By Jo Wilding
April 30th

Zaid’s sister Zainab got engaged today. Everyone was exhausted from dancing all afternoon at the party but it was the first time we’d seen each other in months so no one was too tired to dance some more. Tying sashes around my hips and their own, they moved the rug to create a dance floor under the ceiling fan.

You generally see the women in anything from long loose clothes, with or without a hijab, to a full on tent, gliding along like a black phantom with even their faces covered, but the underwear stalls in the market can be taken as fair warning of what might lie beneath.

The tassels of the sashes flicked wildly back and forth with the movement of their hips, their heads back, shoulders quivering, swaying down to the ground where they kneel facing each other shaking their busts, wiggling everything there is to wiggle, sensuous, sexual, energetic, whether the music is Arabic or western.

They do a clicking thing with the fingers, palms together, clamped by the thumbs, fingers outstretched, the first finger of the right hand making a loud clicking against the knuckle of the first finger on the left. There’s another rhythm, holding one hand above the other, clicking the fingers on one hand then the other then clapping the palm of the top hand against the closed fist of the lower hand so it makes a sound like a horse galloping.

Asmaa has been looking for work but can’t find any. She used to teach computing before Bibo, the younger child, was born, first in a public college then, after she had Mimi, in private lessons. Now there’s no work to be had; women, especially, struggle to find jobs because the sanctions and then the war have extinguished so many jobs. It’s boring and frustrating to be at home all day, especially for someone like Asmaa with good qualifications, not going out because there’s nowhere to go if you’re unemployed and it’s not safe to wander about.