Biography

Nihad Alaeddin was once one of the great sirens of Syrian cinema. Working under the stage name Igraa, or Seduction, she embodied the openness and liberalism that reigned in the Arab world during the 1960s and '70s, performing the region's first cinematic nude scene and flippantly telling journalists that "we have to bring sex to the cinema because our audience is frustrated.".

Ighraa is a Syrian actress, writer, director, producer and belly dancer who reached her fame mostly in Syrian cinema of the 1970s.

As a teenager in the late 1950s, she traveled with her older sister to Cairo, where an Egyptian impresario renamed them Seduction and Charm and made them a successful belly-dancing duo who toured Europe and Asia in daringly scanty outfits. In the late 1970s the Islamic revival began, taking with it Igraa's sister. She took the veil and became a conservative Muslim, discarded the name Charm, and now refuses to talk about her belly-dancing past.

She dropped out of school in the fifth grade and moved to Cairo at the age of 13.

She chose a lower profile but has remained a symbol of "openness and liberalism that reigned in the Arab world during the 1960s and 70s.