Then, with the explosion of a thunderclap, the dhammal began: slow at first, the drumming rapidly gained pace, and the long lines of dreadlocked dervishes began to move as they felt the rhythm pound through their bodies. Old men began to sway, arms extended or hands cupped in supplication, mouthing softly murmured prayers. As the dancers turned their eyes to heaven, smiling beatifically, they slowly began part-skipping, part-dancing, part-running on the spot.
The tempo and the volume both rose steadily, until the massed kettle drums were pounding physically through everyone in the courtyard. The dancing gradually turned from a meditative and prayerful swaying to something much more wild and frenzied and ecstatic. As a climax was reached some shouted out chants in praise of the saint—“Dum Dum Mustt Qalander!” (“With every breath the Qalander gets higher and higher!”) or “Jiya Jhule Lal!” (“Long life to the Living Ruby!”). A few cried out Shia chants in praise of Ali: “Ya Ali! Ya Haidri!” or “Ali Allah! Ali Allah!” One man fell to the ground in a gesture of namaaz, then, amid the jumping, jerking, dancing men, stretched out full-length on the floor. The air was hot with sweat, and the rich, sweet scent of rose petals mixed with incense and hashish.
Many scholars believe that just as the Sufi fakirs of Sehwan Sharif model their dreadlocks, red robes and dust-smeared bodies on those of Shaivite sadhus, so the dhammal derives from the damaru drum of Shiva, by which, in his form of Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance, the Destroyer drums the world back into existence after dancing it into extinction. According to the sixth-century Chinese traveller Huien Tsang, Sehwan was the cult centre of a Shaivite sect called the Pashupatas, who believed in emulating the dance of Shiva as part of their rituals, using this shamanistic dancing as a way of reaching union with God. Remarkably, Sehwan Sharif seems to have maintained the ancient Shaivite dance of the Pashupatas in a thinly Islamicised Sufi form.
On the right-hand side of the courtyard, as the men danced, the women took the music in a quite different way. A few danced a little like the men: one beautiful old lady was jumping from side to side, holding her walking stick in the air. But most had gathered themselves in small groups, each one clustered around a woman in a state of trance. As their mothers and sisters supported them, the possessed women sat cross-legged, but with the upper halves of their bodies they swayed and thrashed about, their eyes rolling and long hair fanning out as they swung their heads wildly to the rhythm of the drumming. Still supported by their families, a few rose and spun around like tops.
“As soon as they hear the drumming, they have to dance,” said an old man next to me. “Even if you bound them with chains they would have to dance.”
“Within ten days,” said another, “whatever cure these women ask for will be done. Lal Shahbaz cannot refuse his devotees.”
These, explained the old man, were women who were believed to be possessed by spirits, or djinns, and who had been brought to the saint for exorcism. One teenage girl, head uncovered, sat shaking and sobbing with one of her mother’s hands resting gently on her shoulders and the other supporting the small of her back. All the while, another older woman, perhaps an aunt or grandmother, kept calmly questioning the djinn she believed to possess her. “Why don’t you leave?” she said. “We are in the house of Lal Shahbaz Qalander. It would be better for you to leave. Just go! Go now!”
The ecstasy of the dhammal is a safety valve, providing an outlet for tensions that otherwise could have no other expression in this deeply conservative society. The dhammal is renowned for its ability to heal, and in Sindh—as elsewhere in Sufi Islam—it is widely believed that a disease that appears to be physical, but which actually has its roots in an affliction of the spirit, can be cured by the power of Sufi music and drumming. The hope is that by sending the women into a trance, their sadness and anxiety will be calmed and, ultimately, cured.
It was while I watched the ranks of transported women that I saw Lal Peri. As my friend at Bhit Shah had indicated, she was unmistakable. In the corner of the courtyard, between the kettle drums and the shrine, was a huge, dark-skinned, red-clad woman of between fifty and sixty, dancing with an enormous wooden club held aloft in her right hand. She had silver armlets covering her forearms, and a red wimple over her head. Images of Lal Shahbaz hung from a chain around her neck. She danced with great force and a manic energy, jumping and leaping in the air, more like the male dervishes than the possessed women who were seated relatively demurely around her.
Eventually, after nearly half an hour of building, the drumming reached its final climax and Lal Peri did a last pirouette before dropping to the ground as the pounding rhythm ceased as abruptly as it had begun. She lay there panting on the marble floor, smiling an ecstatic, exhausted smile. “When I perform the dhammal,” she said in a deep, husky voice, “I feel as if I am in the company of Lal Shahbaz Qalander himself—and alongside Ali and Hassan. I live for this moment.”