Dabkanets

Montreal, April 2024

He looked at her, his dark hair falling in front of his eyes.

“Let’s join. Come on.”

“No way, I can’t!”

“Come on! Come on. It’ll be fun. You know it.”

She stared at him for a second, weighing everything in her mind. She knew he was right. She was just so terrified of doing anything in front of a group of people. Especially a group this large. On a spurt of adrenaline, she burst out,

“OK! OK. Let’s do it. What about my bag?”

He walked over a few meters to the drummer. The drummer had a kuffiyeh wrapped around his head, his meaty arms showing from his rolled-up sleeves, pounding away at the drum, the very heartbeat of the protest.

Her friend slung his back pack off and propped it up next to the drummer. She looked at it for a second, dubiously, and upon second thought, decided it would be better to take her bag with her.

Without warning, he ran into the clearing where the ongoing Dabka line was thrumming away, led by two young Palestinian men, surrounded by the other spectators- students, professors, and families. There were both women and men in the Dabkla line, although notably, no hijabis. She ran after him, her arm outstretched and his outstretched for the person before him and leaving his arm extended behind for her to hold. Their hands linked, clicking into the Dabka line: they were now a part of it.  

They had no idea how to do the Dabka. She had learned a year or so before, but this seemed different, and she felt a bit dizzy looking out at the crowd of maybe 50-100 people watching them, smiling, taking videos. The music was blaring, ana dammi falastini (my blood is Palestinian). With some of her former Ballet training and coordination carved into her soul from a decade more of memorising movements, she soon caught on. Before long, a woman with a hijab and her little girl appeared right behind her, and the woman asked her if she could join – if she could hold her hand. She looked at the woman’s green eyes and excitedly nodded. She realised later on that the woman must have been waiting for a woman to be the tail-end of the Dabka line. The little girl, who can’t have been older than 9, was joining in happily at the tail-end now.

And so they kept on going around and around in a circle. The spectators began to blur, and before long, the Dabka line had become interloped within itself, multiple loops – one, two, three, like the outer shell of a snail.

As she looked out at the sea of people, her feet rhythmically in tune with the others in the Dabka line, she saw the guy she and her friend had been talking to earlier – a friend of a friend, a PhD law student with long blonde hair. He was smiling at them from the crowd of spectators. She grinned back at him, as if to say, “we did it—we joined!”

Gaza, June 2024

No one knew whose wedding it was, but it didn’t matter. People would go anyway, drawn by the sounds of celebration and the promise of a distraction. Weddings took place now in the late afternoon, around five or six in the evening, because there was no electricity at night. The air was warm and soft, the harshness of the day’s sun dissipated. From a distance, it looked like a school. But as they got closer, the faint sounds of a zaghloota—those high-pitched, celebratory trills—echoed through the air, guiding them in.

He arrived with his cousins, who were friends of a friend of the groom, or something like that. The wedding was a blur of unfamiliar faces, a gathering of strangers who greeted them as if they were old friends. A few young girls were dancing amongst themselves on the side. As he and his cousins moved through the crowd, everyone they passed would shake their hand, welcoming them with open arms, utter strangers, but treated as utter family.

Suddenly, a hand reached out, pulling him into the Dabka line. He laughed as he was tugged into a circle, and before he knew it, someone else had grabbed the person who had pulled him in, and the circle grew larger and larger, people clapping and dancing in unison. He tried to fade into the background, to blend into the crowd, but it was no use. A hand found his again, pulling him back into the center of the action.

The music shifted, and a Dabka song began to play – ana dammi falastini (my blood is Palestinian). The crowd cheered as five or so of the men began the Dabka. For a few seconds, they moved together in perfect harmony, but soon, the circle expanded. Fifteen people joined in, then thirty, as the dance floor filled with people, all drawn into the magnetic rhythm of the Dabka line.

His cousin, noticing him hovering on the edge, grabbed his hand and pulled him in once more. Before he could catch his breath, he realised they were moving closer to the front of the line. They found themselves in the fifth and sixth positions, their shoulders pressed against those of the people next to them. It was now their turn to pull others in, linking arms and joining the ever-growing circle of dancers. The music, the clapping, the laughter—all of it blended into one, binding everyone together in a celebration of life, an act of pure resistance.