Genie in a Bottle

I'm listening to Genie in a Bottle while driving through the streets of Cairo in my severely-jaded-from-love friend's new car. The layers of hilarity and irony wash over me and I start uncontrollably giggling in fits and starts. Do you know what a genie is? Its an English corruption of the word jinn, according to Islam, a spirit made of fire by God. These spirits can be good or bad (some are on God's side, some on Satan's, some still neutral). They can shape-shift, tempt and trap good humans, or sometimes they can help. They are invisible spirits, or ghosts as the word is sometimes translated. I think back through the layers of years of my life... (I remember reading a story once, one that's stuck with me, about how people are like onions (this is not Shrek), they have layers of the years of life that they've been through, and all those younger stages of each person are in there a little deeper, but can come out in certain circumstances.)

I'm at the mall with my seventh grade best friend. We're in Claire's, judging each others' choices of hair and jewelry accesories (I would never wear something that clunky), picking out yet another set of matching BFF necklaces (butterflies, half of a broken heart, or flowers this time?) and watching a Britney Spears music video, while discussing the merits of Christina Aguilera vs. Britney Spears. O Christina totally has a better voice! You have to agree!

I'm at a highschool dance. I love dances. I don't usually have a date, but that is definitely not the point. If you have a date, you don't have that kind of nervous anticipation at the beginning of the slow songs, and you don't get to make an idiot of yourself dancing with all your social outcast friends during all the other songs. And they're playing Genie in a bottle! I look to whoever of my best friends is next to me, our eyes light up in mutual recognition of the importance of this song to our young lives, we run as quickly as possible in our heels and miniskirts off the courtyard into the gym, or the cafeteria, the room shaking with Christina's voice. We scream at each other two feet away, "Come, come, come on and let me out!"

Two years ago in Cairo, I'm staring, literally staring at my friend Mohamed's computer screen background. A scantily clad Christina poses for the camera wearing a low cut, tight fitting white dress (the color of innocence, right?), heavy make up, and a giant cross necklace nestled in her bosom. Here we see the picture of Western Christianity, stunning and jarring and appalling to me after a few weeks in this city of newly awakened conservative Islam. I despair a little after seemingly fighting a battle every day to be seen as something different.

I'm sitting in a classroom at Calvin College. Three hours a day of creative writing class. I'm hearing critiques about my story. My story is about a minibus haunted by a jinn in the streets of Cairo. Comments of my colleagues range from, "you need to tone down the "god willing," it gets repetitive" to "this seems completely implausible" to "this is very interesting."

And now, here I am. Mohamed and I have just turned off the bridge into Shara Sitta w Eishreen Julio, and his stereo is pumping a somewhat more raspy and loud version of her voice than I would prefer. He turns to me with that little grin and says, "I love this song so much." He then proceeds to sing along.

So I am riding around in my friend's car on an island in the middle of the Nile, while he quietly sings, "my body's saying let's go, but my heart is saying no! If you want to be with me, baby there's a price to pay. I'm a genie in a bottle, gotta rub me the right way." And while my roommates here are writing their statements of purpose for International Relations and Middle East Studies graduate programs, I know that I am seeing East-West, Muslim-Christian relations all right here within the three minutes of Christina's vocal gymnastics, and I divulge in giggles over the irony, the complexity and the simplicity of it all.

The Islamic religious concept of Jinn has morphed through Arab folklore of thousands of years ago into the concept of a genie (see 1001 Nights). This concept, popularized in America through weird television shows (I Dream of Jeanie) and Disneyizations (Aladdin), comes to Christina's consciousness as a song. And she sings her little Latina-American heart out about how her body (as a supernatural spirit in Islamic belief) is saying lets go, but her heart is saying no.

And my buddy Mohamed (named after the prophet, like at least half of Cairo) grins and says he loves this song! And I love this song! And we both have a lifetime of memories built around this song. Ahh globalization. Sometimes I just love you.