Back to Blog
Qaderi sufi zekr erbil7/14/2023 I’m slack-jawed because I never expected to see a seemingly conservative and religious woman dancing in front of an audience in Egypt. Wearing the obligatory scarf (and even gloves!), she swings left and right with no apparent rhythm. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a heavyset woman starts to dance to the music. A demented man starts to sway to the music, while the elderly matrons clap and cheer him on. Slowly, people emerge from the neighboring small hovels and gather around the musicians. So far, it’s a sedate performance, no different from a small neighborhood party in any big city in the United States. Only a lute, tambourines, a flute and an Egyptian drum are used. The music is rhythmic, played with well-rehearsed ease by the musical troupe. The singer clears his voice and sings the repetitive songs that laud the Prophet Muhammad, his descendants and the various Sufi saints, including the founder of the sect, Sayed Al Badawi. The musicians have started their performance, led by a chain-smoking “ muallem“, or teacher. Another Muslim stereotype bites the dust! Later, she changes her mind and literally begs me to do so since she’s sitting with a man who is not her husband. Another woman taps me on the shoulder and asks me not to photograph her. One of them is an elderly feisty looking woman who’s dragging on the mouthpiece of her water-pipe, and who laughs raucously when I start photographing her. There are a number of them already there. The enterprising coffee shop owners provide chairs, anticipating a brisk business supplying tea and water-pipes to spectators and participants. Just as we make our way out of the mosque, I hear the sudden screech of an amplifier, signaling that the musicians are ready to start. I suppose they were made nervous by the sight of my large camera and lenses, since they don’t bat an eyelid when devotees use their camera phones to snap pictures of the saint’s mausoleum. My efforts to photograph inside the mosque are thwarted by the guardians who claim that photography is prohibited. The performance is to take place near the mosque of Sayyidah Fatimah Al Nabawiyya, a great grand-daughter of the Prophet Muhammad who is said to have been instrumental in bringing Islam to Egypt. These women are called “ awalem” and are best avoided if one is in not the best of moods. Women tougher and physically stronger than many men who boast a vocabulary that would put many a hardened criminal to shame. It’s a pity, since a number of these coffee houses are owned and managed by women. Seeing that my guides are walking briskly ahead of me, I choose -wisely, I think, not to ask permission to photograph the coffeehouse patrons. All that matters is the soccer game playing on the grimy television sets. They don’t seem to notice they’re sitting on wobbly chairs, precariously perched on ground strewn with litter and worse. Men seated at small coffee shops, sipping tea or coffee and sucking on water pipes, stare at me quizzically. Electrical connections and telephone wires are limply stretched from one building to the other, quite possibly illegally, reminding me of nests of pasta. The area is dilapidated, with small buildings having seen better days a hundred years ago. Riding a battered local taxi masterfully but maniacally driven over innumerable potholes by Abdel Fattah (or Kojak, as he prefers to be known) and accompanied by Badawi and Haj Zakaria who are connected to the Sufis, I arrive near the area where the performance is scheduled, carrying a small Domke bag with my Canon 5D Mark II and a 28-70mm f2.8, a 17-40mm f4.0 and my new Marantz PMD 620 audio recorder. A somewhat rough neighborhood originally known for drug dealers, it seldom extended a welcome mat to outsiders (and certainly never to foreigners), but it seemed to have recently cleaned up its act. The first ceremony was scheduled for late afternoon in an area of Old Cairo that I had only heard of. The devotions of many Sufis center on the zekr, a ceremony at which music, body movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the disciples. It was therefore by pure luck that I discovered someone with strong connections to one of the Sufi tariqahs or sub-sects, and who promised me full access to a number of these rituals. It was a tall order since I was after the authentic zekr, not some version diluted or prettified for the tourists and tour groups. On my way to Cairo I developed a plan to photograph and document the zekr a form of ritual performed by Sufis, a sect of Islam frequently considered as too liberal and too progressive by the more orthodox theological authorities in Egypt and the Islamic world.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |