Reckless Resting - Day 12

What a strange weekend or rather a weekend full of strange(rs). You would think after such a full day yesterday I would have just retired to my bed and gone to sleep after my first pack of strangers/friends left. I did - just quite a few hours later after I had dramatically reduced the years on a car and made sure my partying friends made it home safely. Indeed, I was the BOB i.e. the DBD - designated bad driver. And somewhere in between I also turned some more strangers into friends. Once home my dreams of an extended lie in were abruptly destroyed by my neighbour who felt the overwhelming desire to vacuum clean his car right under my window at 9am on a Sunday. The vacuum may have stopped a while later but it was still rather loud in my head so I got up and decided to get my clean on.

I walked into the warzone formerly known as my kitchen and tried to find an inch of an empty surface to start the re-build. With the kitchen cleaned I had every intention getting household things done. Instead I found myself parking my monster truck on the smallest street, to the chagrin of onlookers, to have a pleasantly surprising breakfast (hiatus ongoing..) with one of my shiny new friends. Not before long breakfast turned into tea with more happy strangers which turned into a sing along with some more unknowns. Indeed, in one cafe we were met with the delights of the Dutch Patti Labelle and a Christopher Lloyd doppelganger singing tunes from the early 80s on a karaoke machine. Well, singing slash repeating lines comically. After picking up more friendly strangers off the street we seated ourselves in a tapas restaurant and somehow ended up singing along to classic 90s tunes drummed out on a flamenco guitar played by a Dutch man.

The musical theme on this day of rest reminded me of something rather unique to Egypt during Ramadan. The mesaharati. The mesaharati (usually male) is someone who would walk around the streets beating his drum and singing a short tune to wake people up from their slumber so they can eat before the dawn prayer. The chants always begin along the lines of "wake up sleeper.." and follow on to made up verses (not always in iambic pentameter!) such as "praise your God, make this month count, wake up sleeper, before its too late and hunger sets in". Obviously translated into English it loses all its charm. The idea clearly originated from a time when our alarm clocks and iphones were still iota particles in their unborn inventors' minds. The idea that one man (or woman) would take it upon himself to wake up an entire neighbourhood with his drum and song for the sole purpose of making sure the people would have some suhour [pre-dawn breakfast]. There is something quite timeless about being woken up this way around 3am without having to rely on my trusted iphoney to belt out some hideous 80s tune. Then again I am sure someone will make a mesaharati app soon enough [hint hint]. The rhythmic drumming of the magnanimous mesaharati is not something I ever found to be intrusive - starting from a distance it would come closer until it almost felt as though he was drumming right next door as opposed to on the street. When I was younger I would always try to rush to window to catch a glimpse of the mesaharati as he walked off into the distance again with his long flowing galabiya [kaftan/men's robes] and white turban illuminated under the orange streetlights. To my young self the mesaharati was always a rather mystical figure with his drum lulling people hypnotically out of their sleep. The Arabic version of the pied piper if you may.

As with all good things - the mesaharatis are a dying breed. Nowadays they are met with criticism even for waking up the Muslim (and non Muslim) bourgeoisie who do not partake in Ramadan. I suppose being woke up by youngsters who hang out underneath people's windows nightly for lack of a better place to go, is a different awakening process? It is sad that even this tradition is suddenly hurled into the backwaters of a wider socio-political shift in paradigm regarding religion and the state. Somehow in Egypt we always wear this discussion inside out and backwards. Instead of fearing the rise of certain religious political groups who's theories would wreak more havoc than a natural disaster, Egypt focuses on the eradication of peaceful traditions that make up the country's rich cultural fabric. Just to say "look.. we are doing something!". Yes Egypt, you are doing something. Something that once again completely misses the point. However, one thing to note about Egyptians is that they can be surprisingly resilient. In the case of the mesaharatis one charitable organisation is active in recruiting mesaharatis annually for Ramadan to post them to different neighbourhoods in Cairo to keep the tradition alive. Grass roots organisations as such are popping up like .. grass roots, to ensure the survival of those traditions Egypt can be most proud of. From the mesaharatis to the twirling dervishes [okay its more Ottoman]; and from our houmous stands to our fool [brown bean stew] carts; collectives everywhere are making sure these finely woven threads that make up the design of the nation do not unravel. Egypt already lost half of her heritage to the British Museum - should she have to lose the rest to the modern appetite for homogenous assimilation where no room exists for a culture of song, dance, street food and merriment? Then we may as well throw in our turbans and give the mesaharaties vacuum cleaners with which to wake up the neighbourhood.


Foto by A. Viskadourakis