Before I go into detail about the festival I went to, I would like to go into more detail about how useful and wonderful these shows are. The idea of showing your traditions and learning about others and the dialogue between different cultures is very important. By doing these kind of shows people can learn about, remember, and practice their traditions. These kind of things are what keep tradition alive. In the recent years people have been forgetting their trues selves, their traditions. Keeping traditions alive is important for teaching the next generation about a particular or shared past and for helping individuals to establish identity. I’ve seen people that have forgotten their traditions and customs; If you don't protect your customs and traditions it is as if you have become one of another nation. Tradition is what defines a nation. These festivals help to keep hundreds of year old traditions alive.
It was a Saturday, which is basically Sunday for non-Arab countries. Normally on Saturdays we take special math and science classes, however this Saturday was different; we were going to go to an Arabic Festival. Not only was this an opportunity to
practice Arabic, it was also an opportunity to be more familiar with
Arab and Egyptian culture. We woke up early in the morning and got
ready, we wore our best clothes and set off to the international school
where the festival would take place. Once we got there I could
understand how big of a thing this was going to be, judging by the big
crowd. We entered the theatre and sat down, I was already getting
excited.
Boom!
Woosh! There were fire effects on the stage and the show had started.
First there was an intro video that described the purpose of this festival and
what was going to happen. Then a speaker went on stage and called some
teachers. Afterwards he told everybody to stand for the Egyptian
national anthem. The show then started with two students singing a song
about the culture of Egypt. One demonstration that I enjoyed a lot was
the play. The play was apparently a story from Arab tradition. The story
was about a wise man called "sheikh al-faqir", which means the poor old
man. This man was very religious Muslim, however was very poor. His
friends family complained about him being this way and his wife said
that their kids were starving. This man was normally very religious
however said "I do all these prayers and read all this Quran, for
what!? My family is hungry and I've not seen any help from Allah! If by tomorrow
I don't find food in my house I swear that I wont read a single ayat
from Allah's ayats! (Ayat is a small small section of the Quran)". Upon
hearing this their friends got very worried so they decided to make a
plan. Every person was to bring something from their houses as food;
some brought juice, some ;brought meat, and some brought bread. They
gathered all these things and put it in the old man's house. The next
day upon finding this food the man repented the sins that he had done by
saying those other things and him and his family lived happily after
that. Other than that there were poems and dances.. At the end of the
festival we feasted traditional Arab/Egyptian foods.
Overall the festival was
stunning and I learned many things about Arab and Egyptian culture; Not
just from the performances, but also from the people that were
watching. I still cannot stress how important these sorts of things are.
If the world wants peace they need tolerance, and for tolerance you
need a good understanding of somebody’s culture. These programs are just
steps towards world peace.
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