Opa! ("Oh, Pa...")

It seems perfectly fair to me that people whose cultures get made fun of in America should have the opportunity to get their own back once in a while. But dear God, I would rather witness such hilarity from a distance. Especially since last Saturday.

There's this great Greek place right up the road from where we live (one of the perks of our neighborhood is all the cool restaurants nearby, although my sister spoils that one good by constantly insisting on eating World Wrapps). We've been there a few times already, and my parents decided last Saturday that we should have dinner there. When we got there, it started out as a pretty normal meal--we snarfed down the calamari appetizer, while I tried to convince my parents to branch out from Chicken Souvlaki--and then the most beautiful woman in the world appeared.

Or so I thought.

What really happened was that the head waitress announced there would be some bellydancing while we ate. The woman who was going to dance for us came out in a pretty traditional costume, and before I saw her face I thought, "She's probably really pretty." And truth be told, her body was in really good shape...but her face looked kind of like a shrunken head. A shrunken head covered in eyeliner. Still, she danced very confidently, which turned out to be the bane of my poor father.

As she danced, she made her way in between tables, every so often winking at someone or leaning on their shoulder. Which I thought was cool until she did both to my dad. The look on his face was priceless, and I don't know if I was more embarrassed by the shrunken head hitting on him or how constipated he looked. After she had moved on to the next table, my dad thought he was safe, but during the next song she came around again and draped her shawl over his head.

At this point my dad must have figured that the more he resisted, the harder she would try to seduce him, so when people started tipping her by sticking money into the hems of her costume, he decided to tip her himself. I must say I admire his courage for sticking a few dollar bills under the strap of her top, but his efforts were all in vain. The Shrunken beckoned to him and made him get up, then dance with her for the next thirty seconds.

I knew that I would be scarred permanently if I watched my dad try to shake it Greek-style, so I only stared for about five seconds before hiding my face, pretending to be laughing uncontrollably. (Which, actually, I was.) But the Shrunken obviously thought it was funny too, because she made the entire restaurant get up and learn the basic steps. I felt very stupid trying to bellydance, but I was consoled by the fact that I was better than my mom, who looked like she was trying to be Tom Jones.

After the dancing, I wanted to escape ASAP, but somehow my parents decided to order dessert. I suppose the baklava ice cream did make the situation considerably better. And I'm definitely planning on eating there again--just not on a Saturday. And if on a Saturday, not until I look like Shakira.

Marie Antoinette

Through her walls, she feels the beat
Of a riot song going on outside
As she sits on the bed, bent over
Her own computer

Whose screen flashes commands in black and blue

She has been told that computers
Make color with light
And no pigments,
But what could this machine know of colors?
For a second she dares to be distracted,
Faces the flood of real colors around her
—Oranges and golds and dark, sick mauves
All blending blindingly into one another—

Now the beat outside her walls
Gets louder, faster,

And it is only a song,
But she thinks she hears the shouts of the revolutionaries
And pistol shots and cannons
Breaking against her bedroom door.

She steels her ears against them
So that she hears only a hint of a tune,
Her fingers staggering out words
To the chaotic beat of the clock
On the computer screen,

Whose colors are slowly beginning to look real

But when she hears the last clatter of hi-hat cymbals
One against the other, like a sigh,
Her eyes flutter open for a split instant!

Her heart quickens in the silence,
For now—and she knows this because she has read it in books
About human history—
Now is the moment
When those radicals storm the fortress!

She glances at the pounding computer clock,
Sees that time is running short,
Anxiously wonders
How many words can she fit in
Before the massacre begins?