The Story Teller of the Desert—"Backsheesh!" / or, Life and Adventures in the Orient

by Thomas Wallace Knox

When we were properly un-booted we were allowed to pass the doorway and stand in the interior of the convent.

The building is quite plain; the part that we saw was circular, and consisted of a space in the centre for sacred waltzes, with a floor carefully polished, and waxed to such an extent that it lacked very little to render it useful as a mirror. Around this arena there was a low balustrade, and between this balustrade and the walls was the station of the spectators. Our party of foreigners was allowed about a quarter of the space surrounding the ring, another portion was assigned to the musicians, while the remainder was devoted to Moslem spectators! Above this floor was a gallery supported by graceful columns; a part of the gallery was assigned to Moslem women, and there was a loge or box for the Sultan whenever he chooses to honor the dervishes with his presence. At one corner is a little box for women, furnished with gratings for them to peep through.

The ornamentation of the ball room was as simple as that of the mosques—no pictures nor statuary, but only texts from the Koran, some of them highly illuminated. On the left hung a large board, like a table of laws; to what use it could be put was a puzzle. Lamps are hung all around the building. To the right of the place of worship, under a projecting roof, and of an octagonal form, is a marble fountain, of fine execution. Here devout Moslems perform their ablutions, before entering the main theatre.

We waited some time, and it was no easy matter to wait, as we had to rest like the party at a public dinner when somebody proposes the memory of Washington—standing and in silence.

After a while a solemn old fellow wearing a hat an inch thick and shaped like a sugar-loaf, entered the ring and squatted on a small carpet which was spread just opposite the entrance. As soon as he was seated, the rest of the party, to the number of twenty-five or thirty, made their entrée and bowed very low before the first comer. He was sheik, or chief of the lot; the rest were the rank and file—the common fellows who were obliged to wait his orders.

They did not come in with a rush, but very slowly, one and two at a time, so that they consumed at least a quarter of an hour in getting into their places.

In bowing to the sheik they bent their bodies so that their backs became horizontal, and I longed for a spirit-level that I might ascertain if these fellows were on the square. Each of them wore a sugar-loaf hat like that of the boss, and like his, made of coarse felt of a reddish grey color. Each was wrapped in a long cloak of dark blue cloth, and as they stood in their places, they held these cloaks tightly around them. Later—after the service began, they threw aside these robes and revealed a long skirt of the same color, and not unlike a hoopless petticoat in its general appearance. The skirt was wide at the base, but gathered closely at the waist, and the part above the waist was by no means a bad fit.

The prayers began with the sheik in the centre, and there were many prostrations, bows and genuflections before they were ended. Then there was a chant, which was taken up by the orchestra, in which the only instruments were flutes and light drums or darboukas. The music was not at all disagreeable, but, like all Oriental melody, had a good deal of monotony mingled with its plaintiveness. Up to the opening of the music, the dervishes were standing in the arena, and as it began, they closed their eyes, and seemed to be indulging in a species of intoxication. In a few minutes one of them began to turn mechanically, and at the same time opened and extended his arms with the palm of his left hand turned upward, while that of the right was downward.

Scarcely was he under way before another, and then another set his engines in motion, and in a few minutes the whole party was under a full head of steam. They whirled so rapidly that the centrifugal force caused their skirts to expand and stand out at a sharp angle to the perpendicular, just as you have seen the dress of a fashionable woman extend itself during an exciting waltz. Sometimes they reminded me of so many pieces of machinery—their skirts forming a sort of cone.

These dervishes perform the double feat of whirling round and moving onwards at the same time.