By: Yared Mengistu

There she sat. Quiet, poised - perhaps a little shy, but with the glow of someone who knows she is at a place where she is likely to have a good time.

She was one of the many Ethiopian beauties gracing every table and barstool in this particular restaurant, but she stood out because of the smile dancing in her eyes. Yes, she did have a slight grin on her lips, but she had what I always knew was my weakness - an irrepressible twinkle in the eyes.

We were both at an Ethiopian restaurant in the Midwest--- flocked in to catch the latest musical act passing through. Many had driven two and three hours to get a chance at another Ethiopian get-together and perhaps even to make new social bonds. This was not LA, or Dallas or Washington, DC. There wasn't a large Ethiopian population in this town. But this restaurant was a toehold in the vast flatness of the American prairie, anchoring widely dispersed Ethiopians by providing food, entertainment and a place to meet. So people crowd into cars, vans and trucks to brighten up their social calendar.

Of course, I had never seen her before, but then again, I don't get to meet too many Ethiopians anyway. She was seated at her table with a group of friends, all of them chattering away about God-knows-what, while their eyes roamed and cased the room. They were not alone. This was prime opportunity to see and to be seen. Many come to these things to see if they get to meet a special someone - some even harboring fantasies of a memorably hot and torrid encounter.

I scanned the room during dinner. This place was packed full, and I knew it was going to be even more crowded as the evening progressed. "Fire and Ice", I thought, not for the first time. The people here sat calmly and talked in rather hushed tones. Nothing about their introverted and somewhat reserved manner of talking, their gestures and facial expressions could possibly prepare the uninformed for the wild frenzy that was going to take place on that floor in a very short while.

Back to the girl. I studied her with surreptitious glances. I loved her elegant motions, and her small, yet pouty lips. She had a slim and elegantly long neck, on which sat her oval shaped head, dominated by large eyes. She did not talk as much as the other girls at her table, yet I could catch her pleasing laughter every once in a while. She was dressed in a style designed to suggest and nothing more. She wore some make-up, but not much. I liked everything I saw - but it was the smile dancing in her eyes that did it for me.

The tables that had finished eating were moving on to drinks, and Heineken beers and dark gold colored drinks in ice filled glasses started filling tabletops. The crowd was getting louder and the laughters more boisterous. On the stage, the band started to tinker and tune its instruments.

Finally, the band struck up with a throbbing rendition of Muluqen's "Nanu Nanu Ney". As people whistled and applauded, the singer walked over to his beloved microphone. The mic was going to be our friend tonight, fusing his talent with our need to feel Ethiopian music in our hearts. In his wake, most of the tables also immediately emptied, as people descended on the dance floor, immediately and spontaneously forming about five eskesta circles. The party had begun.

I was part of the group that swamped the floor after the first few bars. My friends and I joined one of the circles, and started clapping to the rhythm of the beat. There were already a couple of guys in the center of the circle, shaking their shoulders and stamping their feet to the beat.

Yes, the "ice" of reserve and introspection was being blasted away by the "fire" of the irresistible beat of eskesta music. As individuals got tired or felt the other dancers in the center were outshining them, they left and others quickly filled their place.

Eskesta, just like almost all Ethiopian dances, is a social dance. One could listen to the songs, or dance by oneself, but the glory of Ethiopian dances is in the vibrancy given it by the participation of the whole group. Those not dancing are instrumental in setting the rhythm, encouraging dancers and supplying new blood. Everyone has a role to play.

As one eskesta song followed another, I spied her among the crowd in our circle, clapping to the rhythm. She was not dancing, but I could tell by the rhythmic nodding of her head and that smile on her lips that she was into it. I had already been in the center, and I plunged back in. I headed to where she was, and taking her hand, pulled her into the center.

If I had any suspicions that she was a wallflower, she very quickly dispelled them. As I swayed to the beat and alternately moved my shoulders up and down, she matched me, shoulder thrust to shoulder thrust.

“This was not acceptable,” I told her with my eyes. “I'm the baddest, meanest "eskestist" this side of Lake Michigan, and she better know it.”

“I don't think so”, she said with an especially elegant half turn on top of her shoulder move.

“Well, we shall see won't we?” I shot back, with another smile and glance.

“Try your best,” her eyes taunted me.

Ah, I said to myself, I think I am in love. This was a girl after my own heart. As the music blared on and the rhythm seized us, I could feel within me that point when my moves stopped being mine, and some internal drive took over.

I let myself go, mentally walking away from the urge to control my body and its gyrations. It was as if the god of music had taken notice and sent one of his minions to possess me. I recalled what some European writer had said about this moment - "…an ecstatic shivering that seems to get hold of the dancer…" How true, I thought, I was in my ecstasy.

She was in that zone too: between ecstatic abandon and complete control of the game of out-dancing me. She alternately raises and lowers first her left, then her right shoulder. I dance in and out, throwing my head back and forth over her alternating shoulders. She changes tack and starts throwing her chest forward, hands on her waist. I spread my arms and circle behind her, standing back to back and both of us still in rhythm. I start to lower myself. She follows me down, down, down in a game of provocative "how low can you go?" Back to back, kneeling lower and lower, while all the while moving our upper torsos to the inescapable beat.

She was not going to let me get the better of her.

I laugh and we spring back up and face each other, still jamming. With my hands on my waist, I stop stamping and feel my shoulders shiver. She does the same, but she has her arms extended out sideways, and she adds a slow left to right swaying to her move. Beautiful, I say to myself.

The rhythm changes to a minjar beat, where the feet take over. Jump up, stretch one foot out, bring it back right in, do the same for the other foot - all in one beat. We are side by side, looking at each other, still keeping rhythm. Was this going to be where she gives up?

The music changed to the Gurage beat. Everyone is exhausted, but no one was going to forego this one. A new crowd, fresh from the tables joins us all again, swelling the ranks. We get a chance to catch our breath while waiting for the chorus. In the meantime, standing in the circle, everyone is swaying together. Left, clap, right, clap.

I flash a look at her, and she smiles back. I tell her she is good. She says thank you, so are you. We were making polite conversation, but somehow, I know she is, like me, waiting for a chance to get back to the dancing.

The song shifts gear and people start letting out piercing whistles. The swaying stops and those who dare, start the dance.

Clap, jump and kick out.

The floor changes into a wild frenzy of flying legs, joined palms thrusting back and forth, and piercing whistles. You either join the fray or you get run over by an exuberant crowd. We both jump in, but quickly find our own saner corner. She is a master at this game - she can do the exuberant male version or the more graceful female "look at me making myself up as I dance" move. I do the jump and kick out, and then the more demanding kneel down and lean back move - all in perfect rhythm.

She never backed down. I was in dancing heaven. As she swayed, leaped and bobbed, I told myself I could see her soul in her eyes. She was dancing without reserve, openly giving herself to the joy of the moment. She, like me, enjoyed dancing for dancing’s sake, not because it was a social event, but because she loved it. The way she kept perfect rhythm with each song, song after song, while her eyes seemed locked somewhere between here and infinity told me she had her own music.

She was into a musical "flow", connected to something she knew existed, for which she had no explanation, but of which she had no fear. She was very capable, yet completely trusting.

As the music cycled through the calmer beats of Tigrigna and Oromo songs, we stay together, still on the dance floor, getting to know each other. As people move to form one huge rotating circle, she and I stick together. She does the Tigrigna glide well, I tell myself, as I circle her while moving along with the wheeling crowd.

I hold her during the Oromo songs, as everyone puts their arm around the waist of the person on either side, gently stamping their feet and bobbing their chest. The crowd gets delirious as the circle becomes two chains of people facing each other, advancing and retreating with and against each other.

In the lulls, I say some sweet nothings and she gives me playful answers, but I felt we had asked and answered all the questions that mattered while our heads were lost in the heat of the dance floor. The way she held and squeezed my hand told me she agreed.

In accepted eskesta tradition, you "win" the duel if you outlast your partner or partners. If you ask me, I would tell you I won the duel. But I lost my heart that night to an Ethiopian girl who gave herself up to the dancing gods.

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