But That's Show Business

For centuries, a jumping ritual known as the zaar has been used to drive away djinn, or evil spirits, by Egyptian witch doctors. At a typical zaar, affluent customers are ordered to bring such items as sheep and goats for sacrifices; humbler offerings of fish and fowl may be demanded of the poor, but the witch doctors always come out ahead. After the djinn-soaked customer is isolated for a week, the witch doctor bursts into his room with a band composed of drum-beaters and female vocalists whose job is to shriek. The zaar goes on all day, as the participants weep, beat their breasts, and roll on the earth.

Gamal Abdel Nasser is about as enthusiastic about the zaars as he is about bar mitzvahs, and has long been anxious to eliminate them as a vestige of the Dark Ages. Nasser's Interior Ministry has finally got around to banning them completely under threat of a six-month to three-year jail term. Uprooting the zaars may prove difficult in remote villages, but Nasser will have no trouble in the cities, where a more sophisticated populace has outgrown them and where the neighbors are bound to hear the racket if anyone tries to stage one. Scores of the city-based witch doctors already have gone into other work, mostly into show business.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.