|
Tonight in Cappadocia we took the bus out into the middle of nowhere to an ancient Seljuk caravanserai. It used to be a way-station for camel caravans, and now it's used for whirling dervish performances. Mete has our tickets.
The inner courtyard.
We could take all the pictures we wanted outside, but no photos allowed during the ceremony. It's not just a dance performance, after all, but a serious demonstration of a mystical ceremony.
Now we're inside, where the camels used to rest for the night. Now there's a stage.
Our group gets ready for the performance.
They wouldn't let me take a picture, but they didn't say that when I returned home I couldn't scan the brochure they gave me. So this is what it looked like.
And here's an actual photo from a performance earlier in the summer. A member of one of Mete's previous tours saw my website and offered this picture. Thanks, Herb Hoffman!
And oh, why not? Here's another picture from the same performance Herb attended. Saravanan Subramanian took this photo and posted it in his blog. I just stole it. Hope he doesn't mind. There were musicians that played drums and wind instruments that sounded oriental, and there were six of these guys in dresses. They walked in slowly, one at a time, wearing black robes, and thimbles on their heads. To start everything off, the first guy bowed to the second guy and then he bowed to the third guy and then he bowed to the fourth guy and then he bowed to the fifth guy and then the second guy bowed to the first guy and then he bowed to the third guy and are you following this? Let us just say there was a lot of bowing. Then five of the six guys removed their black robes to reveal these white dresses and they assembled (slowly, slowly, slowly) on the dance floor in the pattern of the dots that make a 5 on dice, and they began to whirl. Round and round and round, with heads tilted, with one arm up toward Heaven and the other down toward the earth. Round and round, not too fast, not too slow, just round and round and round. And nobody fell down. And occasionally the one guy still in black would wander out among them and they'd rearrange themselves and they'd keep whirling. And it was almost hypnotizing. And then they stopped, and they all bowed and bowed and bowed and filed out. And then it was over.
And we all went back out into the courtyard and drank tea.
And then we left. That's the outside of the caravanserai. If you'd like to read all about the whirling
dervishes, look here:
|
