From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
TWIRLING TO PARADISE
It is the Night of the Middle of Shabân, perhaps the most sacred, not to say awful, night in the whole Mohammedan year. For at a little after sunset this evening the Sidr—that mystic lote-tree which bears as many leaves as there are living beings in the world—will be shaken by the appointed angel in Paradise; and on each leaf that comes fluttering down from it will be found inscribed the name of some person who is fated to die before the year is out. If he be destined to die very soon his leaf is almost wholly withered; if later in the year a larger portion of it is still green; but whether immediate or delayed his death within the prescribed period is assured. To every devout Moslem, therefore, this is a night for serious and solemn meditation, and no doubt there are many such pious spirits among those who are wending their way up the ascent to the citadel of Cairo and to the great mosque, whose slender minarets stand out to-night in unwonted clarity through the darkness, encircled, each of them, with a double ring of lights. Not so, however, with the majority of the crowd which surrounds us at the principal entrance into the buildings. Their errand is either that of the ordinary European sightseer, or of the native who lives by ministering to his wants. They are assembled to witness the State visit regularly paid by the Khedive on this night of the year to the mosque of Mohammed Ali, and they are waiting till he comes out, after the due performance of his devotions. Like most acts of homage paid by temporal potentates to Eternal Powers, it is appropriately limited in point of time; and, after no very severe trial of our patience, Abbas Pasha, who has developed into a young man of singularly undistinguished appearance and of a stoutness beyond his years, steps forth from the entrance porch, divests himself of his slippers in the midst of salaaming satellites, and, entering his brougham, drives rapidly away. Then the crowding sightseers push and jostle towards the doorway, and, gradually squeezing through it, flow wide, like water suddenly liberated from a conduit, over the spacious floor within.
Large as is the concourse of people who have poured into the building, they are scarcely more than enough to dot the vast area of the great mosque with a mere score or so of scattered groups. There is space and to spare between them for the eye to gratify itself with the rich warm hues of the immense carpets, gifts of successive Khedives to the sacred foundation, and among the finest and most splendid fabrics that Eastern looms have ever produced. The hundreds of chandeliers dependent from the lofty roof, and never lighted save now and during the Ramadán, have converted the whole huge cupola into one great constellation, dissolving its upper glooms into a luminous mist and bathing its lower walls and pillars of grained and gleaming alabaster in softest radiance. The effect is magnificent beyond conception, though as little devotional as can well be imagined. To the eye of an unbeliever it might seem to be rather an Aladdin's palace than a house of prayer. It is to the ear alone that the character either of the place or of the people reveals itself; and it is to the groups of seated figures from whom the "noise of worship" proceeds that the curious direct their steps.
The comparatively staid and unemotional worshippers—the little batches of Arabs ten or twelve strong who are reciting verses of the Koran in a low monotone or crooning responses after the professional "reader" who has come to the aid of their illiteracy—collect but scanty audiences. The chief centre of attraction lies elsewhere. It is to be found in that ring of squatting and swaying devotees who have chosen their "pitch" in the south-east corner of the mosque, on the same side of it as the great tomb of Mohammed Ali. For those—and they probably form a majority of the foreign visitors — who have on some previous day hurried over their lunch in order to hear the so-called "Howling Dervishes" give what has been irreverently described as "their celebrated farmyard imitation," this performance in the mosque may fail to prove a "draw."
The spectacle is to be witnessed down at the Kasr-el-Ain Mosque in Old Cairo—and is variously reported upon by some as "an extraordinary sight which I would not have missed for anything," by others as "a disgusting exhibition that no one should look at who desires to retain a spark of respect for human nature" and by yet others, as contemptuously and more concisely, as "the biggest fraud in Egypt"—it is at least unique in its kind. Even if it be to a certain extent "faked," as the critics last quoted insinuate—even if a certain considerable percentage of these grunting contortionists have the perfunctory air of "supers" at a piastre a day, and among them you recognise unmistakably typical specimens of the bazaar-tout, the street dragoman out at elbows, and other worthy or unworthy citizens, certainly not affiliated to any religious order of Islam—what then? Mabille itself, that once famous temple-grove of the "great goddess Lubricity," could not in its later days dispense with the services of hired ministrants for the due performance of its saltatory ritual, and had to supplement the declining zeal of its habitués by the mercenary agility of the calicot and the cocotte masquerading as the grisette. And, anyhow, the performers in the little monastic courtyard of the Kasr-el-Ain Mosque, unlike those who disported themselves in the sylvan shades of the Parisian pleasure-garden, can at least show a leaven of bonâ-fide devotees.
Some of these wild-eyed, neurotic, semi-imbecile creatures belong to a type which is familiar enough all over the world, and which you may meet with in every costume and under every sky. Nature only too plainly proclaims them the congenital victims of some one or other of the many forms of hysteria. When these men jerk their heads in concert from side to side, accompanying each jerk with a grunt like that which punctuates every thud of a pavior's rammer; when they groan in unison; when they gasp and pant and croon in response to the whining quaver of the old precentor in a filthy turban and frowsy gaberdine, who "deacons off" the extraordinary choir; when, above all, they bow till their bodies are bent double, each of them flinging forward his dirty mane till its ends almost touch the ground and then throwing it back again over his shoulders—you can see that the thing is genuine, or at any rate as much so as such manifestations of religious excitement ever are. For what analysis will ever disengage and measure the ingredient of personal vanity which enters into and combines with disinterested enthusiasm in all public exhibitions of extravagant and unusual forms of devout emotion? Every religious zealot, from a Brahmin fakir to an English Revivalist, has one eye only upon the deity of his worship, and the other upon the spectator. Who can say which of the two organs of vision fixes the more intent gaze on its object?
The howlers of to-night in the Mosque of Mohammed Ali are noisier than the dervishes in the Kasr-el-Ain, but then they are, perhaps, a little more human. In revenge, however, their grimaces are more hideous, and their cervical column seems to have such a peculiar pliancy as to create the agreeable illusion that their heads, which they wag from side to side with a looseness that puts to shame the fore-and-aft nutations of the porcelain mandarin, are about to part company with their bodies. On the whole, they form a sufficiently repulsive sight; and it is only the erect devotee, who stands in the centre of their circle, and to whose performance these moppings and mowings are a species of accompaniment that contrives to interest, without disgusting, the Western spectator. The Dancing Dervishes, for some reason or other, have ceased to dance at the Tekiyet-el-Maulawiyeh, the usual scene of their antics, for the present; but one of their number is here to-night. Without any prelude he has stepped quietly into the ring, a thin anaemic youth of barely twenty, clad in the sort of long striped soutane which these mystics affect. Extending his arms at right angles to his body he begins to twirl, and for five and twenty mortal minutes, by the independent testimony of many watches, he continues to do so. He was twirling "when our parcel left," as the cricket reporters say, and being then evidently "well set," it is impossible to say how long the innings may have lasted. Every now and then, say, at intervals of about ten minutes, the speed of his revolutions would slacken, like that of a spent humming-top, and you might have thought that he was coming gradually to a halt from exhaustion. But no! At the moment when the pace had slowed down almost to stopping point, it would rapidly quicken again to its former pitch.
It is a truly extraordinary performance considered merely from a secular point of view, and one well worth witnessing on that account alone. Indeed, you can in a certain sense respect the performer; you may even entertain for him that sort of qualified admiration which is commanded by the sword-swallower or the regurgitator of tape. He is, at least, doing something which you cannot. We could, any of us, growl, and groan, and gasp, and wag our heads and sway our bodies to and fro by the hour together. But to revolve upon the long axis of the spinal column and the human legs, say, one hundred and fifty times a minute, for the best part of half an hour, and that without ever once calling upon the spectator, in the words of the well-known comic ballad, to "see me reverse," is an accomplishment of far greater rarity and merit.
It seems, moreover, to give proof of a far higher form of religious exaltation. The grunters and groaners, and tom-tom beaters and head-waggers are mere energumens. This man has all the air of a genuine mystic. It is impossible to contemplate the countenance of this twirling fanatic, and the contrast of its strange quietude with the ceaseless motion of his body, without being powerfully impressed by it. As the endless gyrations continue the position of the arms is repeatedly varied. Now both are extended at full length; now one is dropped by the side while the other remains still stretched out; now one, now both are bent till the tips of the fingers touch the shoulders. But all the time the eyes remain closed and the face wears the same expression of perfect and imperturbable calm. To gaze intently upon him is to feel his condition gradually communicating itself to your own brain. That spinning figure with the unmoved countenance begins to exercise a disturbing effect upon you.
The world of sight must long have disappeared from his view; the whizzing universe would be a mere blur upon his retina were he to open his eyes. But does he see nothing beyond it through their closed lids? Has he really twirled himself in imagination to the gates of Paradise? Are the heavens opening in beatific vision to that human teetotum? After all, why not? Once overcome the feeling of giddiness which would probably lay an ordinary mortal prostrate before he had spun two minutes, and anything might happen. You sleep as a top is said to sleep, as this man is obviously sleeping; and "in that sleep of tops what dreams may come?" Who knows? Perhaps the incessant rotatory motion acts on the human brain like haschisch or some other wonder-working drug. The dervish, at any rate, has all the air of the wonder-seer. He is of the true race of the visionaries, and even if he were not, the stupor of trance is at any rate a less unwholesome and distressing subject of contemplation than the spasms of epilepsy. The performance of the twirling dervish leaves no sense of a degraded humanity behind it; but you quit the company of their grunting and gasping brothers with all the feeling of having assisted at a "camp meeting" of the lower apes.
Soberly devout Mohammedans no doubt look askance at both. To the question what such followers of Islam think of these wild fanatics a venerable Moslem replied the other day to a friend of mine, "We think of them, sir, precisely as a sober member of your Church of England thinks of the Salvation Army." The parallel, of course, is not quite exact, but it is sufficiently near for practical purposes. Every faith may claim to be judged by the best specimens of its adherents and the highest examples of its ritual and worship. And assuredly El Islam can point to countless followers, even among the very humblest, whose simple piety is day by day and quite unconsciously illustrated under conditions which absolutely exclude any possible element of religious vanity or Pharisaic display. No one can doubt it who has ever, himself unseen, beheld an Egyptian peasant alone between the desert and the river, at the sunset hour, prostrating himself before the Deity in whose sole presence he imagines himself to be, the One God who called his Prophet out of that Mecca towards which his worshipper devoutly turns. To look on this sight is to feel the spirit of human worship in its purest form; and a pious Moslem twitted with his howling and posturing dervishes might as confidently set "this picture" against that, as we Christians would bid him look, for instance, at the bowed heads and clasped hands of the two rustic figures in Millet's "Angelus," as a corrective to the vulgar corybantics of Hallelujah lasses, and to "take away the taste" of Happy Eliza with her coal-scuttle bonnet and tambourine.
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