Looking for a Husband

If I was to name the subject I am the least qualified to teach, it would have to be physical fitness. As one of my high school friends pointed out last week, “Hal, you never even came to gym class!” It’s true. Much of my high school career was spent devising ways out of physics, calculus, and physical education, and I am proud to say I was more often than not successful (unfortunately, to the detriment of my muscle mass and mathematical prowess). I am uncoordinated, refuse to run even the shortest distances, and consider kanafeh healthy because it is made from wheat and cheese (and butter and sugar). I am the last person you want leading cardio, handing out diet advice, or training girls in soccer. And yet, that is exactly what I did every week here.

My beautiful aerobics class on our final party day.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, one of the other interns, MJ, and I would team-teach aerobics for two hours. At first, I mainly taught the cardio portion, a task that required me to dig deep down to my seventh grade gym days and watch some Billy Blanks videos. The women then requested dancing, and for a while, I taught a zumba routine to the Shakira song, Loca. Finally, MJ, and I taught various workout circuits together, each one of us demonstrating different exercises.

Although I love my children, their mothers, the women in my aerobics class, are in stiff competition for my heart. Everyday, the women come in covered head to toe in hijabs and abayas, and then strip down into these sexy workout outfits or pajamas. They then proceed to put up even more of a fight about working out than I typically would. But their comments during certain exercises are the class highlights for me. One morning, I was leading some pilates exercises and the women were being particularly talkative and lazy. To punish them, I said we would do forty-five leg lifts (women lay on their sides and lift one leg straight up and then lower it back down) on both sides. One of the women groaned and muttered something in Arabic; in response, the entire room busted out laughing. I looked to Hanin, my Arabic teacher and translator, for a translation. She reddened slightly before saying, “She says she won’t be able to lift her legs to her husband tonight because of you. They all want you to get tired.” For the first time in my life, I was the fittest person in the room.

  

MJ and I took some glamour shots after being made-up.

This past Wednesday was my last class with the women so we had a party. Normally, they only see me without make-up, sweaty, and in frumpy workout clothes. So when they walked into room to find me dressed in a skirt with my hair freshly washed and down, I was met with exclamations of, “Hilary, you are pretty?!” And this got them thinking. One woman decided she wanted to do my hair, and then a couple of the women thought they should do my make-up. Afterwards, I “looked like a bride without a groom,” so another woman offered me her son’s hand in marriage. He is a “wealthy man and well liked; you would be well respected in the Nabulsi community.” I politely declined and then went to dance with some of the women. This too turned out to be a mistake.

Hanin is not only my teacher and translator, but also one of my closest friends here in Nablus. Two weekends ago, I went with her to her brother’s house for Sha’aban, a celebration strictly for females during the month before Ramadan. The women chat, smoke shesha, prepare food, dine, and dance. So Hanin’s family tried teaching me how to dance like an Arab woman, aka shake my hips. And, well, I kind of picked it up. So dancing in front of a roomful of women who had just made me up to look like a bride only solicited appraisals of my physique for their eligible sons, nephews, and brothers.

I was also the topic of discussions in their homes as I came to later learn from their daughters the following day at the pool. As I was playing around with some of my girls in the shallow end of the pool, a couple of them explained that their mothers said I could dance. They wanted to see too! So the girls started dancing around me, singing, and trying to clap me into acquiescing. But I’ve learned my lesson, no dancing in front of women looking for a wife for their men.