Pilgrimages and festivals are like temporary cities made up of wood, cloth, and electric wire. They rise in a matter of days, stand lofty and crowded with people for a day or two, and afterwards disappear in a matter of hours. Temporary as these structures are, the bits and pieces that make them up are very durable. The buildings of the festival are modular, designed to be taken apart, transported, and put together again. Wrapped together and loaded on trucks they are taken to other festivals where they come together in new formations. Covered with scratches and dirt, kept from falling apart with countless minor repairs, they show the traces of long travels through the country. Like the crowds who after the festival disperse to go home and maybe come back next year, these structures return year by year giving the temporary city of festival a magic permanence.

These images were shot at the mulid (Muslim saints-day festival) of as-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta, Egypt, IX November MMVI

Copyright MMVI by Samuli Schielke / back to the photo index