A PICTURE AND A THOUSAND WORDS

Hicham Safieddine on the ancient art of the whirling dervish

he central concept in

Sufism is the love of

God, and Hani Mohammad Ameen has been spinning in “ infinite” circles for nearly four decades to express it.

“ When I spin, I am in a completely different state of mind, far away from this world, as if I am swimming in the sky,” says Ameen, 47.

“ And the more I spin, the lighter I become, just like when you spin a ball in your hand and you feel its weight is diminishing.” But in the second half of these four decades, Ameen’s spinning has taken on a more worldly character. He has been whirling as a dancer in the Egyptian folk troupe Al- Tannura, which in Arabic means “ skirt.” The reason? The unorthodox Islamic ritual of whirling, heavily influenced by Egyptian folk music, has been in decline among the Egyptian populace.

“ There are some aspects of Sufi practice that are still performed at Mawlids ( street celebrations of certain religious holidays),” explains Ameen.

“ But whirling is less common among them these days.”

TIn 1988, the Egyptian ministry of culture felt it necessary to form a troupe dedicated to preserving this cultural treasure for posterity, and for the outside world to marvel at. The ministry’s recruiters set out to find dervishes still performing in Mawlids who had never been trained professionally but had inherited the artform from their fathers. Al- Tannura was born.

Today, Al- Tannura’s free stage performances at select sites in Cairo’s Islamic neighbourhood have become the number-one attraction for tourists seeking this genre of dance.

Since its inception, the band has also travelled across the world to more than 30 countries, including Canada in the early 1990s. Clad in multiple layers of hand- stitched and kaleidoscopeskirts, Ameen begins a 40- minute spin during the show that is full of symbolism derived from Sufi philosophy.

“ According to this philosophy, the universe begins at a point and ends at a point,” explains the troupe’s director, Mahmoud Eissa. Examples of these focal points and the rotation of bodies around them include the revolution of the planets around the sun and, in a religious context, the circumambulation of the faithful around the Kaaba, the house of God that Muslims visit on their annual pilgrimage, the Hajj.

“ At Al- Tannura, we took the Mawlawi [ a Sufi order] philosophy and form of dance and mixed it with Egyptian folk music to get the rich end result we present today,” says Eissa.

“ We also combined all the different colours of the different orders in our skirts.”

Normally, each order tends to adopt a predominant colour for the attire of its members. The colour coding is linked to the development of the disciple of Sufism. This development involves the awakening of various spiritual centres of perception in the student, such as the spirit or the soul, that hitherto have been inactive. Each colour is associated with a specific centre.

During the Al- Tannura performance, Ameen is surrounded by a circle of junior dancers. As he picks up speed, the green, blue, white and red on his skirt mesh in a dazzling spectacle of music, colour and prayer.

His body represents the sun and the junior dancers the planets revolving around it. They move counter-clockwise, the same direction pilgrims walk around the Kaaba. As Ameen turns, his right hand extends upward while his left hand inches downward.

“ This way, communication is established between the worshipper and his creator,” he explains after the show. Ameen’s cupped palms are then withdrawn toward his bosom.

“ When the Sufi places his hands on his chest, he can feel his own heart throbbing with the love of almighty God,” he says. But the feat that seems to draw the most appreciation among the spectators is Ameen’s skilful lifting of his skirt above his head.

“ When I untie the skirt laces at my waist and raise it, I am figuratively shedding off my sins and moving upward towards heaven,” he says.

Half-smiling in a trance-like state, his eyes closed, the barefooted Ameen holds the spinning skirt over his head like a sun disk. He then brings it down, folds it up and tosses it out to one of the musicians standing by, all the while spinning non- stop. Asked the secret behind not getting dizzy, Ameen smiles.

“ There is no secret really. It is a matter of habit,” he says.

“ When you start spinning at a young age, you actually get dizzy and fall off repeatedly, sometimes even throwing up.

“ But within a year or so, you begin to feel your brain and eyes becoming somewhat unaffected by the movement of the rest of your body, and that is when you know you have begun to master the spin.” The longest non-stop whirl Ameen performed was almost an hour and a half, during an international Sufi festival in India several months ago.

“ Even towards the end, I felt I could, God willing, go on,” he recalls.

Habit or talent, the endurance of Ameen awes those who watch him, including Canadian tourist Dean Vrecko.

“ I can’t really stress how impressive I found this performance,” says the 27- year-old from British Columbia, who is on a one- month tour of Egypt.

Eissa says the show sends out a message of peace and love about Islam that is usually overshadowed by the coverage of fundamentalist Islam and its politics.

Eissa admits that, even in Egypt, younger generations of devout Muslims are likely to consider these Sufi practices an unacceptable form of worship bordering on the heretical.

“ But as long as there is countryside in Egypt, and farmers and folk art in the street,” he counters, “this tradition will survive.” Hicham Safieddine is a former Star intern and freelance writer currently working in Egypt.