The Iraqi fantasy and a furious sand storm

My first day of shooting promotional clip for a Ramadan special Iraqi TV series blew my mind! I could not believe what environment and atmosphere I was thrown into! I had to pinch myself if it was truly real. I could not stop smiling because I knew, it was once-in-a-lifetime experience!

We were taken to the Sahara desert far from Cairo, it was burning hot. The first things I spotted in the shooting location was many camels and Iraqi men riding them. Of course they were not Iraq, they were Egyptian actors. Not far from them I saw a huge magical real Bedouin style desert tent, the kind that we see in Orientalist paintings. All of this looked promising and I had a good feeling what was waiting ahead...
Is should mention though, I was the only one who was happy and excited, for us foreigners a desert means adventure and is exotic. My Egyptian fellow dancers were not happy they have to spend the day in the heat with hot sand under the legs and no decent place to go for decent toilet. A cultural difference;)

The girls were all dressed in khaligi-style abaya's (long robe), all wearing dark black wigs. The make up was given big and heavy, just like the Iraqis like it :)
Guys were wearing traditional khaligi white robes with the famous red head scarfs and masculine swords.

 

So after about 3 hours of getting dressed and having a full make-over it was time to get on the set and start dancing and shooting. As I stepped out of the make-up van I felt a strong wind in my 1 meter long new hair and I couldn't wait to get started. I arrived in the Bedouin tent with Salah and we had 5 extra minutes so we decided to take a few photos. Everything started well but then photo by photo I felt the tent that we were posing next to bending over to our side. Suddenly the wind grew stronger, I started to have way too much sand in my eyes, soon I couldn't breathe, too much sand in the air!!! And then it happened.... the whole big massive tent was blown over by winds of sand stronger than 40 mph. Many actors were trapped under the tent. I grabbed Salah's hand and we ran towards the van. Everyone around us was running, most of us had never seen a sand storm before. You basically can't open your eyes, if you do, the sand just block your vision and You cant see where you're going any more...

Guys fighting the storm, trying to keep our dressing room tent from flying away

 We were safe and sound in the van, ears and hair and mouth full of sand. Noone felt glamurous any more. I was sure we would cancel the shooting, but it took only an hour for the winds to slow down and they built up the tent again. It was then time to get to work!

Tent after rebuilding

Our dance was quite simple as we were background dancers for 2 singers. The atmosphere was magical, torches and live fireplace, small golden tables filled with fruits and tea glasses, Iraqi men sitting around it and clapping to our dance, 2 massive luxury Jeep's parked in a distance to add more masculine glamor to the scene, 10 arabic princes with swords swinging in one rythm, 10 arabic princesses swaying their hair in another rhythm, among them a happy Estonian girl. I didn't want the night to end...

But it did end and tomorrow is the next day of shooting Egyptian folklore dances. I'll keep you posted ;)

PS. The Waifai TV-series will run during Ramadan in MBC1 channel.

Our Iraqi fantasy. Im the forth girls coming in: