Tanta

Today we went on a day trip to Tanta, the biggest city in the Nile Delta, situated about half-way between Alex and Cairo. Even though it is quite a big city, about the size of Oslo, it was a lot more laid-back and slow-paced than the two aforementioned cities, and had a slightly rural feel to it. Even though this is not a place often frequented by foreigners, people were in general nicer and less bothersome than in Alex.We could walk along quite undisturbed, and when the wind carried Eman's train ticket away, a man casually jumped down on the tracks to get it for her, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

Apart from walking around a bit and having a look in some shops, the only thing we really did was visiting the Sufi Mosque of al-Sayyed Ahmed al-Badawi. We tried to visit a church and a market as well, but it seems we had come at an unfortunate time, as neither appeared to be open.

The mosque was a big, beautiful and - to us - strange place. It contains the shrine of al-Badawi, a Moroccan from the 1200's who founded a Sufi order and fought crusaders, until he died in Tanta. From time to time the shrill sound of ululation (as the name suggests, an "ululululu"-sound) would pierce the silence, as eager devotees were circling and kissing the shrine. Quite a few couples were seated around the shrine, some of them seemingly on a date in the mosque. A woman was handing out sweets to everyone, until she suddenly had to step in to expel the demons from another woman who was having an uncontrollable laughing fit, or at least that's how I interpreted the situation. The latter was laughing like a maniac and looked like she might fall over any second, whereas the former was repeatedly pushing her shoulders and uttering "Allah", before escorting her out of the mosque. Our mosque visit was quite different from and a bit more eventful than those I've undertaken before.

It is a cruel paradox that it is so difficult to find a restaurant in a city so full of sweets. We left Tanta hungry but otherwise happy. 

The Mosque of al-Sayyed Ahmed al-Badawi

The mosque's interior

The mihrab (prayer niche) next to al-Badawi's shrine

The shrine of al-Badawi