The Sufi Show

Cairo is busting out all over. The city is swollen from the heat and the intense overpopulation and at night, all the veins and arteries burst and bleed out makeshift sidewalk cafes and pedestrians toe to bumper in traffic. All the merchants are squirted out of their tiny shops and their merchandise is spread out onto the street in front of them. You can buy cellphone covers and leather belts, or possibly some men’s shirts, bootleg cassette tapes, a nice, glossy, burgundy whole beef liver (“it’s so shiny I can see my face in it!”) from a selection of beef livers fairly fresh and inviting displayed next to some working (and some not working) fans, big grandma underwear, boxes and boxes of tissue, watermelon…

Moving closer to downtown, the merchandise changes to shoes, seemingly miles and miles of women’s shoes. Shoes are serious business here, because if you are going to be veiled, what is seen is extremely important. So it is all about shoes, eye makeup, and manicures and then what is underneath. Some of the underwear I have seen in the shops in the Talaat Harb make me raise my eyebrows. It’s just downright nasty. It is the kind that normally is in adult emporia, stacked in boxes on the wall near the cash register: not really lingerie, just another marital aid, a shameful buy – possibly so that your love doll you just purchased can have an outfit. There should never be shame in lingerie; it can be as sumptuous and elegant and cozy and sexy as anyone would want, but they don’t really want that here. They are going for the shame factor. I’m talking thongs with targets, with picture windows, with big sequin hearts and fringe, with strategically placed cutouts that just scream, “I am a nasty ho!” I have no problem saying this all the time, every day of the week, holy or not. Why should I observe the Sabbath when I could observe dick? And yet the problem I have here with this underwear is that it is meant to be worn underneath the veil, that the women here live with a male domination that chooses their outfits from soup to nuts, and it is sick and unfair.

Of course a woman could choose to veil and then go for all this crazy shit underneath, for herself and only for herself; but then why would it be so hard to accept her without the veil as herself? I know there are many women who do not veil and are modern feminists who are doing it for themselves, but they seem to be the minority. I want to understand it. I don’t want to be an arrogant Western feminist who is appalled at the treatment of women in this country without any awareness of the cultural subtleties of it all. I veil myself here, unwillingly and unhappily. It causes a rash around my neck, as if my body is saying, “Oh no, I am a feminist and I will not,” until it is muffled by the long black cloth. I veil because I just can’t fucking do anything if I don’t. It offers me a slight degree of protection, like a floating layer of mace. The men do not come close. They give me better prices when I shop. I am safer unseen. My beautiful dancer friend Caroline did not veil, but is so pretty and tall and fair the veil would really do no good because a cute face is an invitation and a gift and these men see it. She had to ward off entire streets who wanted to marry her. The whole of Khan il Khalili was chock-a-block with suitors, all wanting to trade all the camels they could give me and her mother for her. One suitor was especially aggressive, actually taking young Caroline’s hand. I immediately sprang into action and screamed “LA!”, Arabic for no, and pulled her back out of his reach, head to toe in black cotton, only my furiously angry face visible, beaded and dripping with sweat and serious stay-away-boy vibes. The young suitor asked, “Who is this?” Caroline, fast on her feet said, “It’s my husband’s sister.” To which he nodded and politely backed away.

I don’t hate the men here. I just have an intense relationship with them. Some men I love are the men at the Sufi show in the Citadel on Saturday nights. It is put on by the Ministry of Culture and it is outrageous and great. It’s what it would be like if National Geographic sponsored a Chippendale’s show. Handsome and talented musicians and dancers take the stage underneath the darkening summer sky. Their music is as old as time and they play like hotties in a boy band, but they play well, so well you are put into a trance. Then there is a Sufi whirling dervish who spins and spins for what seems like an hour, embodying the spinning nature of the universe. He hands down blessings he receives, keeping nothing for himself and he spins and spins and the music is loud and I am no longer listening to it. I am part of it and Morocco, who brought me to this incredible show, comments that the Sufi spinner had no calluses on his feet, and I briefly wonder if I should convert to Sufism because honey, I got calluses that got calluses.

The musicians are as great as the spinners. The Zils player is dubbed the Bantam Rooster by Morocco, because he just is; with his flirty smile and strutty butt he is causing lots of trouble in the henhouse. Then there is the beautiful drummer with a serious face like a weary king, regal yet immensely tired; not physically tired, but tired of all things except for the beat. The beat sustains him, and causes us all to fall in love with him, follow him into other dimensions. The drum is the king and we just want to serve him by obeying the beat, being loyal subjects to the beat. It is his kingdom of rhythm and here I could live always.

Another spinner is a little flashier. He holds his skirt up high above his head, whirling it like an XXXXtra large pizza, and he lies down on the ground, and with a wink to me says, “I’m sleepy,” as he covers himself with the spinning pizza skirt like a down comforter but it never stops spinning. We are having a religious experience here with them, and we are meant to because they are. They roll their eyes back, they glide on their soft toes across the stage and it is like they are made of silver and fire and myrrh. I lie if I say I am not in love with them, but I don’t understand them. All musicians here are not this way.

The musicians at the hotel who accompany the big dancers when they teach actually smoke in the dance room. It is disgusting because we are exercising hard – really, really hard – and breathing in second hand smoke. Not only is it terribly damaging, it is also incredibly inconsiderate but what can you say? We are in Egypt. We smoke here. Or should I say, the men smoke here
while the women work out. When we dance in clubs here, the musicians smoke and the dancer just puts up with it because it is not her nightclub or her choice. When I perform standup, I have to accept the reality of cigarette smoke sometimes, and even though what I do is fairly physical, I just breathe now and cough later. But in Egypt, only men are supposed to smoke and of course lots of women do, too, but not publicly and certainly not while working out.

There was a big clash in the dance room on the last day of the festival during Soraya’s class. A woman, I think an American, just started yelling at the top of her defiled lungs, “I TOLD YOU THREE TIMES NOT TO SMOKE IN THIS ROOM WHEN WE ARE DANCING AND YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO ME!!!” A musician had lit up again, and then after her outburst, sullenly put it out. It became an international incident with the festival coordinator coming in and telling her she didn’t need to raise her voice and that he had taken care of it. Class started again but there was palpable tension in the room as band members made constant and very showy walks across the dance floor to show that they were going to smoke just outside the dance room. And I like these musicians a lot too, not as much as the Sufi show guys, but these are talented men and I would love to have them play when I dance. I want to love them but they just won’t let me.