I’ve always been partial to the combination of music and bonfires: not the folk song-while-camping kind– though that will do in a pinch — so much as the African kind. It seems to me to get closest to what music, and for that matter religion, is really for. In the last few years, I found myself again and again trying to write music that would sound good chanted around a bonfire. But my fascination remained largely theoretical. No one in New York, no matter how brazenly defiant of fire codes in other ways, was going to let me light one on stage.

Last Friday, I finally got to see my theory in action. L., W. and I caravanned up to Sharjah with some friends to watch the UAE’s Ethiopian Orthodox community celebrate its biggest holiday, Meskel. Fire plays a key role in the story of the holiday; it is literally the reason for the season. Meskel, which means “cross” in Ge’ez, marks the finding of the cross on which Jesus died by Queen Eleni, or St. Helena, in the fourth century. According to the story, she had a revelation in a dream that if she built a huge bonfire, the smoke would rise up and point to where the cross was buried. To this day, Ethiopians believe that part of the cross is buried in their country. The holiday re-enacts this bonfire, called a Demera.

We got to Sharjah beach just as the sun was low in the sky and the processions of white gauze-draped “church girls,” as our Ethiopian friend called them, were making their way across the sand toward the waiting bonfire. Circles of men were singing religious songs, accompanied by a giant drum. Most people were hanging out in the sand exchanging greetings. Nearly all the women wore white traditional clothing, while the men tended to wear jeans and button-down shirts. The UAE’s Ethiopian community is solidly middle-class and nearly balanced in gender, an anomaly in a country where men outnumber women two to one. I’ve met several Ethiopian women who own shisha cafes and several Ethiopian men who are accountants. The friend who guided us to the event is a civil engineer.