Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
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Our party arrived at the village of Keremli, near Erzerum; it consists of three hundred houses, with a mosque and a dergah, the dervishes of which go bareheaded and barefooted, and wear their hair long. All the people of the village came to wait on the Pasha, and invited him to visit their place of devotion, the semahane. We followed them to a large place where a great fire was lighted of more than forty wagon-loads of wood, and forty lambs were sacrificed. They assigned a place for the Pasha at some distance from the fire, and began to dance round it, playing their drums and flutes, and crying "Hu!" and "Allah!" This continued for an hour or more... They then gave a great feast to the Pasha, even greater than the feast given him by a great nobleman. We were surprised that they were able to prepare such a feast in so short a time, as the Pasha had arrived suddenly and by a by-road.

from Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
Copyright © 1999, 2000 by Kathleen Seidel
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