We entered the tekke shoeless through an unmarked door. Abdullah led us
down several low corridors and through a series of anterooms as he continued
the lecture he had started half an hour earlier.
“In 1925 Ataturk banned Sufi dervish orders all over Turkey,” he explained as
we advanced deeper into the building, his voice a half whisper. “But he
cannot kill them. Instead we go underground. Now, in the last years, there
is a new growth. There are more Sufis than ever before in Istanbul.”
In a low-lit room, with framed inscriptions jammed onto the walls with the
cluttered aesthetic of a Victorian drawing room, we sat down towards the
back of a sea of crosslegged men, each one wearing a white cylindrical cap.
As each sat down he leant over to hug and kiss the men on either side of him
on both cheeks. Everywhere I looked men smiled at each other in well-to-do
anticipation.
Some prayers were said and at the front of the room one man began to tap at a
drum while another plucked at a saz, a kind of lute. Two men started
to sing, one high, one low, the microphones crackling as they pulled
themselves closer. The men around us wiggled to get comfortable. The singers
grew bolder and soon the two voices were weaving into and out of each other
with a certainty that suggested they had sung together before.
There were more prayers, the old men rising more slowly from their
prostrations than the young, and one of the singers began to read, sing or
chant passages of the Koran. As he did so, men in the congregation began to
whisper “ hai-hai” to themselves, over and over in rhythmic
succession. At the same time the white-capped heads around us started to
sway, looking like gulls bobbing on the ocean.
Hu means Him, or God — God your lover — Abdullah had explained,
although it sounded like “hai” that night.
The singing and whispering went on for more than an hour and, overcome by
tiredness, I fell asleep.
I woke to the booming thud of a bass drum. The entire congregation had moved
next door where they had formed six or seven concentric circles, each with
his arms over the shoulders of the men on either side of him. They looked
like footballers in a series of overgrown prematch huddles.
Coming to fast, I hurried next door. I was the only person sitting down.
There was no audience. The men were chanting “hai-hai” in unison
now and it was louder than before. Something had begun. In a gallery above,
screened by wooden lattice meshrabiyehs, women I had not noticed as I
walked in sat crosslegged watching the men. Some of them began to rock back
and forth.
More drums started up and a different man began to sing, his voice thin and
feverish, nothing like the soporific drone from before. Still the men
chanted, “Hai-hai. Hai hai...”
The singer’s voice grew, becoming louder and more shrill, until it was
piercing and made my ears ring on certain notes. On a signal I did not see,
the circles began to sway as one, each man shifting his weight from left
foot to right foot, left foot to right foot. Then the circles began to turn
slowly in a clockwise direction. “ Hai-hai. Hai-hai.” Near the
centre of the circles the leader of the ceremony was ducking in and out of
the lines of men as they moved past, chanting at worshippers from
point-blank like a sergeant major as he exhorted each man to greater
heights. His eyes looked enormous behind the bulletproof bulk of his
glasses.
As the drumming and chanting grew louder, the circles accelerated. The men on
the outside circle began to look out of breath. Still they went faster, the
chanting becoming more frenzied. “Hai-hai,” gasp, “ hai-hai,”
gasp, “ hai-hai” pounded through it all, over and over, as a
man appeared in the middle of the rotating circles wearing a black cloak and
a conical camel-hair hat. I hadn’t seen him make his way there. He stood
very still before shedding the black cloak to reveal a white skirt and a
white shirt with a black sash round his waist. The circles widened to make
space for him. This forced the men on the outside circle into a canter. “It
is when he drops his cloak that he leaves the mortal world,” Abdullah had
explained earlier. I could see him now in one of the outer circles, his face
blank and his eyes shut as the circles hurried him on. “The white is the
white of death. Only in white can he throw himself at Allah, like a
butterfly at the light.”
The black sash round the man’s waist was the conscious, nagging reminder of
his setting, of his ego and of his mortality. In slow motion he crossed his
arms over his chest as if about to go down a steep slide and he began to
spin. His arms opened out above him like those on a corkscrew as it grinds
into the wooden flesh below. “Hai-hai,” gasp, “ hai-hai...”
The eyes of the spinning man were empty. Open but empty. His head hung to one
side as he spun faster and faster in the opposite direction to the mass of
men around him. “Hai-hai,” gasp, “hai hai...”
The men shooting past allowed me split-second stills of the centre man’s face.
It was like watching an old-fashioned mechanised animation. Above, women
rocked with more intensity and some began to moan. The room smelt of sweat
and deodorant. “ Hai-hai,” gasp, “ hai-hai...”
It sounded like someone trying to hyperventilate. “Hai-hai,”
gasp, “hai-hai...”
One by one, men began to lose themselves. “Hai-hai,” gasp, “hai-hai...”
Their faces went limp and their smiles hung loose as if they were drunk. Their
heads lolled like flowers too heavy for their stalks. Their feet mimicked
movement, the momentum and shoulders of those around them hurrying them on.
Head after head bowed in submission. “Hai-hai,” gasp, “hai-hai...”
On and on they went, head after head bowed in trancelike ecstasy.
“Hai-hai...”
I felt like the one sober person at a drunken party.
Gasp. A voyeur. “Hai-hai...”
On and on the spinning went, as the drumming built to a crescendo. The leader
joined one of the circles and was consumed immediately. His head rolled
about like the men on either side and the circles around him began to
tighten, moving faster and faster, closer and closer, rudderless, until the
singing reached one final crescendo and the circles all collided, bodies
piled up in one great heap of flesh.
“Hai-hai.” Gasp.
Heads and shoulders and arms were as one, and for a moment it looked like the
remains of some awful massacre.
Silence. Deodorant and sweat.
- Extracted from Misadventure in the Middle East: Travels as Tramp, Artist
and Spy by Henry Hemming, published by Nicholas Brealey at £10.99. To buy
the book for the reduced price of £9.89, with free p&p in the UK,
call The Sunday Times Books First on 0870 165 8585
Travel details:
Turkish Airlines (020 7766 9300,
www.thy.com) flies to Istanbul from Heathrow and Manchester; British
Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) flies from Heathrow; and EasyJet (www.easyjet.com)
flies from Luton.
Stay at the opulent Four Seasons (00 800 6488 6488, www.fourseasons.com;
doubles from £179), or the characterful Empress Zoe (00 90 212 518 25 04, www.emzoe.com;
doubles from £70).
This year is the 800th anniversary of the birth of Rumi, the founder of the
Mevlevi Sufi order.
Visit www.rumi2007.net for
further information on Sufism and performances.
