off his cape to us as if we had never seen a cape before. Awkward situation.

But back to the belly dancer.

There are attractive belly dancers and there are belly dancers that are not attractive. This one leant a little more towards the latter. If I shorten her name from “Belly Dancer” to simply “Belly”, you might get my point. She is sweet though and gets people up dancing throughout the evening. Being the youngest person in our tour group I am, apparently, being saved for last.

Belly gets me up towards the end of the evening and there seems to be a collective “finally” vibe that goes up in the group. It’s my turn to dance and entertain and, it is important to note, this is all happening the night after I went up on stage at our hotel and pushed a sword into a fakir’s stomach, a story I have yet to tell.

The group is looking forward to me dancing with Belly and she senses this and doesn’t want to disappoint. We dance and she brings my hands in and makes me hold onto her namesake and she comes in close to me and starts to take off my sweater.

Um, no.

Not neccessarily in this order:

1) It is cold and we are outside in the desert at night.

2) I have a girlfriend.

3) People are still eating.

4) We just met.

I politely decline her subtle offer to strip me down and laugh and turn to walk away and I come face to face with the owner’s son who, dorky as he might be, is thick, stocky, and bigger than me. He shakes his head and turns me back around to face the belly dancer. Creepy, a little rude and there is no other escape.

I am wearing a t-shirt underneath so, going along with the whoops and hollers from my group, I decide to let her take my sweater off.

We continue to dance and it isn’t long before she is trying to take off my t-shirt.

With the owner’s son still behind me and the group loving every awkward minute of this, I consent and I am suddenly topless, arms around Belly, dancing in the desert.

There is a picture.

There is a picture of this exact scene, with the owner’s son standing behind me and everything, and me looking directly into the camera. This picture was mailed to me by one of my traveling companions and, fortunately, was not taken with a digital camera.

Oh sure, I could scan it but… um, I don’t want to.

This thing is never seeing the light of the internet.

But wait, there’s more.

After a few more minutes of awkward dancing where I prove exactly how tall and white I am she steps away from the floor and I think everything is over.

It’s not.

She comes back with a blindfold.

“All right, thanks everybody… great evening, had a lot of fun but really I must be going now… don’t forget to tip young Belly here…”

And there is the owner’s son, halting my retreat yet again, pushing me (a little too eagerly and forcefully I might add) back onto the dance area.

I concede and resign myself to playing this whole thing through to the bitter end. I start to play it up for the group and she puts the blindfold on me and I try to peek but Belly reprimands me with a waving finger.

Then she starts playing with my nipples.

I stand there and start to scratch my head pensively, as if I cannot figure out exactly what is going on while she continues to play with my nipples. The group is loving it. Her fingers start roaming up and down my chest and stomach and I stand there, frowning, hands on my hips, not wanting to even pretend I am enjoying myself, which turns out to be a good thing…

Because when she takes the blindfold off from behind me I see the owner’s son tickling my nipple.

There is applause and I am finally, finally allowed to sit back down at the table.

“That was a joke, right?” I say to the lady next to me. “It was her all along and he just came in at the last minute, right?”

There are tears in her eyes she is laughing so hard.

“No Lee, I’m afraid not.”

I am a sucker and have fallen for what feels like the oldest trick in the book; but everyone had such a good time watching, I don’t completely mind being the centre of attention and the jokes the evening inspires throughout the rest of the trip at my expense, well, makes the whole thing worthwhile.

2 Comments »
Filed under: Travelogue