Seamster of a sequined legacy

In a shop that looks and feels like the inside of a vaudeville trunk, Ahmad Diaa Eddin sits amid beads and sequins bargaining hard with a woman from Saudi Arabia over satin and chiffon.

“200.''

“The price is 400.''

He won't budge. Neither will she. There is a stare-down, but Diaa Eddin hasn't spent 40 years designing belly-dance costumes to let his wares go cheap.

He knows the contours of a woman's body and the intricacies of her mind. He waits.

The night outside the open window is cool; he has listened to the street below since he was a boy in this same room watching his father sew purses for ladies. The Saudi woman makes a counter offer — the deal is done.

“I'm famous. Google me and I pop up all over,'' Diaa Eddin says. “Nobody taught me this art. I mastered it. I am the first person in Egypt to export belly-dancing costumes.

"I am the oldest designer in my trade. I love to watch the dancer. I love the way the costume flows.''

Diaa Eddin rummages through his shop, a sparkly, unspooled-thread kind of place with fading photographs of dancers, a computer misted in dust and, hanging above it all, an air-brushed picture of Diaa Eddin with a smirk that suggests he might whisper something intoxicating, or perhaps slightly offensive, into your ear.

At 60, there is a hint of nostalgia about him, as if he can't find his way back to those times when the best part of his craft and the arousal it evoked were a swatch of silky fabric, a sliver of imagination and the mystery of the unseen.

Egypt's best dancers have worn his costumes — women who can earn up to $3,000 for a single show.

He knows the nightclubs, the orchestras, the bartenders, the scent of the water pipe and that feeling when the lights go down and the tables fall quiet as the tabla sounds and the silhouette appears, sometimes in high heels, sometimes not.

“Tastes change, beauty stays the same,'' he says. “But, you know, the golden days of belly dancing are gone. It's deteriorating all over Egypt.

"Most of my costumes are exported. This country has many dancers but the quality is poor. I blame these music videos. They're harming belly dancing.

"You get this director who hires five or six girls, dresses them in belly-dancer outfits, but they're not professional.

"They can't dance. But people see them on TV and they get hired in clubs.''

Even Mohammad Ali Street, the fabled strip of belly dancing, is not what it used to be.

The artistes have slipped away to other neighbourhoods, leaving behind upholsterers and tailors, men with swift hands and steady feet working vintage-era Singer sewing machines.

“I began as a designer on this street when I was 16, but I've been in and out of nightclubs since I was 9,'' Diaa Eddin says.

“I was a loser at school. But if I hadn't been a loser then, I wouldn't be famous today.''

Women come and go, flicking through catalogues, scrutinising folds of satin and Lycra. Some of them are shopping for bridal gifts; others, like the Saudi woman who wore a hijab and had her face covered except her eyes, want to entice husbands in the privacy of their homes.

Some belly dance for art, many ripple their hips for exercise, especially in Scandinavia and Germany, which imports more of Diaa Eddin's costumes than any other nation, including the US, which comes in third.

Diaa Eddin enjoys imparting knowledge, stitching together a bit of this and a bit of that, giving thoughts shape.

“Belly dancing is a legacy from the time of the Pharaohs,'' he says. “Ancient Egyptians believed the belly dancer had an easier time in labour during childbirth.

"The costume is a sign of joy. It shows the allure of a woman's body. Egyptian women are inherently good at belly dancing. I don't know why, they just are.

"Today, though, it's the foreigners who like the traditional costumes and the Egyptians prefer the more revealing, tighter-fitting style.''

The office is crowded. A professional dancer, wearing a pink sweatshirt, sits next to Diaa Eddin. She prefers Lycra to chiffon.

He has lost a number of women he once costumed. Renowned dancers, Hendeyya and Sahar Hamdi, became devout Muslims.

They wear hijabs and keep their midriffs covered, part of an Islamic revival that has emerged in recent years.

“I think there were motives other than religion,'' he says.
It bothers him, but he doesn't linger.

There are new orders to fill. Everyone on Mohammad Ali Street knows who he is. He is the man with the lighted window and the little neon sign with the curvy girl.

He has got pricked fingers and miles of thread, and the women come, slipping through the grit of ordinary life to buy something exotic. They hurry home as if someone just handed them a bag of magic.

Diaa Eddin keeps working, wandering the rooms of his shop, plucking fabric from racks, arranging sequins and beads.