more arabic class in the afternoon, then chilling in the lobby of the dorm for a while, then hopped a cab back to school to get in the shuttle to go to the bazaar. it was a school event which means that there were like 50 people there, so i definitely wasnt planning on buying anything because white people=hiked up prices and a large group of white people=super incredibly hiked up prices. im told that you can only get stuff for decent prices (as a westerner, that is) if you go with a very small group that includes a native egyptian. actually i was talking to an indian guy today who has been living in cairo for almost four years and he says that he still gets ripped off at this market. so my plan was just to walk around and see lots of shiny things, which was an excellent plan in and of itself since i really dig looking at shiny things. so i went and the girls i was with got embarrassingly distracted at the first dress shop that we came to so i just wandered down this crazy market street by myself. it was filled mostly with clothes, but there were also random spice vendors and food stands and knife shops and guys with big trays filled entirely with souvenir statues of ancient egyptian gods. and everything was entertainingly lit. and everyone who saw me said "hey, america! come spend your money!" or something to that effect.
we actually only had about 30 minutes to wander in the bazaar, though, because, much to my surprise, the trip was actually centered around a sufi dance. im not sure that is spelled right, but sufi-ism is a sect of Islam that uses music and dance to connect with God. they dance and spin in circles in special costumes until they reach a nirvana-esque state. needless to say, the show was pretty powerful and also extraordinarily entertaining.
it started out with about a dozen musicians, mostly percussionists but also including a couple of weird string things and a couple of oboe-esque winds, standing on a stage. they would all play together and then one would come to the center and do like a call and response solo deal and he would spin and his skirt would fly out (which is the characteristic feature of sufi dancing). they went really crazy, especially the guy with the djembe and the guy with the hand cymbals. so at the end of their set, which was pretty long by itself, i was expecting a bow and a return to the market, but no, that was just the intro set.
so next they brought out a couple more musicians and a random old man singer and started a new set, only this time filling center stage was a guy in a green robe and this gigantic skirt. it truly looked like a very thick quilt, and judging by the way that it spun i think it had weights in the hem, so it must have been incredibly heavy. anyway, he spun... and spun... and spun. for literally a half hour straight. and his buddies were dancing and spinning and playing drums and stuff all around him, and every ten minutes or so he would untie a layer of skirt (it turns out that he was actually wearing three) and throw it up over his head. so that was neat, a real sufi dance, extremely colorful and loud and energetic. and at the end of half an hour or however long it was the guy looked ready to fall over, and i was like, cool, good show, i guess its time to go.
but no.
that was the warmup act. the band came back, and this time they added in a few more oboe-thingies and a few more djembes, and this time there were three guys in gigantic quilt-skirts spinning in the center. so they would spin, and then they would spin around each other, and then they would untie skirts (they were each wearing four) and hold them up over their heads so that they had one swirling out high and one low. and in the middle they had this special double skirt thing so that when they lifted them over their heads they really looked like giant, fabulously colored spinning tops. you could only see their feet. so then they got down to the last skirt, and when they untied that one (they still had swirley robes on, no worries), they started throwing them around like pizza crusts. they would spin the skirts over their heads one handed and toss them and strike weird poses and lie on the ground and get back up and dance around each other, all while spinning in circles and twirling these huge, heavy quilt skirts.
and after this one it really was over :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jsSdelV7Qg im pretty sure that this is actually the exact same show that i saw (on a different night, obviously). this is the green guy in the middle, so no top-twirling, but you can look that up yourself.
and then we went to a cafe and i drank bananna juice, which is delicious.
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