At this point it is fair to say that my wife got cheated in this marriage.
We met in 2010 while I was still a heart surgeon. At that time I had hobbies other than making fun of TV pundits and politicians. I was a dancer. I loved to dance all my life, and I even used to teach Argentinian tango and salsa. In a conservative country like Egypt, a guy who takes up dancing as his pastime and even as a source of income is frowned upon—especially within an even more conservative community like doctors. Some of my senior colleagues and medical school professors used that against me. It didn’t matter how good or bad I was as a doctor, the dancing was brought up at every turn. I didn’t care, though. I didn’t censor myself to please them and I didn’t give up what I liked to earn their approval. Maybe I had a rebellious streak all along. A rebel with a Latin beat!
I always felt that if I married, I would marry a woman who appreciated what I did and even be part of it. Then came my wife, Hala, to perfectly complement me. We both loved tango and had a passion for the arts. It didn’t take long to seal the deal and get married at the end of 2010.
We hosted tango nights in our house, went to classes together, and even spent our honeymoon at a tango festival. A few weeks after that, the whole revolution thing happened. I found myself time-sucked into the YouTube show, then the TV show, and then the preparation for the live show with all of the political turmoil that came with it. Things got horrendously dark and busy.
“I married a tango-dancing doctor, not an absentee TV celebrity,” she used to tell me at the dinner table.
With my newfound fame, and since the show started airing, I was never there for her. I spent all my time in the theater, supervising the renovation and getting ready for the big debut.
Our team rapidly expanded. We now had a staff of eighty-two people. Yup, I counted them: producers, writers, researchers, technicians, and everyone in between. I was responsible for the biggest production in Egyptian television history, all while the Islamists rose to power and my marriage suffered.
Till this day I don’t know why my wife stayed. She once told me that if I were another celebrity she would have just walked out. But she believed in what I was doing. She too was part of a younger generation that was sick and tired of decades of taboos and the suppression of free thought. “This is not just another show, it is a statement and people need it,” my wife told me. I guess some men are luckier than others!