A Dhamaal session typically takes place after the evening Isha prayer, often on Thursday nights (the eve of Friday, considered holy in Islam) or during the anniversaries of saints (walis). The setting is a mal’amat (a Sufi lodge or mosque courtyard). Men—though historically some women’s circles also exist—form one or more concentric circles.

The ritual follows three escalating stages:

Build a mental dictionary of awkward first letters:

Dhamaal literally translates to "completion" or "turning over" in Somali. The core objective of the game is to build a chain of words where each new word begins with the last letter of the previous word. Unlike similar games in English (where "Apple" leads to "Elephant"), Dhamaal has a strict phonetic rule: you cannot repeat the same letter that just ended a word as the starting letter of the next word without a specific condition. However, the most common modern interpretation follows a simple yet challenging rule set:

Somali entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, Kenya, and the diaspora produced low-budget VHS and DVD comedies. Stars like Axeeste (Cabdi Cadani) and Ku Xajin filled living rooms in Minneapolis, London, and Toronto with laughter. Their humor was physical, loud, and entirely in Af Somali, using regional dialects for comic effect.