Originally Posted by Aziyade

I didn’t know Reema Joseph Samaha. We never met, I never attended class with her, and I never got the pleasure of seeing her dance. We never emailed each other our goals and accomplishments, nor did we remark on each other’s frustrations, but we shared the same dream and passion: a love of Middle Eastern Dance.

On Monday, April 16, 2007 Reema was murdered in the Virginia Tech massacre. I can’t help but feel like we’ve just lost one of our own.

We often refer to the “sisterhood” of dance, or we talk about the Belly Dance Community, but in reality, dancers are part of a large, extended family. We support each other and encourage each other, argue and debate each other, share costuming wisdom and music reviews. Sometimes we fight with each other, as siblings will do, but ultimately we make up one big happy “family.”

It’s not fair to lose such a family member.

We often read news reports after such tragedies as these and think to ourselves, “Oh, how terrible.” We may say a silent prayer, or offer the families our condolences. But most of the time, when we read the list of the victims, we don’t see faces. We don’t think about each life lost and what that means to us: we who are simply strangers reading a newspaper.

But Reema was a belly dancer. One of us. One of our own. I’m looking at her picture now, seeing her smiling at the camera in her coin scarf, and Reema is not just some face or some name in a newspaper memorial. She was a belly dancer. One of us.

What I know about Reema fits inside two column inches in the newspaper: Her heritage was Lebanese. She had been dancing since she was two years old and studied ballet, jazz, modern dance, and hip-hop as well as Middle Eastern dance. She performed for her church and her high school and even won “best individual performance” in her school’s talent show. She was a part of Hill and Veil, the Middle Eastern dance association at Virginia Tech.

And she was one of us.



(x-posted cause it think it needs to be said)