[leylalanty]

In 1977, soon after I first started dancing, I went to Egypt. I saw the pyramids, and other monuments in Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan. In Cairo, I stayed at the Cairo Sheraton where a "5-star bellydancer" (Nagwa Fu'ad) was performing. I went to her show twice and was enthralled. I managed to hire a guide to take me to the now closed and gone Sahara City nightclub where I saw Soheir Zaki and Hanan - again enthralled. I only found out they were famous top dancers after I got home and talked to a couple of Egyptians who told me about them! No, I didn't live in a cave - it was the late 70s - still pretty much the electronic dark ages.
No videos
No Arab films shown where I then lived in upstate New York
No internet
No DVDs
No CDs
No (or very few) commercially recorded cassettes
Want Arabic music? You may find 1 or 2 vinyl albums in your local record store's "international" section or mail order from Rashid's in Brooklyn, NY, without any chance to hear it until you got it.