Yasmina Ramzy Memoir Excerpts
(names changed to protect identities)
By Yasmina Ramzy
This memoir is a work in progress to be published in 2025.
Chapter Samples
Arriving in Amman
After more arguing in the airport, we were ushered into a car. A tense angry silence then ensued until we arrived at the hotel. There was no checking in. Even our baggage was left in the car. Instead, we went directly to the nightclub where eight musicians were warming up on stage. More people followed us into the nightclub. All were men. “Were there no women in this world?” The musicians seemed kind. They smiled at me but I made everyone else angry.
First Date at Age 26
When the slow romantic song started he asked me to dance. This was scary because I was pretty sure that a slow song meant that he might hug me. But I had gone this far. I was in my first disco with flashing lights, loud music, hundreds of people, lions, tigers and champagne. I was pretty sure I was on a date and people slow danced on a date. In the name of social anthropology studies I would try… and I was kind of looking forward to a hug if it happened.
Afrah
I looked up crying and shaken to my core. It was the first time I had seen her with a hijab. Afrah took off her sunglasses to reveal two black and blue bruised and swollen eyes with tears in them. We went to my room where she revealed her whole body covered in bruises. I was petrified and feeling like it was my fault and I was falling into a familiar pit. Afrah had been so kind and generous with me and I caused this to happen to her. I hated myself for it.
Vault of Heaven
One of Auset’s emanations is Nut, goddess of the night sky who is often depicted arched up with her hand s and feet on the ground and her belly above is always painted indigo blue full of gold stars. She swallows Ra, the sun, in the evening and gives birth to the sun in the morning. I was first introduced to Nut as Nuit in my Thelemic practices. Nuit, whose belly is the vault of heaven, was embodied in the art and expression of Bellydance.
A Dictator Visits the Souk
Too many soldiers blocked my view as I arched my neck yearning to glimpse this guy who could clear the ancient Hamediya Souq except for those around me frozen in fear . The tension in the air was palpable. I knew some of the men present and they did not look happy. The president was celebrating a special holiday by praying at the oldest mosque in Damascus. It was situated at the end of the souq which was suddenly silent with the remaining twenty or thirty of us not breathing.
“Ya Leili” (Oh my night)
He said “imagine you are alone in the desert on a moonless night where above and in all directions of the infinite horizon is nothing but stars and deep black sky. There are no clouds in the desert, no sounds of living creatures. There is nothing but you in a cocoon of thick piercing shining rays of light that feel they are so close, they are touching you. The bliss in this experience of oneness with the vast and infinite universe is why the Arabs sing “Ya Leili”.
.The Young Girl
Math was a fun game for me that I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved school. I was a curious, creative, and a fully engaged young person playing classical and folk guitar, writing my own songs, taking ballet class, rounding up the girls on the street to create dance performances, a Brownie aspiring to be a Girl Guide, working hard for my Eagle badge at Camp Tawingo and caring for a total of 23 pets from lizards and frogs to rabbits, guinea pigs and rats to cats.
War
The phone rang. It was the Canadian Embassy advising me not to leave the hotel unless absolutely necessary and then only with an Arab escort. Oh, and I should get out of the country right away. I couldn't comprehend how Iraq and Kuwait could be at war, the two cultures whom I had just been introduced to through their dance and music. Is this the difficult mission that the American Special Forces guys told me they were off to last week?
Synopsis
Performing in 70 cities around the world, dinners with heads of state, stuck in a war, royal marriage proposal, dating gangsters, arrested by Syrian army. Alongside all of this was a secret life in a variety of mystical traditions including co-writing a book on spirituality. Against the backdrop of a waspy Canadian childhood followed by 9 teenage years lost to repressed memory of rape, sexual and emotional abuse and the heartbreak of losing a child. A fast moving thrilling adventure layered with grief and joy.