My mother is the strong one in our house and people would probably make fun of my father if it weren’t for all the money he has. Money is his favorite thing, like somewhere along the way he decided he could only focus on one thing and he thought better money than family, less headaches. So men respect him because of his success. He owns a grocery store in Hollywood, but he got his money from other business ventures.

People are always coming to our house to visit, which is my mother’s favorite activity and why our house is always spotless, why she has so many clothes, and why there is always so much food. A few weeks ago my cousin Lina (my father’s niece) came over with Jaffer, her fiancé, and her mother, Auntie Dahlia. They were talking about their upcoming wedding. I love going to weddings, but my mother hates me to go and worries that I will do something she thinks is unacceptable, like what happened when we were in Nawara and went to my cousin Jalal’s wedding. The story comes up all the time, so it wasn’t surprising when my mother told Lina and Jaffer that it was too bad they weren’t going home to have a traditional wedding like cousin Jalal, that Lina remembered that she hadn’t seen the video and that she had been meaning to ask my mother to borrow it. My mother tried to talk them out of it but with no success, and somehow got them so excited that they wanted to watch it then and there.

Your eyes are the light of my eyes.

For you I sing this song.

It starts out modern flowery style. “Show-off video” is what we call it when tapes have fancy editing like this. I knew my mother was hoping that Lina and Jaffer would get bored before we got to the henna, which was the second day of the wedding, but they didn’t and so we watched it. This part shows just the women, the older ones and the married ones in colorful traditional dresses, the younger ones in longer western dresses, and the bride in a sequined blue gown, sitting in a chair way up high on top of a table at one end of the room. The women have already painted her hands with henna designs and now they call for her to dance. At first she refuses and lowers her eyes shyly. “Such a good girl,” my mother always says at this point.

Your eyes are the light of my eyes.

For you I sing this song.

I know they are watching Jalal’s new wife get up off her pedestal, helped up and then down by little-girl hands begging for the bride to dance her dance. I know their expressions will change when the bride has finished dancing alone and the other women join in.