While teaching English at a university in Alexandria, Egypt back in the 80s, I had this amazing encounter into the inner world of Islamic spirituality.
Tea in the Shadows
A Mystical Encounter in Alexandria, Egypt
By John Herlihy
Ostensibly, I had been invited for tea to the house of a local sheikh after the sunset prayer. This occurred many, many years ago in the early 80s when we lived in a different world and when the perceptions of both Islam and the Middle East were far different than what they are in today’s world of turmoil and terrorism. However, I am getting ahead of myself; let me return to the moment at hand that I wish to relate.
I worked for a number of years in Alexandria, Egypt as a teacher at a local university. I was introduced to one of the Sufi sheikhs in the part of town where I lived and was made to feel welcome at his Thursday night gatherings. The sheikh himself was well educated with a PhD in Economics, spoke good English and had a magnetic personality that drew a person into the glow of his sanctified aura as the lodestone attracts base metal. It wasn’t surprising to learn that he had a huge following, many of whom would gather together with the sheikh for the Thursday night dhikr session that was the highpoint of the evening, after much socializing and conversation. There was never any plan or program, no announcements and no encouragement to attend these gatherings. Given my Western upbringing, the sheikh made it clear that he wanted me to attend, if for no other reason than to make me feel welcome. In fact, between the sheikh and his beloved followers, they all made it clear that they extended every love and consideration to me while I was there in attendance. Their love for me was spontaneous and freely given; my love for them was initially responsive and in reflection of their own heart-felt sentiments.
Egyptians are very social people and they have great respect for foreigners. This was during the time of Sadat when there was close rapprochement between Egypt and the US in the wake of the Camp David agreements. Needless to say, every Egyptian’s dream at that time was to find himself (and not especially herself) in America to take part in what they considered the great American dream. Of course to them, I was a Muslim first and then an American as an added advantage, guaranteed to enter Paradise, they loved to tell me, by virtue of having converted to Islam of my own free will. “You are better than us,” they loved to say, even though I knew otherwise. I learned more about living the good life, the value of virtue and the joy of spirituality from these comrades than anything I might have earned by becoming Muslim.
The sheikh had a large apartment; but it is part of the domestic Islamic culture not to clutter rooms with excessive furniture, and certainly not to hang things such as pictures or Western artwork on the walls as decoration, the one exception being the occasional hanging of Qur’anic verses on the walls of a room or sacred Islamic art such as Qur’anic calligraphy, a form of art that embellishes phrases and verses of the Qur’an. At a signal from the sheikh, the large gathering of young, middle aged, and elderly men dressed in Egyptian jallabiyahs moved into a larger room and formed a grand circle with everyone holding hands, the sheikh taking up his central position within the group. For a few moments, there was a hushed silence, a kind of sacred anticipation if you will, in which all the negative energy of life seemed to drain away from the group and a letting go, the noise and distraction of the world cast aside. It felt like a collective pause, as if the group had taken a deep breath and had neglected to exhale, or perhaps purposefully held the spirit of the breath within themselves in anticipation of the sacred ritual that was about to commence. The sheikh began the devotions by intoning certain sacred epithets from the Qur’an and these phrases were quickly taken up with rhythmic resonance by the large circle of initiates.
Immediately, the room became transformed into sacred space echoing in abundance the waves of sacred sound coming from the worshippers. The circle of devotees held each other’s hands and rhythmically began chanting the supreme Name of Allah while bending their knees and rocking their bodies back and forth like the moving hand of a metronome. I could see the white skull caps of the faithful as they bent their heads and the flowing multi-colored kaftans of the older sheikhs fluttered like banners in the turmoil of the wind created by the collective swaying back and forth of the group and the movement of the overhead fan. I felt at one with the multitude as we intoned the Name Allah in a rising crescendo of sacred psalmody, my own body and mind at one with the bodies rocking back and forth in the darkness of the night. There was a rising tide of sound in the room that was impossible to countermand as the voices of what seemed like a thousand men uttered the name of God again and again in ritual repetition, forming a cadence that was hypnotizing.
We in the West have completely forgotten that repeating a divine name over and over is tantamount to identifying oneself with this name and consequently with God Himself. It was as if the floor shook under our feet and my legs felt as weak as rubber. The sheikh himself worked the circle as though not wishing to neglect anyone and leaving no one alone, passing in front of each one of the devotees with his right hand raised in the air, pointing with his index finger in tribute to the great witnessing of the shahadah or sacred formula in Islam. As he stood in front of me, I could feel his presence even though I had my eyes closed. The sheikh radiated a holy presence that seemed to sparkle and I could feel the power of his love enter my soul, mingling with my own heightened emotions as they rose back up to God, Who was in truth the Source of true desire for the multitude of worshippers in the room.
One hour, two hours, time went by as though in an instant, for the continuum of time has no true framework to contain this kind of experience. At times, I felt as though I was being lifted on high off the ground, the rhythm and resonance of the sacred name was so resounding and so powerful. It seemed as though a thousand echoes were making their way to some invisible shore on a tide of sound, at other times it sounded like muted cloth that unfurled like banners in the wind, blowing in the direction of some distant horizon in search of fulfilment in the mythical realm of “beyond”.
There were those who faltered and lost their breath; one person fainted; several others fell to the floor only to be helped back up by the ever vigilant sheikh who scrupulously watched over his flock and would let no one wander away either physically or mentally. The rhythm became breathless and the clarity of the sound united into some primitive, primal force that was indistinguishable from the ur-language of the Divinity. Eyes were shut and voices became hoarse; there were tears in the night. I do not know whether it was the collective emotion of the horde, or some secret door from within that had finally opened, but I felt a sudden rush of emotion and tears flooded my eyes and fell down my face as I sank into a deep emotive well, feeling a lack of caring and an abandonment of all that I thought I loved, my friends, my job, my money, my books, my writing, my successes and failures in life, such as they were. It seemed like some great surge of love was being born out of the chrysalis of my former self as an exquisite butterfly, or as though a diamond-shaped crystal was beginning to emerge out of the lodestone of the heart. Something indefinable was being created approximating the feeling of limitless love that seemed to ride on the intonation of the sacred name as the Name of the Beloved. There was a feeling of intoxication to the experience that was undeniable, fused by the true spirit of the moment that brought the Infinite and the Eternal down into temporal time for one brief spellbound encounter with the holy Presence that was unmistakable because it was truly experienced.
Whether I had stepped across an invisible threshold or fallen off the edge of some symbolic horizon denoting the limits of “this world”, there was an overwhelming sensation of having arrived at the open spaces of some expansive frontier whose horizon blended into the heavens in a seamless unity. A boundless spiritual freedom filled the room that was there for the taking and perpetuated by the swirling vortex of the sheikh, driving us forward with his compelling spiritual force—a vibrant, joyous freedom that rose up into the mind like the vault of a vast cathedral, vaulted to the skies and reaching heavenward with its enveloping bliss. It was as though we were caught as a collective whole in a powerful embrace and were drowning in the wavelets of a universal sound that embodied the name of God and that cleared the way to His Presence. Pennants unfurl, scrolls spread open, the waters part, while in the heavens, the Milky Way makes its way into infinity as if it belongs there, taking us into regions of the universe we never knew existed, much less ever expected to visit.
I remember thinking at one point: I am a ball of yarn unraveling, wondering what lie within the center of this disappearing universe, unraveling slowly but surely with every resonant sound. There was a distinct feeling of letting go and giving something up, something that once given up would set you free. We sometimes have a similar sensation when we dream during the slumber of the night. Falling asleep is a letting go of sorts and a giving up of the active consciousness. There is the presumption of trust that in falling asleep, we will once again awaken. If we dream, there is the sense of a temporary freedom in the timelessness of the dream and provided it isn’t a nightmare, the dream state can be extremely liberating. The dhikr or oral remembrance of God is a letting go of the self in search of union with the Supreme Self.
In roaming through the inner world of darkness behind closed eyes, I began to see some inner world of light. A small point of illumination made its way through the darkness of my mind to become a swirling and multi-colored spiral, like a spinning sun with phosphorescent trails of light, undulating in the darkness like a living animal. I opened my eyes at one point, to replace the darkness behind my eyelids with the darkness of the room, half expecting this vision of galactic stars to be extinguished, but that spinning spiral of light continued to pulsate in the darkness, turning into the vision of a million fire flies that was alarming to behold. For the first time in a long time, I felt the “fear of God” that one speaks about in spiritual tomes, not a fear that we experience here on earth as a trembling induced by terror and fear for one’s life, but a fear that amounts to a profound awe in the face of an unknown reality that makes itself apparent as a living truth.
The profundity of the moment was so simple really; no one could deny the truth of the experience. You reach out through revelation and spiritual discipline; you engage the entire body in ritual movements that heighten the experience of the moment; you use the sound of your voice to call down through invocation and remembrance a sense of the Presence that is witnessed by the angels, when behold, the very sakinah or supreme peace descends into the souls of the devotees. And nothing and no one could stand in its way, not even ourselves and our own limitations.
Sometime later, the sheikh slowed down the rhythm of the multitude, brought the exclamations and shouts of the worshippers down to a whisper that soon drifted off into the night as the lights came back on in the empty darkened room. How long had we been entranced by the remembrance of the Sacred Name no one could tell or even cared to wonder. The sheikh's followers embraced and kiss one another with bright light on their faces and with gestures of deep fraternity that they felt for those within the group. I was, of course, included in the embrace of these bear hugs and felt at one with this rarefied community of friends. We sat down on the carpet amid the shadows and tea was served in miniature cups, clear, golden tea that tasted like the nectar of the Paradise.
A truly interesting experience. I was in Egypt for four days over the new year 1977-78. Cairo was not calm. Martial law had been imposed and there was fear that Israel would bomb again. The city was filled with refugees. I did not get to Alexandria, but as far as Memphis to the north.
The Muslims I knew were my students and they were most gracious and loved to socialize. Except for attending one wedding, I did not know Arabic and was not a Muslim, so I was not invited to prayer or anything like you have suggested. I did attend parties by the son of a prayer leader in Mecca who married the sister of Sheik Yamani, OPEC oil minister at the time. Religion was not mentioned or practiced in those parties.
My fellow traveler and I allowed an Egyptian doctor from Virginia to cut in line at Kennedy International Airport so that he could check his bags for Moroccan airlines. A week later, we came upon him in the street with his mother in Cairo. I was surprised when he did not invite us to his home. But, Cairo was in turmoil at that time.
I have found, that, regardless of religion, repetitive chants have a kind of self hypnotizing aspect often leading to the kind of experience that you have described. There is something in the primal brain that causes this, and cults like the Hare Krishna are known for mesmerizing and solidifying their beliefs this way.
Reading about your heightened mystical experience, singled out amongst many, was not only calming but a testament to the core peacefulness of Muslims. It is a timeless and timely story to share during these turbulent times when fear mongering breeds unjust animosity toward "all" of Islam.
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