Entertainment in Sharm el Sheikh

Image A dancing baboon, a women breathing fire, a man staging a back street performance involving a snake and a guinea pig, these are among the forms of entertainment you might come across in Sharm el Sheikh. Weddings are also a public spectacle, the parade of ululating women, tambourine-playing men, usually a belly dancer, too, preceding the bashful bride and groom. The form is similar whether along the streets of poorer quarters, or through the lobby or luxury hotel.

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.