You Are the Needle and I Am the Thread

Faces of Egypt

“You dropped it.” I looked down at the grime of the street, seemingly centuries old, expecting to see something I had dropped…a wallet, an address book. I looked up into the smiling eyes of the street vendor, his hands over his chest. He said with a bow, “You dropped it… my heart.”

I offered up a smile and then hurried on. I was trying to keep up with friends who were already a hundred feet ahead of me in the throngs of people.

I enjoyed poking around the bazaars and backstreets of Cairo and was looking forward to our evening plans to experience more of the “real” Egypt and to watch the whirling dervishes perform.

I joined the others as they moved toward the overpass. We ducked as a man riding a bicycle and balancing a huge basket of baladi (flat country) bread on his head wove his way through the crowd. He tsk-tsked as he pedaled, a non-verbal sign in Egypt that means “Coming through!”

We scooted around the old galabiyya-clad woman who was laboriously making her way up the steps, and as we neared the top, we squeezed past the street merchants with their wares displayed before them: combs and barrettes, loofah sponges, pens and pencils, and socks of every description.

At the top of the overpass, we paused to survey the street below that was choked with traffic. A cacophony of horns and vehicle noises mingled with the human ones that assaulted our ears. You not only had to be fleet of foot but deaf of ear to fully enjoy the bazaar scene.

There were shoe shops and dress shops and many places to buy house wares, their pots and pans and dish sets stacked out in front. There were carpenters sanding intricately carved chair legs, fabric and notion shops, and the tarboosh man working his press that heats and molds the felt to make the tasseled fezzes.

Abdou, a young shopkeeper, offered us a smoke on a sheesha pipe and some tea. He talked about being a secondary school science teacher who moonlighted in the family appliqué shop in the Street of the Tentmakers. His grandfather, with over 70 years of sewing experience, still sat cross-legged on the dais and fashioned the intricate, appliquéd designs out of scraps of brightly colored cloth.

On the way to the Mausoleum of Sultan al-Ghuri, where the dervishes were to perform, our path was blocked by the combination of the effluent of a stopped-up drain and recent rain. No one wanted to chance falling into the sewage, even though it looked no more than ankle deep. We decided to play “follow the leader” as we followed a line of local Egyptians who were also going to watch the dervishes dance. We flattened ourselves and hugged the side of the building as our feet balanced on a ledge of stone. “Walk like an Egyptian,” one of the persons ahead of us said with a grin, exhibiting that famous Egyptian wit and presenting us with images of two-dimensional hieroglyphs.

As we watched the evening’s performance, our eyes were mesmerized as the dervishes’ skirts became a kaleidoscope of color…red, yellow, green, and blue. The dervishes were Sufis who believed that they could achieve mystical communion with God and be transported to spiritual ecstasy through their whirling dances. Faster and faster the men whirled to the drum beats until I felt dizzy just watching them. Soon the dervishes became spinning tops that twirled and whirled until at last they stopped, their faces glistening with sweat. The dancers’ steps were hypnotic and showed us a side of Egypt we had never seen. Recollecting our experiences that evening, I was reminded of my first encounter with the “real” Egypt there in the street.

The vendor was right. I dropped it…my heart…in Egypt.[1]

First published in AAA Going Places March/April 1999