Shaking up tradition
Generations are clashing in the Lika household. For one, belly dancing is art. For the other, it's sin.
By Tamara El-Khoury
Published January 27, 2007
Sevdije Lika lays a beaded red bustier on her bed. Soon, her sisters will come home from work, from their regular nine-to-fives, and Sevdije will put that bustier in a suitcase. She'll head to work in the dark. But now, the house is quiet. It's just Sevdije and her mother.
In another room, at the front of the house, Sevdije's mom faces Mecca in her homemade floor-length skirt. She kneels, prayer beads click-click-clicking.
Naime Lika is 69. She'll tell you how she was raised as an Albanian in Macedonia and walked in snow up to her chest, pregnant, to a refugee camp in Greece. She has a son and four daughters. Sevdije, 33, is her youngest, her craziest.
Naime prays five times a day. Each time she asks God for Sevdije to find a new profession. Maybe something in computers or at a restaurant.
"Haram, haram, haram, haram," she says to Sevdije, using the Islamic term that means forbidden. "You're going to pay back in the other world. You watch and see, watch and see."
In her room, Sevdije primps for work. She rolls curlers in her dark hair, rubs rouge on her cheeks and paints her lids with eyeliner, thick like Cleopatra's.
Her mother says she's humiliated. She warns Sevdije to ask God for forgiveness. "I say, 'You look like devil now.' " Sevdije laughs it off. Before leaving the house, she pulls her mom in for a kiss. Naime turns away.
- - -
Sevdije tells her extended family that she makes her living as a dance teacher.
It's true. She teaches belly dancing four to six days a week.
But after class, Sevdije goes to a restaurant or club. Bahasa Lounge or Byblos Cafe. She'll change into a long, shimmering skirt and a top that shows off her tight abs and toned arms. She'll dance a sexy, beautiful, impossible dance born in the Middle East and the Orient and bastardized by the West.
Sevdije teaches her students belly dancing's history. To her, it is art. She tells her students to represent the art in the proper way, as one of the oldest forms of celebration, healing and empowerment.
"Are you educated?" she asks. "Or are you just using it for look-at-me attention?"
She learned to dance with the women in her family. They danced to celebrate engagements, weddings and births.
She was 3 or 4 the first time she saw a belly dancer. It was at a cousin's wedding. Sevdije peeked through people's legs to watch as wedding guests threw money at the dancer. Sevdije decided that's what she was going to be when she grew up.
To her, dancing is spiritual. Sometimes, when she sees how happy she has made an elderly person or a disabled child, she'll go to her dressing room and cry.
The perception of belly dancers as "hootchy-kootchy" girls is what made Sevdije sneak out of her house.
"They think you're a whore," she says.
She started hosting and then bartending at a Chili's restaurant when she was at Clearwater High School. Fifteen years later, she left to pursue belly dancing full time.
In February, she will perform in a tour with about a dozen other belly dancers in Canada and Michigan.
She has no health insurance. Her body aches. "But I'm taking it to a different level," Sevdije says. "I'm sick of this nightclub crap, jumping out of the janitor's closet like a movie star."
- - -
Dad died in 2000. Mom moved in with Sevdije. They live in Palm Harbor in a house owned by Sevdije and her eldest sister, Mevlude, who usually works out of the country on peacekeeping missions. The girls told Naime that Sevdije taught dance to the elderly. Naime bought it.
When Sevdije came home extra late, she told her mom she was bartending at a wedding. In her mom's eyes, bartending is better than belly dancing because bartenders wear more clothes.
When Mom moved in, two very different generations of Muslim women had to coexist under the same roof. Sevdije sold all her furniture because her mom wouldn't part with hers. She stopped inviting her friends to lounge by the pool in their bikinis. They stopped staying up late to watch movies.
Naime planted papaya and lemon trees in the back yard. She chased away the lawn guys. "Go away," she told them. "You did a s--- job." She cuts the grass herself.
One day, several months after Naime moved in, the phone rang. It was Sevdije's phone, but Naime picked it up anyway. The guy on the other end wanted to confirm that Sevdije was coming to belly dance at a wedding.
"I said, 'She's not here,' and I hang up and I cry, cry," Naime says.
She confronted Sevdije. Sevdije figured her mom might as well know about that tattoo of a sun on her shoulder, too. She had hid it since she was 17.
Now another sister, Nafie, has moved in. Their brother, Agim, crashes there too.
Naime doesn't care that Sevdije's job sustains the family. She says she's ashamed of how the money is made. She would be okay with it if Sevdije danced at home, for other women. That is part of their culture.
But Sevdije dances in a skimpy outfit late at night for strangers. Showing all that skin is a sin, her mother says. She'd like to burn that money on the stove.
- - -
Sevdije arrives at Meridian Hookah Lounge, just off the University of South Florida campus, just before 11 p.m. It's a Thursday in December - exam week - and the kids in the dark, narrow lounge are sleepier than usual.
About 30 college kids sprawl on black sofas, their laptops and cell phones open. Thick, fruity smoke clouds the room. A Dave Matthews Band song plays.
Sevdije wants to dance and teach all over the world. She wants to be with people who appreciate her art and skill. She wants to weed nightclub scenes like this out of her life.
Sevdije doesn't like the smoke from the hookahs. When she was younger, Naime told Sevdije a saying that the devil peed on the tobacco, so don't even smoke it. She goes outside and smokes cigarettes.
Sevdije, who spells her stage name Sevdiah so people can pronounce it, is always nervous before dancing. It doesn't matter if the room is full or empty or that she has been dancing for 13 years. Her knees and ankles wobble.
On this night, she gets ready in a musty storage closet with various tobaccos on the shelves. She changes into a flowing green skirt trimmed in gold beading. This outfit makes her feel like a lady.
At 11:40 p.m., someone plays the CD of Arabic music Sevdije brought and she flies out of the closet with thumb cymbals on each hand, injecting the room with energy.
Her body movements are tight, fluid. She twirls like a ballerina on fire. When the music stops, she hears some weak applause.
A second song starts, slow and mournful. The thin crowd talks louder. Sevdije's whole body ripples and shakes. A rapid drumbeat kicks in, and her hips rock, her hair twirls. Then she bends forward, slaps the ground with the cymbals and slowly rises.
The music pauses.
"What a lame crowd tonight," she says. "Now who is going to dance with me?"
No one volunteers. Kids smoke their hookah pipes and glance at their computer screens. When the song ends, Sevdije runs back to the musty closet.
They didn't even clap.
At clubs like Bahasa, where there's an international group, all eyes are on Sevdije when she dances. She is showered with tips, and her audience claps and stomps to the music as they swarm her. At weddings, people stop eating to watch. Sometimes, when the club is full and the liquor is flowing, it can be what her mother dreads. Tonight it is just disappointing.
Some girls cry over nights like this, she says. She's tempted to tell the owner to forget the next set and just pay her half.
"It's not the ballet," she says. "You're in a freaking hookah lounge."
In the closet, she changes. She pulls out a sewing kit and repairs hooks on her green costume.
She can't sew. Her mom can. Her mom made the garment bag hanging on the back of the door.
- - -
Sevdije is home at 2 a.m. In the dark kitchen, she heats the bean soup her mother made. She slices a tomato and cuts herself a hunk of feta cheese, puts it all on a tray and heads to her room.
Yes, her family is a pain. They've all moved in with her but contribute little. Exhausted, Sevdije comes home to her mother's criticisms. And nights like this, she wonders why people even hire a dancer if their customers won't enjoy it. She can feel frustrated and burned out, but she thinks her dad looks down on her and says, "Thank you."
Sevdije turns on the TV and eats but doesn't really pay attention. Later she will check e-mail, repair costumes and burn CDs for her classes.
Most nights, Sevdije doesn't go to bed until 6 a.m. Her mom is up by then to pray. Sometimes she will linger at Sevdije's door.
"I don't know if you want company," Naime says.
Sevdije tells her to come on in. Naime sits on the bed, holds her prayer beads and tells Sevdije about last night's dream.
Tamara El-Khoury can be reached at (727) 445-4181 or tel-khoury@sptimes.com.TO LEARN MORE
About Sevdije
For class and performance information or to contact Sevdije Lika, visit her Web site at www.bellydancepro.com.