At the entrance to the fairgrounds, the last tattooer of the Tanta mulid has set up his booth: he is a true artist come from Cairo. Although a Muslim himself, he prefers Coptic mulids, where he makes more money tattooing crosses on the wrists of Christians than a bird on a Muslim hand or a few therapeutic dashes on the temple of someone suffering from migraines. He learned his art from his father and grandfather, but none of his children will follow him. Nearby, the flute seller has come from Mit Badr Halawa, the Delta village that seems to provide so many fruit and vegetable salesmen to the markets of Paris. Other mulid specialists have gradually disappeared, like the circumcisers, who were once so much a part of Tanta’s celebrations. A family of circumcisers, the role handed down from father to son, and even from father to daughter, practiced its profession over many long years in a booth next to the Great Mosque. During the mulid other practitioners of the craft would come in from the Delta and set up their little stalls around the sanctuary, and young boys would be brought in by their parents to be swiftly snipped for the baraka. Six years ago, however, the government banned this street practice and one must now take the child to a hospital or clinic. Where have all the circumcisers gone? The mulid is changing. Old attractions, like the Wall of Death, have disappeared. That particular spectacle dates back to the British occupation and the extreme danger involved certainly brought the crowds in. This year there is only one magician’s stall, and one balancing act, and two strongmen enticing the young lads to test their strength. The circus that used to raise the big top on the edge of the grounds takes up too much space and has been moved away from the action. Other attractions have replaced the fun of the good old days. This year the fashion is for photography, and one can get one’s photo taken dressed up as a fantasy Bedouin and sitting on little carriages drawn by outsized cuddly toy donkeys or elephants. In a way this is paying homage to the saint of Tanta, whose very name recalls his Bedouin origins. Other fairground people have joined the first arrivals, and there are several big Ferris wheels and a few bumper-car tracks. A great colorful world of blue, yellow, and red has been conjured up: a world of light in the night. Gigantic neon strips create geometric patterns on the tents and shops that can afford them. The town’s electricity supply is sorely tested and generators have prudently been installed in reserve. This year, as has been the case for a few previous years, the general atmosphere is touched by the economic crisis, and one sees less neon and fewer generators. All this entertainment can be expensive for the fairgoers: the swings cost one or two pounds and chickpeas are three or four pounds a kilo! Never mind, the mulid only happens once a year. . . .
The grounds are still calm since the majority of the pilgrims will not arrive until Sunday or Monday. Once upon a time they came earlier, but now people have to work, the peasants are tied into an ever more rapid rhythm of the harvest, poorly paid government workers have their second jobs, kids have to go to school. The crisis, which has been biting for years in Egypt, has become a lot worse since 11 September 2001: inflation, unemployment, a country on the edge of bankruptcy. None of this is good news for a mulid that lasts a number of days and requires considerable investment on the part of local government and the pilgrims themselves. At the Great Mosque, the police are tense, worried about possible trouble. I have noticed inside the mausoleum an increase over the years of written and verbal bans on this and that, intended to impose a change of behavior: no sitting, no photos, no eating in the tomb. Respecting the rules takes time to catch on. Another rule, recent and unwritten, has been continually repeated over the past five or six years: female pilgrims are not allowed to sit in the mausoleum, but they can visit it, and then they are directed with the children to an adjacent hall. The poor women: prohibited from praying in the prayer hall, prohibited from lengthy worship in the mausoleum, they are left to enjoy their picnic outside the sanctuary. Indeed, not long ago, the colonnaded courtyard in front of the mausoleum served as a common space where groups of people would eat, drink, and sleep together. Blankets and litter and the stuff of human life would be strewn across the marble slabs. Now, during the mulid, the colonnade is occupied by colorful tents with floral patterns that are reserved for more lofty purposes. It is here, starting on Tuesday, that Qur’anic recitations will take place; it is here that officials will be received; it is here that the police will set themselves up. Pushed out of the courtyard by the formality of the official tents, the poorer pilgrims settle around the fountain and in the square, spreading out mats and firing up gas stoves to boil water for rice or tea. This is the campsite of the visitors who do not belong to any particular brotherhood but who wish nonetheless to honor the saint of Tanta. On Thursday evening, for the Great Night of the mulid, the celebrated Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami will come to this colonnade to sing in praise of the Prophet and the saints. This great singer of sacred songs is originally from Upper Egypt and some ten years ago was not really known in the Delta. Now, however, a quarter of all the tape cassettes being hawked by the roving vendors who have come to the Tanta mulid are of his voice. His image is on all the cassette boxes, with a backdrop of the mosque of the Prophet at Medina, or al-Azhar, or the well-known mosque of Cairo University, or indeed the Eiffel Tower, because he has sung in France at the Théâtre de la Ville and the Institut du Monde Arabe. He is extremely rich. Everyone considers him a saint.
At Sigar, the pilgrims are gradually arriving and settling in. Vans, cattle trucks, pickups, and rented minibuses unload one after the other a mix of blankets, sacks of rice, and stoutly built matrons. The tents are laid out in regimented rows, marking out streets, crossroads, and neighborhoods. At the entrance to each tent an embroidered cloth banner proclaims the name of the sheikh—whether dead or alive—the name of the village, district, governorate, and of course the name of the brotherhood itself. In fact, the color of the banner is itself significant: black is reserved for the Rifa‘iya, red for the Ahmadiya and all its branches, and green and white are used by several brotherhoods, such as the Qadiriya and the Burhamiya. In general, the pilgrims group themselves as a function of brotherhood, locality, and family allegiances. The Qadiris from Fisha Salim, for example, are a group of related families, united by their sheikh and coming from the same village. However, there is also a woman from Benha in their tent whose connection is only one of friendship and habit, and by the relationship she has formed with their sheikh. Every year she returns to stay with them during the mulid. At the far end of the site, on the edge of the fields, about one hundred pilgrims with their children have arrived with boxes and cooking pots, some piled up on camels, others squashed into vans. They are all members of the same clan from the village of Sidud near Minuf, but they are sharing their tent with people from Ghamrin, a nearby town where the sheikh both groups revere is buried. This sheikh died about ten years ago and is the object of an active mulid in Ghamrin. While these tents appear at first sight to be occupied by peasants, many of the younger folk work in Cairo during the week and only return to the village on Friday. Outside the tent the forty-two camels that carried them from Sidud are grazing: inside, straw and blankets cover the floor. The women and children are confined to the rear behind a cloth partition, but they come and go freely in a way that would not be permitted in Upper Egypt. The cooking goes on in this rear section. Another sheet closes off the two goats that will be slaughtered in honor of Badawi on the final night of the mulid. They are shown off to me with pride: livestock is very valuable and it represents great baraka for the brotherhood. It is said that in the 1920s there were two sheep or even two buffalo per tent, but who today has the wherewithal to sacrifice so many animals? Nobody here ever eats meat, except of course during the mulid.
The day drags on with nothing much to do: a bit of shopping, a visit to the tomb, a shot on the swings, fetching water, paying taxes to the local administration, a visit to another