Whirl!

The other night I was about to go home to my nice apartment when I saw a poster that advertised "WHIRLING DERVISHES OF RUMI" that was going on that evening and it was free! Free! Multiple whirling dervishes! Erin and I met up for dinner beforehand and then found seats amongst a very ethnically diverse crowd. Oh, how exciting!

I learned that night that not only are whirling dervishes not crazy Tasmanian Devils that flail their arms and shriek like banshees, but that you have to sit through a ton of other stuff to get to any whirling whatsoever. Unfortunately, photography was verboten so I wasn't able to get any pictures, but it didn't really matter since not a lot happened. First, some guy gave awards to community leaders. Then, the program said that there was to be "a short speech about Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi". Short, my butt. This thing went on for a half hour. Then all of these musicians came on stage and I was like, oh yes! It's spin time! Oh, no. They just played some music, which wasn't bad, just kind of dull. This went on for a goodly while. Then, intermission.

What happened during intermission? I saw Travis's doppelganger! Oh yes! It's this guy that looks exactly like Travis would if someone grabbed him and stretched him out another couple of inches. He bought some artwork at the vending table and I not-so-stealthily stared at him.

Anyway, after intermission we still didn't get to see a dervish but instead watched a dialogue about the background of the dance. This was actually funny, so no problem there. Afterwards, the same musicians got on stage followed by seven robed guys that knelt down on a carpet and then got back up and stood in a line. This all happened really slowly. The musicians started playing, and still nothing happened. The robe guys just stayed where they were. After awhile, there was a pause in the music and at that exact moment when the music stopped and nothing else was happening is when my stomach went "wheeeeeeeeeeeee!" with a horrible digestive noise and I believe that other people had to have heard it as well and I was embarrassed.

Eventually, the guys started whirling, but it wasn't crazy ecstatic whirling but instead a carefully calculated and slow spin. More of a rotation than anything else. You could see their bloomers, though, which made me happy. They all had these flesh-colored fezzes on that made them look like Coneheads.

There was one really exciting part though - one of the Dervishes accidentally hit a microphone and sent it crashing to the floor. Loud!

I started writing on my program what I heard this guy singing in the background. It went: "jaaaaayeeeeemaanuuuuuhhheeeeeeuhhhhdeehhhhhehhheeeee". That was about a minute of song.

So the show finally ended and we hung around in the lobby for a while to catch a glimpse of not-Travis, because I like to stalk. I was considering going up to him and saying "Hi, you don't know me, but you look just like my friend Travis. Would you get a picture with me so I can show him later?" and then I played it in my head and realized how incredibly weird that would be.