the bourgeois in city suits murmuring Qur’anic verses: outside, the uninterrupted trampling of the crowd, so many feet stomping the floor in unceasing and extraordinary movement. Just covering a dozen meters is tiring enough, but to go from Sigar to the mausoleum is a commando training course that leaves one spent. Passing through the tunnel beneath the railway that marks the line between town and suburbs is fearsome. The cries resound more here than elsewhere, the half-light is just right for clumsy jostling, and the disabled who squat here to beg barely escape being crushed. The crowd pulls and pushes, it wavers for a second, then stands firm. It is a continuous stream that cannot long be diverted by any distraction. One can, however, move forward. Some fifteen years ago, one could hardly touch the ground or choose direction or even escape from the flow. Only the truncheons of the police stationed along the path of the pilgrims could slightly dent the compact mass of brown and navy blue as it swayed like the sea. I was always being told, “You can’t walk there,” and it was true. You needed physical bravery to dive into the scrum. Every year people died, suffocated by the crowd or trampled to death in a stampede. But those days seem to have passed. The crowd is smaller, smothered by poverty: the poor no longer have the money to pay for entertainment designed for the poor. And the middle classes, numerous if discreet participants in the mulid, are not going to risk life and limb wandering through thronged streets.
As the sun sets, a procession follows the khalifa as he goes to pray in the Great Mosque of Badawi, setting off more cheers and applause. He comes from the direction of the Samanud Bridge where he has been greeting the Shinnawiya, a branch of the brotherhood that grew out of the very first companions of the saint. It is another way of celebrating the allegiances between the brotherhoods, even though, among all the ululating women and rejoicing men, almost nobody knows the history. All is banners, drums, and cries. The multitude of pilgrims camped out in front of the mosque are squashed in together, sitting on cardboard boxes. A matronly woman, widowed with ten children, is selling tea with her daughters from a second marriage. She normally lives in Cairo, in the shadow of the great mausoleum of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet, where she scrapes together a living. Next Monday she will have moved on from here to work the Great Night of Sayyida Aisha, a Cairo saint and descendant of the Prophet. At that mulid she will sell peanuts, before moving on the following week to Disuq for the mulid of Sidi Ibrahim. She manages to survive, rolling from mulid to mulid. She loves the People of the House, the ahl al-bayt, all the holy men and women venerated in Egypt who are accepted as descendants of Muhammad. Badawi is one of them.
As night begins so do the dhikrs, more of them and even louder than the previous evening. Canopies have sprung up in the old town and in the run-down streets around the Great Mosque, smaller perhaps than those out at the camp of Sigar, but they are busy and pull in those passers-by who are not truly Sufi. There is a large awning attached to the top of a flight of stairs that stretches between two houses. Beneath it are the followers of Sheikh Sa‘d Ragab al-Rifa‘i from Minufiya. The sheikh was a ticket inspector on the buses in Cairo but came originally from the large Delta village of Bagur, to which he returned after his retirement. Their dhikr is considered one of the most beautiful, and he and his folk used to set up tents at all the great mulids of Cairo and the Delta: I have followed them from mulid to mulid, from year to year. About two and a half years ago, after a short illness and on a day when the sky suddenly went dark, the sheikh passed on in a haze of sanctity. If the miraculous signs and visions appear in sufficient number and the government consents, then the sheikh will have a tomb and a mulid of his own.
In the meantime, a full-size photograph of the holy man decorates the tent and stares out at the new sheikh as the latter launches the dhikr. Before his death Sheikh Sa‘d had chosen his third son to be his successor, and these past few years, after seventeen years of driving trucks in Saudi Arabia, the son has returned to dedicate himself to the brotherhood. Tall and austere like his father, the new sheikh also shares a certain shyness, but not the same silent smile that seemed to understand all of human weakness. He knows that his father was a saint and nobody around here would doubt it. With due humility he prides himself on honoring the memory of his father with scrupulous loyalty so that none of the customs and traditions of the brotherhood will be broken. As he observes the rituals of the dhikr, the new sheikh is careful to follow the path set by his father, and he ends up revealing an unforeseen force that fulfils the expectations of his disciples. Everybody is saying it: he takes after his father.
The dhikr begins at nine o’clock. After the specific prayers of the brotherhood, which all the initiated members recite while sitting, taking their lead from the sheikh, the Fatiha is spoken. It is a moment of real concentration with tense faces and eyes closed or fixed on the middle distance. Then, up they stand and the musicians take over: a violin, a flute, two tambourines, and a darabukka. Voices rise, a tambourine is struck, the rhythm is set, and the dhikr begins. At first slow and full as the performers find the beat, it will grow faster and faster, more and more energetic, almost without end. Two singers, one of whom is famous throughout the Delta, will take turns driving the performance from nine o’clock until three-thirty in the morning. A few years ago it was Sheikh Lutfi, his face disfigured by scarring from burns, who whipped up the dhikr of Sheikh Sa‘d, until one night, returning from a session, he dropped dead. His eight-year old son is here this evening, and he is hoisted onto a chair and takes the mic for half an hour. His piercing voice, still clearly that of a child, delivers the chants of adults, listing the names of the saints venerated by the Egyptians: the descendants of the Prophet, al-Husayn and Sayyida Zaynab who are buried in Cairo; and the Four Poles of Sufism, Sidi Ibrahim al-Disuqi, Ahmad al-Rifa‘i, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, and Sayyid al-Badawi, the host of this feast. People are struggling through the tightly packed crowd around those performing the dhikr in order to see the son of the father and to admire his youthful talent.
Passersby stop, the mass grows, the throng thickens, and the musicians climb onto tables and chairs to play over the assembly. Some women standing at the edges are taken by the rhythm, rise up, and join in. Here and there a man falls into a trance and is swiftly and firmly grasped and held up by the sheikh, who leads him, still trembling, to a calmer spot. One particular person, an epileptic, causes serious concern to the sheikh’s cousin, a courteous man who normally works for UNESCO but during the mulid is in charge of security. The son of the new sheikh, named Saad after his grandfather, is a teenager with a gentle face. He lives in Minufiya and has come this evening after finishing his classes at high school. He enters into the dhikr methodically, with concentration, and his father, passing through the rows, adjusts the young man’s shoulders and shifts the stretch of his arms. Some men stop and move off to grab a bite in a corner: leaves of arugula, potatoes in gravy, a chunk of brownish meat bobbing in oil. Tea is continually being served and cigarettes smoked. Night moves on, sweat drips from foreheads, and fatigue causes a momentary falter as the rows of participants break up and drift off. Time for a pause in the dhikr as some people wander home. Others head off to visit another sheikh and there are a few moments of hesitation. But then, tea is drunk and the dhikr starts again, renewed and rejuvenated. Once this point in the night is past, things get even more intense and unfettered. The body, ears, and wounded fingers of the drummers and of the lips of the flautist have been at it for more than four hours with almost no break. At this late stage in the night, the dhikr becomes gradually more free-form. A sharp voice rings out as a little girl is hoisted onto her father’s shoulders and sings the glory of the Prophet. Women slap their palms together and ululate their admiration. A magnificent sheikh of the Rifa‘iya brotherhood arrives grasping a wooden staff carved in the shape of a snake, which he moves from hand to hand. This bears baraka since the snake is the emblem of the Rifa‘is, and it is by swallowing live serpents that the sheikhs of the brotherhood reinforce their charisma. The singer grabs the snake staff and, climbing onto a chair, dances and sings, improvising around the usual themes. The joy reaches new heights as the dhikr intensifies. The chanting follows and seems to be unable to reach an end. And then, in a few seconds, everything slows and, almost brutally, stops. The cousin, uncle, brothers, and sons of the current sheikh gather in the center of the tent and recite together the very last prayers, the closing Fatiha. There is much congratulating and fixing of turbans, addresses are exchanged on small slips of paper, and a final tea is drunk. It is past three-thirty in the morning and all the dhikrs are winding down.
Outside, the night is lit by neon and the crowds are still dense. Streams of people are moving from Sigar toward the station