Earthblog

You might sit at a café or listen to gypsy women singing a wailing song or go to a low dive like the Arizona at the Midan Orabi end of Sharia Alfi to watch belly dancers who’ve seen better days. Azany finger-cymbal prayer is followed by a nonchalant Lebanese riding a unicycle across a wire 2 metre above the stage.

What is common to all these entertainments, the puppet shows, the story telling, and dervish hoppings that accompany every moulid, is the abandoned enjoyment with which they are each equally received.

It is perhaps this playfulness, together with a flair for the melodramatics and a touch of African oomph that makes Egyptians the leading film makers, actors, dancers and singers in the entire Arab world.