About
Carnival of Stars Belly Dance Queen
Edwina Nearing
aka Qamar el Moulouk and Eddy the Sheikh
(Photo coming)
Orientalist/Journalist; former feature writer and Middle Eastern Affairs
Editor under the name "Qamar El-Mulouk" for Habibi Magazine;
former ghaziyya with Banat Mazin of Luxor, Egypt; currently writing for
gildedserpent.com; reincarnated as a cat.
I began writing professionally in 1972 as an advertising copy writer for
the Daily Star, the Middle East's largest English-language newspaper,
while I was a student at the American University of Beirut. My main qualification
for the job was extensive exposure to shampoo, toothpaste and used-car
advertisements on late-night television in the U.S. (I guess the TV ads
were effective -- not only did I get the newspaper job, but I have been
buying shampoo, toothpaste and used cars ever since.).
My chief claim to fame is as a crafter of run-on sentences, purple prose,
and what the San Francisco Chronicle's iconic columnist Herb Caen termed
"three-dot journalism."
At school I majored in Near Eastern Studies. My interests and research
encompass the history, arts, languages, "cultural anthropology,"
etc., of an area extending from North Africa through China. This is a
range which would be readily understood by 19th-century orientalists such
as Sir Richard Burton, but which in this age of micro-specialization would
be considered outrageously presumptuous (but it's all connected!). As
"orientalist" is the only term I can find which seems to cover
this range, and I admire the wonderful curiosity and audacity of the 19th-century
explorers and researchers, I have no problem with ignoring Edward Sa'id
and calling myself an orientalisst.
I'm currently at work on a book entitled "Raqs Sharqi and the Western
Gaze: Deconstructing the Myth of the Colonialist Agenda's Nuancing of
the Feminist Discourse in the Gendering of Postmodern Oriental Dance."
(Just kidding! I'll stick with the purple prose.)
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