Exposed (Conclusion)

Well, it’s been a few months since I got back to writing this, but I really didn’t have the drive to put it back up because, well, I didn’t.  However, since there have been a few requests, I may as well finish this off, clean up, and move on to bigger and better things than talking about loser-ish music concerts.

Anyway, Sami Yusuf was delayed, and it took him forever to show (maybe he has some Hyderabadi roots).  When he finally did show, he sang some of his more popular hits.  I, with my menacing hood up, sunglasses on while the day had already faded to night, and nonchalant attitude did not join the crowd when it cheered in jubilation.  I simply watched the musician and the crowd to see the interplay.

As for the Chicago crowd, they were fairly dead in their chairs.  It didn’t really seem like they were truly getting into it as may have been the case in Britain.  I’ve been to a few concerts (yeah, I was young once too), and this was pretty tame in comparison.  Actually, I wasn’t too surprised.  Chicago Muslims are pretty hard to motivate to get exciting about anything to begin with.

Somewhere in there, Sami Yusuf apologized for not being able to bring his whole 13 string orchestra (or something like that, don’t flame me, music afficionados).  My reaction at that time was, oh my God, who really cares?  Apparently no one, as I didn’t hear any gripes, complaints, or collective sighing as a result of the musical deficiency.

In a few of the songs, Sami Yusuf tried to get the crowd to sing with them.  It was then that a statement from a comedian popped into my head – “we didn’t pay to sing to you, we paid you to sing to us!”

Or something like that.

Anyway, long story short, fairly anticlimatic.  Popmania?  Not really.  Must be a british thing.  Chicago was like Marley – dead as a doorknob.

Then came the fun part.  Leaving the concert.  As I was walking out, keeping my head down, avoiding the sisters, some kids behind me, no idea who they were, are like, “Hey man, isn’t it a bit dark to be wearing shades?”  So I kept moving, and one, in all seriousness behind me was like, “Hey, are you someone famous?”

Yeah, Darth Maul.

So I’m booking it out of there, and one brother actually recognized me and was like, hey, salaam alaykum Siraaj, but whatever, I just kept going, and the brother was like, “What the…?”  I just kept going.  Which guy would want to be caught attending a Sami Yusuf concert?  Not me.

Aftermath
So a few days later, I received a message on my voicemail from my good friend Farhan (see part 1 of this story):

“Hey man, you were at the Sami Yusuf concert, hahahahahahaha!!!!”

It was going to be a long month.