THE TOWN CRIER’S DAUGHTERThere are several cemeteries round the town, some of them belong to the easterners and some to the westerners. Almost all the roads into the town cross burying-grounds. Until a few years ago it was the custom to cover the grave with two split palm logs and a thin layer of earth, which usually subsided, leaving nothing but wood on the top. These old graves are still a source of danger, as often when one rides over them, without knowing, the wood gives way. Graves of sheikhs are distinguished by a roughly shaped headstone, and generally a little heap of earthenware braziers, left by the women who come to the cemetery and burn incense. When a particularly religious or important Siwan dies, his family keep a guard over the grave at night for about a fortnight after his death, which they say is necessary to prevent the ghoulish old witches from profaning it by digging up the corpse and stealing the dead man’s hair and finger-nails for their charms.The fear of the Evil Eye is almost more deeply rooted in Siwa than in Egypt. It is thought that ill-disposed and jealous people can cast a malignant influence over others, and also over animals and inanimate objects. The Prophet Mohammed permitted the use of charms against the Evil Eye,although he forbade them for any other purposes. For this reason innumerable charms are worn and exhibited by the Siwans; houses, gardens and olive presses are protected from the much-dreaded curse by bundles of old bones, animals’ skulls, or black earthenware pots stuck upside down and set along the roofs. In many houses and in tombs an aloe plant is hung just inside the entrance, swinging from the ceiling, which prevents any envious person from doing harm. Special charms are made for animals by the witches and the Fikis. The charm used to protect a donkey consists of some ashes, a spider’s web, a little salt, and a scrap of paper inscribed with a verse from the Koran, tied in a black bag and hung round the animal’s neck. Some of the most valuable donkeys have quite a cluster of amulets hung round them. The ingredients of the various charms manufactured by the women are very similar to those used by the witches in Macbeth, those that are the most difficult to obtain being the most efficacious.But in spite of innumerable precautions people are constantly under the impression that they have incurred the Evil Eye, and then complicated rites have to be performed in order to raise the curse. This can be done in various ways. If the evil wisher is known his victim follows him without being seen and collects a little sand from his footprints which he takes to the Fiki. The Fiki, for a small fee, recites certain verses over it, which removes the curse. Another system is for the victim to go on a Friday, without speaking to anybody on the way, to a maledate palm. He pulls off some of the stringy, brown fibre and brings it back to the Fiki who twists it into a cord and binds it round the man’s head. The patient keeps this on his head during the day, and in the evening he again visits the Fiki who unties the cord and reads some appropriate passages from the Koran, after which the object is no longer in danger. There is another method which is frequently practised in more serious cases. The Fiki takes a hen’s egg—presumably a fresh one—and inscribes certain cabalistic signs upon it. He then burns a great deal of incense and mutters charms; when the patient has become thoroughly bewildered he takes the egg and moves it seven times round the victim’s head. He then breaks it in a basin, gazes fixedly at it, discovers whose is the Evil Eye, and destroys its power by scattering it on the floor.Any individual who was popularly supposed to possess an Evil Eye was carefully avoided. There was one old woman who was particularly feared on this account. She was quite old and rather mad, but she certainly had an exceptionally evil expression, and she showed her face more than most of them. Anybody who met her in the morning, starting out to his garden or on some expedition, would attribute any mishap that occurred during the day to her malevolent glance.The witches of Siwa live among some ruined houses in the highest part of the old town. Their leader is a little blind woman who is said to be 100 years old. She looks exactly like one of theshrivelled mummies that are found in some of the tombs near Siwa, but her scanty wisps of hair are dyed red which gives a most sinister effect. She creeps about leaning on a staff, like the regular witch in Grimm’s fairy tales, and although she is quite blind she manages to slip about the high battlements like a lizard, knowing by force of habit every stone in the place. When a client wishes to consult her he comes after nightfall to a certain place among the ruins high up in the town, where a number of dark passages converge, and then he calls her. She lives somewhere up above with two or three others. She mystifies her visitors by appearing suddenly, quite close to them, noiselessly and apparently from nowhere.I once sent a message saying that I should like to make her acquaintance. One night after dinner I walked over to the town, taking a man with me who knew the place well. We scrambled up and up, through pitch-dark passages to the highest part of the town and eventually arrived at a little low door about 4 feet high, in one of the narrowest and steepest tunnels. After knocking several times it was opened. I lit a match and saw the little old woman herself. She led me up several more dark flights of steps to the roof of the house, and there, sitting in the moonlight, I drank tea with her. The tea was served by her grandchild, a Sudanese boy. Unfortunately I could hardly understand a word she said, but the tea was excellent, and the view was very fine.It was a hot summer night, but the high roof wascool with even a faint breeze blowing across it. Looking down over the parapet one saw white-wrapped, sleeping figures on the roofs below, and in the distance there sounded the faint, mysterious melody of reed pipes and a tom-tom. These Libyan nights are very wonderful; the sky is a deep, dark blue, powdered with myriads of stars, and every few minutes a long-tailed meteor flashes downwards. Shooting stars are said to be hurled by the angels in heaven at the jinns on the earth below, but the Siwans fear them as they say that each star kills a palm tree. They prove this statement by arguing that when a tree dies in a natural way it withers from the bottom, but when it withers from the top, as many do, it is caused by a falling star.When a Siwan girl thinks that it is about time that she was married, and no suitors are forthcoming, she adopts the following custom. On a Friday, when the muezzins on the mosques are calling the Faithful to pray at noon, she leaves the house, carrying some sugar in her right hand and a little salt tightly clutched in her left hand. She covers her face with her long, grey shawl and hurries through the streets, avoiding everybody, to a little hill outside the town—close to the Camel Corps barracks—which is crowned by the tomb of a very venerated Siwan sheikh. When she arrives she runs seven times round the tomb, eating the sugar and the salt and calling on the sheikh to help her. She does this on three Fridays in succession, and after that somebody comes to her parents and asks for her hand. Later, if shehas a child, she distributes food to the poor at the tomb of the sheikh as a thank-offering. The actual tomb of Sheikh Abu Arash is inside a little whitewashed mud building. The tomb is covered with white linen, which is renewed by devotees of the saint, and a number of ostrich eggs, brought many years ago from the Sudan, are suspended from the ceiling. Sometimes women bring flowers and palm boughs and lay them on the tomb. Often on a Friday I have noticed a woman hurrying round it, muttering earnestly to herself and hoping for a husband. I wondered at one time whether the proximity of the Camel Corps barracks had anything to do with this recipe for obtaining a husband—but the belief has been held for many years, long before the Camel Corps were thought of.Another way of obtaining a husband is as follows. The girl summons one of the “wise women” to her house and provides her with a basket, which is, by the way, a perquisite. The old woman takes the basket and goes round to each mosque in the town collecting a handful of dust from the ground immediately in front of each door. She then brings the basket full of dust back to the girl and they mix it with olive oil, making a kind of putty. The girl then brings in a round tin or a large round dish and takes a bath, using the putty as soap. The old woman carefully collects the water which has been used in an earthenware pitcher. She goes out at night again to each mosque and sprinkles a little of the water round the doors. The next day, when the men come in andout of the mosques they tread on the place where the water was poured, and probably some of the mud sticks to their feet. One of them is sure to demand the girl in marriage. There are various other methods of attaining the same ends; amulets and charms are manufactured by the witches, which are supposed to attract a certain man, especially if the ingredients of the charm include something that once belonged to him. The whole idea is very much the same as the system of love philtres and charms that were used in Europe in the Middle Ages.The witches are supposed to be able to summon jinns whenever they want to, but any ordinary person has to follow out a complicated proceeding before being able to do so. The system used for invoking jinns is only practised secretly, and by women, but it is implicitly believed in by everybody. For forty-five days the woman eats no meat, feeding entirely on bread, rice, lentils and fruits. Every evening she bakes a loaf of wheaten bread, unsalted and flavoured with red pepper, which is the favourite flavouring among jinns. She takes the loaf, naked, with her hair hanging loose, to the rubbish heap outside her house, where she leaves it. On the forty-fourth night a jinn appears in the form of some familiar animal: a camel, donkey, or cow. If the woman is afraid it kills her at once, but if she is brave, and speaks to it, it does her bidding. The jinn tells her to prepare a dinner on the following night for six of his brothers. Next day she makes six loaves and flavours them with spiders’ webs besides pepper, andtakes them out to the dust heap as before. She leaves them and returns an hour later. Then she finds the chief of the jinns, Iblis himself, waiting for her, a monstrous creature with flaming eyes, horns and great hooked teeth, breathing out fire from his mouth. This individual asks her what she desires and promises to carry out her wishes on the condition that from henceforth she never utters the name of Allah.There is another even more fantastic story that sometimes at midnight one of the witches swings a cord from her house on the battlements to the top of the tall minaret of a mosque just below. She then steps off the wall and walks along the rope, which is suspended in mid-air, like a tight-rope dancer. People also assert that it is a practice of the witches to creep out into the graveyards at night, to dig up a body, tear off the head, and carry it back in their mouths like animals. This gruesome habit was ascribed to werewolves in the olden days.Often when there is a case of theft in the town one of the “wise women” is summoned to help discover the thief and the whereabouts of the stolen property. She occasionally finds the property, but very rarely exposes the culprit. One day a rich merchant came to my office in a great fuss and complained that a quantity of silver ornaments belonging to his wife had disappeared from his house. I held an official inquiry, but there were no clues, and nothing was found out. Then the merchant invited the help of an old woman called Marika, who according topopular opinion was assisted by a familiar jinn. He offered her a substantial reward if she could trace the jewellery. About a week later Marika came to the merchant and asked him to collect every single person in his household outside the door of the house at a certain time that night. The door was closed on the empty house and the old woman hobbled up and down outside it for about ten minutes, muttering incantations and watched with considerable awe by the whole household. After this proceeding she flung open the door and led the merchant to one of the lower rooms where the missing ornaments were found lying on the floor near the window. She explained that a jinn had brought them back; the merchant paid her a reward and she then retired. Nobody thought of trying to discover who had replaced the stuff, and my suggestion that the lady herself had some knowledge of the culprit was indignantly dismissed. These old women have access to all the harems and have a considerable influence over the women, so they are able to collect an enormous amount of information which helps them in affairs like these, though they are by no means always so successful.If a number of people are implicated in a theft another very curious system is used for discovering the culprit. A smooth, round dish, or a flat, round piece of wood about the size of a plate is produced and inscribed with curious hieroglyphics and verses from the Koran. Two men, one of them who has to be an expert, sit down on the ground facing eachother, holding the dish in the air about a foot from the ground, balanced on the tips of their fingers. Each of the suspects come in one by one and places a scrap of paper or rag on the middle of the round piece of wood. If they are innocent nothing happens, but when the guilty man has dropped his piece of paper on to it the wood begins to revolve. I have seen this performance done three times; on two occasions nothing happened, but the other time the wood certainly did move round, although I could not see how it was manipulated.Divination, which is considered to be a form of satanic magic among good Mohammedans, is much practised at Siwa. Perhaps it is the idea of oracular communication which has lingered in the oasis since the days when Siwa was famous for its oracle. Its most frequent form is the interpretation of dreams, but future events are also discovered by examining certain bones in animals that are slaughtered for food, in a similar manner to the Roman augeries. The lines on certain bones of a sheep denote coming events. One old man, after examining the thigh bone of a young kid, announced to me that ten men and six camels would arrive on the morrow from Jerabub, and also that a large convoy was moving from the coast to Jerabub. Part of the prediction turned out to be true, but I expect that he found out about the camels before he made the prophecy.The interpretation of dreams is considered the most reliable guidance of this kind. When a manhas a difficult problem to decide he pays fees to a Fiki and gives him some small article that belongs to him. The Fiki takes the article, a cap for instance, and goes to the tomb of Sidi Suliman or another sheikh; he prays and then lies down and sleeps. Afterwards he interprets his dream as an answer to his client’s questions. Sometimes he has to visit the tomb many times before being able to give any advice, so in an urgent case this system would not be a success. The art of divination at tombs is hereditary, and there is a kind of code which attaches definite meanings to certain things that the man dreams about. The ancient Berbers who believed in an after life consulted at the graves of their chiefs in a similar manner.One of the Fikis, an old man who has performed the Pilgrimage four times, is an expert fortune-teller. His methods are many, but his favourite one seems to be a complicated system by which he draws a species of chart in the sand or on paper, with a number of little squares or “houses” which he fills in with figures depending on his client’s birth date. He has other ways of working with sand alone, or by opening a certain Arabic book on necromancy at random, and reading from the page at which he happens to open it. The natives have great faith in him, and say that his predictions are very accurate—but this was not my opinion when I once consulted him as an experiment.When there is an epidemic in Siwa, such as the “Spanish Influenza” which carried off an enormousproportion of the population in 1918, a ceremony takes place which must have originated when the Berbers of Siwa made sacrifices to appease their gods. The wealthy men of the town subscribe together and buy a young heifer. For several days it is allowed to roam about feeding as it likes in anybody’s garden. On an appointed day the people assemble in the square before the tomb of Sidi Suliman, and the heifer is brought forward and decorated with wreaths and flowers. It is then led seven times round the walls, followed by a procession of the sheikhs and a band of men and boys playing on cymbals, drums and pipes. It is led to the gate of the principal mosque, Gama el Atik; a man steps forward and slits its right ear with a knife, drawing blood, and then throws the knife away. Afterwards the butchers slaughter it, cutting up the meat into innumerable minute pieces and distributing it so that each household in Siwa has one small piece. The people take the scraps of meat home and hang them up in their house, and this, so they say, has the effect of removing any plague or disease that affects the town. Herodotus describes almost the same ceremony as being a custom among the ancient Libyans.Every Mohammedan is supposed, once in his lifetime, to perform the Pilgrimage to Mecca. But only very few Siwans have enough money to do this. Generally, every summer, two or three men go from Siwa, taking with them a sum of money, the proceeds of the sale of dates from certain trees which have been dedicated by their owners as offerings to themosque at Mecca. Endowments of this description, either for the support of a mosque or religious school, or for the giving of alms to the poor on certain days in the year, are often made by wealthy Mohammedans. A gift of this kind is called a “wakf,” and there is a special branch of the Egyptian Government which deals with them, but in Siwa the “wakfs” are administered by one of the sheikhs, and this gives cause for a great deal of quarrelling and libels. The pilgrims from Siwa carry the money with them, though it often amounts to well over a hundred pounds, which among Arabs is a very considerable sum, but the sanctity of their purpose protects them from robbery. They generally accompany a caravan of Arabs going direct to Alexandria, via the oasis of Gara.On the day of their departure the whole town turns out to see them off, escorting them to the most distant spring on the eastern edge of the oasis. The wives of the pilgrims accompany them, and when they arrive at the parting-point the following quaint ceremony takes place. The crowd form up in the background, leaving the pilgrims and their wives on an open space by the side of the spring. A near relative takes from the wife of the pilgrim her round silver bangles and rolls them along the ground, a distance of about a hundred yards, to where the husband stands facing the east. The wife, who on this occasion is dressed entirely in white, runs along behind him and gathers up a little sand from each place where the bracelets stopped rolling and fell to the ground. Sheputs the sand carefully into a little leather bag. After this she stands under a certain very tall palm tree near the spring while the relative climbs up and cuts off three long palm fronds which he gives to her. After farewells have been said the caravan goes on its way, the camels driven along in a bunch in front, followed by the Arabs and the pilgrims; the wives and people return to Siwa, the women wailing noisily, and the men beating tom-toms and singing. The spring is about a mile beyond Aghourmi, and generally on that day the sheikh of the village gives an entertainment and a luncheon to some of the people.On arrival at her house the wife of the pilgrim, with the women of the family and one near male relation, goes up to the roof and ties the three palm branches firmly to one corner; she puts the sand into a little green linen bag and fastens it to the tips of the three palm fronds, so that they bend towards the east—towards Mecca. This ensures the pilgrim a safe journey and also serves to let everybody know that the owner of the house is doing the Pilgrimage.In two months’ time it is supposed that the pilgrims have reached Mecca. Their friends and relations have a feast on the roof and hold a reading of the Koran. Then the man who rolled the bracelets gets up and pierces the little green bag of sand so that the contents pour out; he then turns the palm branches round and fixes them in such a way that they point towards the west, in which position they remain till the pilgrim returns safely home again.When it is known that the caravan has arrived at Ain Magahiz, or one of the outlying springs, a crowd of men ride out to welcome the returned pilgrims, but their women-folk stay at home, prepare a substantial meal, and then go on to the roof, take down the palm branches and watch the distant road for the cloud of dust that invariably announces a caravan.There is one festival in Siwa which almost corresponds to our Christmas Day. It takes place in the winter, on the tenth day of the month of January. For several days before Yom el Ashur—the tenth day—the roofs of all the houses where there are children are decorated with palm branches, 10 or 20 feet long, with a torch soaked in oil fastened to each branch. After dark, on the eve of the day, all the children go up on to the roofs and set light to the torches. There is a blaze of illumination along the walls, and for a few minutes the whole town is lit by the flaming torches. It is a strange and beautiful sight, quite as effective as the most elaborate illuminations. The children on each roof sing songs to each other, and the wail of their voices sounds far on into the night in a monotonous sweet refrain.On the following day the children visit each other and exchange presents which are very like “Christmas-trees.” Each child makes a square framework of palm branches a few feet long, the white wood is stained and dyed with coloured patterns, and on it are hung fruits, nuts and sweets. Some of the richer children give each other doves and rabbits, but generally they keep to sweets, the most favouritekind being pink and white sugared almonds which are imported by the merchants from Cairo. The children of Siwa look forward to Yom el Ashur with as much pleasure as their parents do to the annual mulids. It is really a very attractive sight to see these little Siwans, very clean and in fresh white clothes for the occasion, trooping solemnly along the streets on their way to visit their friends, while their papas sit outside their houses and chuckle at them, and the mammas watch them proudly from an upstairs window.A LITTLE SIWAN GIRLCHAPTER VII“FANTASIAS”“A very merry, dancing, drinking,Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.”“I hear the women singing, and the throbbing of the drum,And when the song is failing, or the drums a moment mute,The weirdly wistful wailing, of the melancholy flute.”SIWANS, on the whole, do not take life very seriously, and when they have an excuse for an entertainment they thoroughly let themselves go and are glad of an occasion, if they can afford it, for a terrific gastronomic display, at which an Englishman feels like a canary feeding among hungry ostriches. The poor people eat twice a day, in the morning and evening; the meal consists mainly of dates washed down by lubki and a few drops of tea. They are very sociable, fond of talk, of entertaining their friends and holding “fantasias,” but one notices very much the entire absence of communion between sexes. Men hardly ever speak to women in public, and it would be considered quite a scandal for anyone to be seen in company with his own wife, almost worse than if he was seen speaking to the wife of another man.With the Arabs it is different. They meet about the camps, and especially at the wells, which fromthe time of Rebekah have been the scene of many flirtations and courtships. The young men often go and sit by the well-head watching the women drawing water, chaffing and talking to them and, very occasionally, helping them to haul up a heavy bucketful. I have often seen most amusing “goings-on” at a well. Lifting up the weighty tins and drawing up the skins of water gives the girls an opportunity for coquettish displays of neat arms and ankles, but an infinitely more modest expanse is exhibited by these Arabs than by the average young woman in England to-day. But in Siwa if one rode past a spring where women were washing clothes they would run off into the gardens as fast as they could, and even when a Siwan man came to the pool they retired hurriedly with shawls pulled over their faces, and waited some distance away.In the hot summer evenings, when noises are hushed and the day’s work is over, men sit in little groups outside their doors on low mud benches, drinking tea, discussing the latest “cackle of the palm-tree town,” and watching the piping shepherds driving their flocks home from the grazing, raising clouds of golden dust as they come along the sandy roads. The women collect on the roofs up above, playing with their children and talking to each other. Each sheikh sits before his house surrounded by a little crowd of sycophants, sipping tea and adulation, and listening to the latest scandal told about his rival of the opposite faction. Passers-by are invited to join in, and if a stranger arrives there ensues alengthy greeting of much-repeated phrases, many hand-shakings, and polite expressions. When one walked through the market-place after sunset there would be a murmur of conversation from the shadowy white figures sitting and lying round the doorways, who rose up and bowed at one’s approach, and then sank down again silently. This Eastern deference is very impressive at first, but it does not take long to get accustomed to it.In Siwa there is no lurid night life like that of Cairo, in which novelists revel. The people go early to bed and lights are very little used. Even the quarter of the women of the town is as quiet as the other streets. There are no noisy cafes with music and dancing girls, and no hidden houses where natives smoke hashish and opium. The Senussi religion forbids smoking, or “drinking tobacco,” as it is called, also coffee, which is supposed to be too stimulating for the passions, and for this reason tea is the universal drink. Life is a very leisurely affair, a pleasant monotony, and “Bukra—inshallah!”—to-morrow, if God wills—is the favourite expression. Very few games are played. Chess, which was invented in the East, is unknown, but one sometimes sees a couple of men deeply absorbed in a game called “helga,” which is rather like draughts, played with onions and camel-dung on a board which is marked out in the sand on the ground.The younger men, especially the ones with black blood in their veins, are much addicted to drinking lubki, an inexpensive, intoxicating liquor madefrom the sap of palm trees. The branches that form the crown of the tree are cut off, leaving the heart of the palm tree bare. A groove is cut from the heart through the thick outer bark, and a jar is hung at the end of this groove which receives the juice when it oozes up from the tree. A palm which has been tapped in this way yields lubki for two or three months, and if the branches are allowed to grow again after some time the tree will continue to bear fruit, but the branches grow very ragged and trees that have been used for lubki acquire a rather drunken-looking appearance which always remains. One of the favourite tricks of small Siwan boys is to climb up the palm trunks and drink the lubki from the jar in which it is being collected by the owner of the garden. When freshly drawn it is as sweet and frothy as ginger-beer, but in a few days it becomes strongly alcoholic and tastes bitter, like sour milk. Labourers working in the gardens always retire to a spring and bathe after the day’s work, then they enjoy a long “sundowner” of lubki before they ride home to the town. All intoxicating drinks are forbidden by the Koran, but in Siwa the people satisfy their consciences by saying that the Prophet approved of all products of the palm tree, so lubki cannot be a forbidden drink.The Siwans are most particular in their religious observances. There are a very large number of mosques in comparison to the population, and Friday—the Mohammedan Sabbath—is very strictly kept. On Thursday evening the prayers of the muezzinsare longer, as they remind the people that the morrow is Friday. On Friday all the men visit the mosques; no work is done in the gardens, and sometimes one of the sheikhs distributes alms to the poor outside a mosque, or at the tomb of one of his illustrious ancestors. For a long time before the event the “mesakin” (poor) of the town collect at the place; one sees old blind men, cripples, shrivelled hags, and ragged women carrying solemn little babies, every one trying hard to appear the most abjectly destitute, and therefore the most deserving case for alms. Then the sheikh arrives, fat and prosperous, holding an umbrella, and followed by some stout servants carrying huge bowls heaped with cold boiled rice spotted with dark-coloured lumps of camel flesh. The dishes are set down before the people, men and women sitting apart, with a servant standing near each dish to keep order and prevent free fights. The paupers snatch and claw at the food, grabbing it with skinny, dirty fingers, squabbling fiercely over yellowish-looking lumps of fat, shrieking vile abuse at each other and trying to hide tasty scraps of meat in their clothes. The sheikh looks on with a complacent smile and listens with much gratification while his friends make audible remarks about his excessive generosity and his liberal qualities.The typical Arab sheikh of modern fiction (if he does not turn out to be an Englishman) is a young, dashing, handsome and intensely fascinating individual, well mannered and well washed; but in reallife one rarely meets such a person—I myself have never seen him. The typical sheikh at Siwa or on the Western Desert was elderly, bearded and only moderately clean. Some of them were certainly very fine-looking men, but utterly different to the personage that one would expect from the descriptions in a certain style of popular novel. The “guides” who swindle visitors in Cairo are much more like the sheikh of fiction in appearance than are the real sheikhs whom one meets and has dealings with on the desert.One of the most curious, partly philanthropic institutions which has survived in Siwa is the “Beit el Mal,” a public fund used for providing shrouds for persons who die without money or relations, and also for repairing mosques, causeways and sun-shelters. The money is contributed from the sale of public land belonging to the community, and also from the sale of argoul, which is a plant that is used as manure, and rents for grazing paid by visiting Arabs. The fund is collected and administered by certain sheikhs, and in former days it included fines, inflicted as punishments, and taxes on strangers who visited the oasis. Any case which is considered deserving of charity is supplied from the money.Ramadan, the Mohammedan Lent, the month in which the Koran was supposed to have been sent down from heaven, is kept very strictly in Siwa. During this month all good Mohammedans are expected to refrain from the pleasures of the table, the pipe and the harem; no morsel of food or dropof water may pass their lips during the day, but at night the revels commence and they feast and enjoy themselves till the unwelcome approach of morning. Night is turned into day, and at Siwa, during Ramadan, there is a continuous rumble of drums from sunset till the early morning; at first it is disturbing, but one grows accustomed to it before the month is out.The words of the Koran are:“Eat and drink until ye can plainly distinguish a black thread from a white thread by the daybreak; then keep the fast until night.”It is possible to obtain a dispensation from keeping Ramadan, on medical grounds, and among the effendi class I noticed that this was frequently done; travellers are also excused from observing it, though I have often been out on trek during Ramadan with men who were strictly fasting. If the month occurs in the hot weather it is a very great strain on every one. Siwa, in the daytime, during Ramadan, is like a dead place; the minimum amount of work is done in the gardens, everybody stays indoors during the day, and one sees nobody about the streets except in the cool of the early morning and after sunset. Fasting, especially abstaining from drinking, is a severe strain; the sheikhs, when they come to the Markaz, look thin and ill, and one’s servants make the fast an excuse for doing nothing.This arduous month is terminated by a festival lasting for three days known as the Minor Festival orKurban Bairam. It is celebrated with great festivities and rejoicings in Egypt; servants expect tips and every one appears in new clothes, but in Siwa it is not so important an occasion; the people merely take a rest after the trials of the fast month, reserving all their energy and money for the great local mulid which occurs a week or so later. The mulid of Sidi Suliman, the anniversary of the birth of Siwa’s patron sheikh, is the most important incident of the whole year. The festival generally lasts for three days, but the people take three more days to recover from it. All the year round everybody saves money in order to make a “splash” at the annual mulid.For several days the women are busy cooking cakes and sweets; the best fruit in the gardens is carefully watched over to be ready at the mulid, and certain animals are fed up with a view to being slaughtered. If possible one or two camels are bought from the Arabs and kept at grass till they are fat enough to kill. On the eve of the feast there is a general spring cleaning of the town. The tombs of the sheikhs are freshly painted with whitewash, carpets and coloured blankets are hung from every roof, while the houses are swept and cleaned, and the place looks quite gay with its clean white tombs, and bright mats and rugs hanging out from roofs and windows. In the evening the sheep that are to be slaughtered on the morrow are led in from the fields, and everybody discusses with interest how many animals Sheikh So-and-So is going to kill. Sometimes the richest men kill as many as seven or eight sheep, and this isremembered and often mentioned to their credit, all through the year. One year there was a great scandal in the town because Sheikh Mohammed Hameid had boasted to everybody that he had killed six sheep, but one of his household let out that there had only been three old goats slaughtered. Enormous supplies of lubki are drawn before the holiday in order that it may stand long and become really strong.On the morning of the mulid everybody puts on his best clothes, and even the poorest labourer dons a new shirt or a clean jibba. Every man goes to pray in his own particular mosque, and the women visit the tombs and lay palm branches on the graves of their relations. After this people retire to their houses and eat an enormous meal and as much meat as they can possibly swallow. When the men have eaten, the remainder of the food is sent to the harem, and when the harem have finished, it is sent out to the servants and labourers who pick the bones clean. After this heavy meal and during the two following days everybody calls on everybody else, and on this occasion one may see eastern sheikhs riding haughtily through the western quarter to call on their much-detested neighbours. In all the streets one meets the sheikhs riding along on their best donkeys, wearing gorgeous silk, coloured robes, which emerge from the chests in which they are locked up during most of the year, each followed by an escort of servants. The people let each other know at what time they will be “at home” and when they will ride out visiting.On arriving at the house one finds servants waiting to hold the donkeys, and if one is so indiscreet as to look up at the little windows numbers of female heads pop out of sight. The owner of the house is found seated in his largest room, with the best carpets covering the floor, surrounded by about a dozen little tables with dishes of peaches, grapes, figs, melons, nuts, cakes and sweets, and one dish which contains the young, white pith of a palm tree, which is much esteemed as a delicacy. Along the side of the room there are more dishes, covered with napkins, heaped up with meat, generally smothered by a cloud of flies. The host offers tea, coffee, or an exceedingly disagreeable syrupy liquor made from a species of fruit “syrop” which should be taken cold with soda, but is served hot like tea, according to Siwan fashion. Strict etiquette enjoins that one must drink three cups of tea or coffee, and taste every dish in the room, except the meat, which is reserved for the family at each house.The extra amount of food everywhere attracts swarms of flies, and the sticky smell of fruit and meat is rather overpowering, when the temperature is about 106 degrees in the shade. One year I rode round myself and paid calls, but the next time I was wiser and invited the sheikhs and notables to a light meal at the Markaz, after their own solid luncheon, and even then, although showing post-prandial symptoms, they managed to eat very heartily. It was at one of these entertainments that I learnt that the Siwans have special names for people who offendagainst the strict etiquette of eating. The following are all highly condemned:The man who turns round and looks to see whether more is coming.The individual who bites a piece of meat and replaces it in the dish.The person who blows on his food to cool it.The one who is undecided and fingers first one piece, then the other.And finally the visitor who orders about his host’s servants, which I have noticed myself as being a very common habit.In the afternoon of the mulid the younger men and boys go out into the gardens, where they lie singing and drinking lubki. At dusk the people begin to collect in the open space below the highest part of the old town, round the square, white tomb of Sidi Suliman, which is illuminated with candles and lanterns, and ornamented with banners stuck along the parapet of the roof. Crowds of men keep on passing up the steps and in and out of the tomb, shuffling off their shoes at the entrance and praying at the grave of the saint. Then everybody collects at his own particular mosque, in various parts of the town, and a great “zikr,” a kind of prayer-meeting and religious dance, is held outside the Medinia mosque in the eastern quarter of the town. It is a very wonderful sight, and is attended by four or five hundred devotees.There is a large, open space outside the mosquesurrounded by tall houses, whose little black windows look like gaping eyes, and behind them one catches a glimpse of the tops of palm trees in some gardens darkly silhouetted against the deep blue African sky. The whole scene is flooded with brilliant moonlight, except where the cold, black shadows fall from the high houses. The ground is entirely carpeted with old rugs and mats whose faded colours show dimly in the moonlight; along one side, in front of the mosque, sit the sheikhs and notables of the Medinia sect, and on the other three sides of the square there is a vast congregation of white-robed, seated natives, row upon row of “dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed.” A carpeted space in the centre is kept empty.Among the shadows of the houses there are more blurred white figures, and in one corner of the square kettles are being boiled on open fires, and men in flowing robes walk to and fro across the light from the flames. There is a subdued murmur of conversation. The first part of the entertainment is a solemn tea-drinking. Dozens of men move about, barefooted and silent, carrying trays and distributing hundreds of little glasses of tea, which is made and poured out by the sheikhs. After everybody has drunk three glasses the low tables in front of the sheikhs are carried away, and the audience becomes absolutely silent. Then the chief sheikh of the Medinia mosque, a handsome, bearded man wearing the green turban, whose looks belie his notoriously bad character, begins intoning verses from theKoran in a sonorous, impressive voice, sitting on the carpet with his hands spread on his knees. When he stops one of the other sheikhs begins, until most of them have had a turn. After this three men step into the space in the centre of the seated audience. One of them is quite a boy with a very beautiful voice, the other two are older men. They walk slowly round and round the square, abreast, singing together a tune which resembles the solemn grandeur of a Gregorian chant, and after each verse the whole audience, several hundred powerful male voices, intone the refrain. It is an intensely impressive performance and one feels thrilled at being the only white man present at such a spectacle. The bright moonlight shines down on the massed ranks of motionless natives whose faces look black, much darker than they actually are, in comparison with their white robes and white skull caps or turbans. For a background there are the high houses, and on the roofs, peering down at the square, a number of heavily veiled women, and “over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars.”After some time everybody rises and all the full-grown men close up and form a circle, tightly wedged together. The old sheikh steps into the centre and begins repeating more prayers, quietly at first then with restrained violence. The audience join in, chanting the Mohammedan creed. Gradually the singing grows louder, the voice of the sheikh is drowned, and the ring of white-robed men beginswaying to and fro, backwards and forwards, their voices become hoarse and raucous; every man jerks to and fro in a frenzy of religious excitement, and the prayer becomes a violent repetition of the word “Allah—’la, ’la, ’la.” Then the sheikh who leads the prayer gradually slows down, and the congregation repeat more quietly the Mohammedan creed, “La ilahi illa—llah, wa Mohammed rasul Allah”—there is no deity but God, and Mohammed the prophet of God. The contrast between the performers at the beginning of the zikr, when they are calm and grave, and at its close, when they are hot, dishevelled and exhausted, is very remarkable.Meanwhile the crowd in the Sidi Suliman square increases. From the various mosques come long processions of white-robed figures, singing and carrying banners; the light of their torches and lanterns flashes in and out as they slowly thread their way through the steep, winding streets of the town, and their voices become faint, then loud, as they pass through and out of the arches and tunnels. They assemble in the square, forming large circles and dancing zikrs. In one corner one sees a ring of old men singing and clashing cymbals; in another group there are a dozen men banging drums, while a half-naked young negro in their midst twirls rapidly round and round, then suddenly falls to the ground and rolls over and over till he reaches the tomb itself, where he is lifted up by his admiring and applauding friends and carried away unconscious. Behind the tomb there are fires where the drumscan be warmed, in order to tighten their parchment. Numbers of women squat on the outskirts of the crowd, huddled in their dark robes, hardly visible, except when the moon gleams on their silver ornaments and pale white faces. Some of them are burning incense in little earthenware braziers, and occasionally one of them creeps up to the white tomb and kisses the wall, if she can reach it before being driven off by the ghaffirs—watchmen.A “FANTASIA” AT THE TOMB OF SIDI SULIMANThe dancers in the centre of the circles move faster, keeping time to the drums and hand-clappings of the audience, and soon everybody is swaying to and fro. Away in the gardens outside the town there are flickering lights and a sound of singing. The great zikr before the Medinia mosque ceases and all the people come streaming out from the dark, shadowy lanes towards the tomb of Sidi Suliman, which shines white in the moonlight with orange lights blazing from its open door and little windows. The sheikhs walk slowly about from group to group, each followed by a little knot of men—servants carrying carpets and cushions, and some watchmen in tall brown tarbouches, holding staves. The police stand about in the crowd, and when one walks up to watch a dance they hurry forward and push people aside, saying, “Make way, make way!” The sound of distant singing in the gardens grows louder and nearer, and suddenly mobs of men and boys, mad with drink, half naked, come leaping and shrieking into the square, scattering fire from their blazing torches.Then drums are beaten madly, cymbals crash, and the shrill screech of reed pipes rends the air. The crowd forms into a great circle round the mass of frenzied dancers who career round, drinking as they dance, shouting and yelling. In the centre there are a dozen men lashing away at cymbals and tom-toms. One of the dancers is an enormous blind giant, almost naked, who flourishes a jug of lubki, and some of the boys have wreaths round their heads and bunches of flowers stuck behind their ears.As the night goes on the pandemonium becomes wilder; the exotic timbre of the music grows more frenzied; many of the dancers throw off their robes, and great pitchers full of potent lubki are distributed among the people. The fires in the square, heaped up with rushes, blaze more brightly when the honey-coloured moon sinks behind the high walls of the town, and frantically writhing figures are seen whirling round by the light of the shooting flames and torches. The whole scene becomes even moremacabre. Gradually boys and men among the audience, fascinated by the mad mob of dancers, plunge in among them, linking arms and revolving round the musicians in the centre, crouching, jumping, hopping, and running, each one executing strange steps and postures as he goes along. Sometimes the music is voluptuous and alluring, then the dance becomes frankly indecent; at other times it is wild and furious, and the performers seem to be overcome with savage transports of rage; but the whole time the music has a very definite rhythm whichurges them on. The light of many torches gleams on glistening black flesh and shining teeth and eyes; the air is thick with heavy fumes of incense, and the bitter smell of liquor. On the outskirts of the crowd one sees figures stretched like corpses on the ground, overcome with the orgy of drink and dancing. When the faint light of dawn shows in the sky, and the fires are dying down they begin to tire of the Bacchanalian revels, and one by one the dancers fall exhausted to the ground, lying where they fell, or crawl away, staggering through the silent streets, to sleep off the effects in readiness for the following day. Looking down on to this riotous African carnival from the highest roofs of the town one can imagine oneself, like Dante, watching damned souls writhing in hell.The Siwans are extremely fond of music and singing. Their instruments are crude and simple, but they manage to obtain a surprising amount of music from them. Drums, or tom-toms, are of various kinds, either cylindrical gourds or basins with a skin stretched across one end, or large round tambourines with parchment covers. By striking first the side of the drum and then the resounding parchment, two different sounds are obtained, one hard, the other soft, and this again can be varied by using either the palm of the hand or the clenched fist. Flutes are usually made from the barrels of long Arab guns, or occasionally from reeds, and string instruments, like primitive guitars, are manufactured from a bowl covered with skin, a wooden frame, and string made from wire or gut which can be tightened or slackened.The combination of these simple instruments with human voices is singularly effective.There is a similarity in all African music; in fact, all Eastern music is somewhat alike. The melody is monotonous and barbaric: sometimes a song sung in a tremulous, high-pitched voice which rises above the throbbing tom-toms, or a tune played on a shrill flute with an accompaniment of drums and twanging string instruments. The scale ranges from bass to treble, sometimes short, sad notes, and sometimes long drawn-out wails, varied by sudden, unexpected pauses. It is difficult to describe, but the general effect is somewhat sinister, at the same time very fascinating. To a stranger it may sound like an inharmonious wail, but in time one gets to appreciate the subtle undercurrent of half-notes which makes the melody. It is suggestive of fierce passions, vague longings, and vast desert spaces.The characteristic song of the Western Arabs, a dreamy refrain with a reiterated note, which they sing to themselves as they ride alone across the desert, is very similar to the Swiss yeodling; but Siwan music is quite different. The Siwans have songs and tunes of a distinct individual style. With them certain notes have definite meanings; there is a language of sound. When some of their best singers, usually boys, are performing, the listeners can interpret the meaning of the song without needing to hear the words. They sing everywhere, and at all times, especially when at work in the gardens. Several men and boys working in different parts ofa big palm grove sing to each other, taking up the refrain and answering each other back, and these unaccompanied quartets and trios sound very attractive, especially when one hears them in the evening, now loud and clear, now faintly in the distance. Good voices are much esteemed, and the best singing boys are hired to perform at entertainments. The songs that have words are in the Siwan language, but when literally translated they are exceedingly indecent.Dancing, too, is very different to the fashion of the Arabs or the Sudanese. In many parts of the Sudan one sees men and women dancing together, and among the Arabs there are dancing girls who perform in front of a mixed audience. On the Western Desert it is not considered shameful for respectable women to dance, although most of the best dancers are very decidedly not respectable. But in Siwa only the men dance in public, and it is very difficult to see women performing, but on one occasion I did see an entertainment of this kind.It took place at night in the courtyard of a house discreetly surrounded by high, windowless walls. A space on the ground was spread with carpets, with some cushions at one side, and the moon shone down and illuminated the scene. A little wooden door in the wall was pushed open and about a dozen girls, followed by an old woman, and a small boy carrying a brazier of smoking incense, shuffled into the court and squatted down in a line on one side. The girls wore the usual Siwan dress, a blue stripedrobe reaching below the knees, and white silk-embroidered trousers; but besides this each of them wore a long silk, coloured scarf, hiding her face and shoulders, and a quantity of jingling silver ornaments and heavy bangles which they took off and gave to the old woman to hold while they danced. Three or four of them had small drums which they beat as they sang. At first they sat in a row, very carefully veiled, singing quietly to the accompaniment of the little tom-toms. Then one of them got up, with the thin coloured veil hiding her face, and began to dance, slowly at first, keeping time to the music, but gradually moving faster as the music grew wilder. The dancing began by simple steps and swaying gestures of the arms, then the movements became more rapid, and one saw a confused mass of swirling draperies and silver chains.After each girl had danced for a few minutes themotifof music changed, becoming more sensuous, and theprima danseusetook the floor again. This time she performed a variety of thedanse de ventre, which consists of queer quivering movements and swaying the body from the hips, keeping the upper part still, with arms stretched down and painted hands pointing outwards. This was varied by an occasional rapid twirl which gave the audience a sight of the dancer’s features; a pale face with long “kohl” tinted eyes and a scarlet painted mouth, set in a frame of black braided hair, oiled and shiny. Finally, the lilt of the music became even more seductive, and the dancer swung off the long,fringed, silk scarf and danced unveiled, swaying more violently, with her arms stretched above her head, stamping on the ground in time to the rhythm of the music, and finally subsiding into her place in an ecstasy of amorous excitement.It was not an attractive performance, although the dance is one which is very much admired by natives, who consider it intensely alluring. One sees it in various forms all over Africa, and everywhere it is equally ugly and dull.CONCLUSIONMANY people have at various times carefully considered the agricultural possibilities of Siwa from a commercial point of view. Undoubtedly the cultivation in the oasis could be greatly developed, as there is enough water to irrigate a much larger area of ground than that which is now being cultivated. At present the natives have only the most primitive ideas of agriculture; for instance, they neglect most of the fruit trees by doing no pruning, and through sheer laziness they have allowed various species to die out completely. They are handicapped, too, by having no proper tools or machinery. The dates of Siwa are exceptionally fine, famous all over Egypt, and besides these there is a quantity of other fruit whose quality could be much improved by proper care. Olive oil is a valuable product and commands a very high price on the coast and in Egypt. No wine is made from the grapes, and no one has experimented in drying fruit, which is a simple and lucrative industry.But the difficulty that faces one in all commercial schemes is the means of transport. Camels can only be hired from the coast at rare intervals and during the season when the Arabs do not mind visitingthe oasis, and their hire is so prohibitive as to make any heavy transport hardly worth while. The ex-Khedive went to Siwa for the purpose of seeing whether it would be worth running a light railway from the coast to the oasis, and since then the project has been seriously thought of more than once, but it has always been considered impracticable on account of the expense and the great difficulty of crossing such an expanse of waterless desert.An alternative scheme of running a service of motor lorries is a more likely proposition, and when once started it might be highly remunerative. Some of the richest and most progressive Siwans were very anxious to buy a lorry and send their olive oil direct to Alexandria, but they failed to appreciate that one lorry alone would be useless, and the minimum number would have to be four.Apart from the possibilities of trade Siwa is valuable as a field for excavators. So far very little digging has been done in Siwa and the adjoining oases, and undoubtedly there are great possibilities in this direction. Labour is cheap and one could hire enough men in the place to do any work of this kind. Nobody has attempted to locate and examine the subterranean passages which connect Aghourmi and the temple, and Siwa town with the Hill of the Dead. There is also the possibility of rediscovering the emerald mines which brought fame to the oasis many centuries ago, and which are now so completely forgotten that I doubt whether half a dozen people have ever heard of their existence. Under thepresent regime, though one does not know how long it will last, an Englishman can live at Siwa in perfect safety, and though the climate is certainly very hot in summer-time it is quite agreeable during more than half the year.But Siwa will never become a much-visited place, which is perhaps all for the best, owing to the strip of desert which stretches between it and the coast. Otherwise it might have developed into another Biskra, which is the oasis in Algeria that Hitchens describes so wonderfully inThe Garden of Allah. Quite lately I noticed in a travel book calledKufara, the Secret of the Sahara, by Mrs. Rosita Forbes, a mention of this very desert between Siwa and the coast which was described as a “tame desert.” This expression, used by a lady with such great knowledge of deserts in all parts of the world, surprised me—and I own that it annoyed me! Her only experience of this particular desert was acquired during the one day in which she motored up from Siwa to Matruh in the company of several officers of the F.D.A. who met her there. But people on the Western Desert can remember, only too well, a terrible fatality which occurred less than a year ago in which three Englishmen were involved, and which proved conclusively that no waterless desert is safe or “tame,” even in these days when cars can travel across it.I was not actually in Siwa when Hassanein Bey arrived there, accompanied by Mrs. Forbes, after their memorable journey to Kufra, but I returned there soon afterwards, and it was very interesting tohear of her exploit from the various natives who came in to Siwa from the west.In spite of a climate that was sometimes trying, in spite of a bad bout of fever, and in spite of an occasional feeling of loneliness, the memory of the time that I spent at Siwa will always be a very happy one. Siwa is so absolutely unspoilt, and so entirely Eastern. Even the ubiquitous Greek trader has not penetrated this desert fastness. It is a place that grows on one, and the few who have been there, and who appreciate its curious fascination, find it very hard to leave.There is a saying in Egypt that whoever tastes the water of the Nile must some time return there, and I am very sure that he who drinks from the Siwa springs will always wish to go there again. Walking by moonlight under those huge, towering battlements of the strange old town, through streets and squares deserted save for an occasional white-robed figure, one could almost credit the queer stories of ghosts, jinns and afreets that are believed by the Siwans to haunt every spot in this mysterious little oasis which lies hidden among the great barren tracts of the pitiless Libyan Desert.
THE TOWN CRIER’S DAUGHTER
THE TOWN CRIER’S DAUGHTER
THE TOWN CRIER’S DAUGHTER
There are several cemeteries round the town, some of them belong to the easterners and some to the westerners. Almost all the roads into the town cross burying-grounds. Until a few years ago it was the custom to cover the grave with two split palm logs and a thin layer of earth, which usually subsided, leaving nothing but wood on the top. These old graves are still a source of danger, as often when one rides over them, without knowing, the wood gives way. Graves of sheikhs are distinguished by a roughly shaped headstone, and generally a little heap of earthenware braziers, left by the women who come to the cemetery and burn incense. When a particularly religious or important Siwan dies, his family keep a guard over the grave at night for about a fortnight after his death, which they say is necessary to prevent the ghoulish old witches from profaning it by digging up the corpse and stealing the dead man’s hair and finger-nails for their charms.
The fear of the Evil Eye is almost more deeply rooted in Siwa than in Egypt. It is thought that ill-disposed and jealous people can cast a malignant influence over others, and also over animals and inanimate objects. The Prophet Mohammed permitted the use of charms against the Evil Eye,although he forbade them for any other purposes. For this reason innumerable charms are worn and exhibited by the Siwans; houses, gardens and olive presses are protected from the much-dreaded curse by bundles of old bones, animals’ skulls, or black earthenware pots stuck upside down and set along the roofs. In many houses and in tombs an aloe plant is hung just inside the entrance, swinging from the ceiling, which prevents any envious person from doing harm. Special charms are made for animals by the witches and the Fikis. The charm used to protect a donkey consists of some ashes, a spider’s web, a little salt, and a scrap of paper inscribed with a verse from the Koran, tied in a black bag and hung round the animal’s neck. Some of the most valuable donkeys have quite a cluster of amulets hung round them. The ingredients of the various charms manufactured by the women are very similar to those used by the witches in Macbeth, those that are the most difficult to obtain being the most efficacious.
But in spite of innumerable precautions people are constantly under the impression that they have incurred the Evil Eye, and then complicated rites have to be performed in order to raise the curse. This can be done in various ways. If the evil wisher is known his victim follows him without being seen and collects a little sand from his footprints which he takes to the Fiki. The Fiki, for a small fee, recites certain verses over it, which removes the curse. Another system is for the victim to go on a Friday, without speaking to anybody on the way, to a maledate palm. He pulls off some of the stringy, brown fibre and brings it back to the Fiki who twists it into a cord and binds it round the man’s head. The patient keeps this on his head during the day, and in the evening he again visits the Fiki who unties the cord and reads some appropriate passages from the Koran, after which the object is no longer in danger. There is another method which is frequently practised in more serious cases. The Fiki takes a hen’s egg—presumably a fresh one—and inscribes certain cabalistic signs upon it. He then burns a great deal of incense and mutters charms; when the patient has become thoroughly bewildered he takes the egg and moves it seven times round the victim’s head. He then breaks it in a basin, gazes fixedly at it, discovers whose is the Evil Eye, and destroys its power by scattering it on the floor.
Any individual who was popularly supposed to possess an Evil Eye was carefully avoided. There was one old woman who was particularly feared on this account. She was quite old and rather mad, but she certainly had an exceptionally evil expression, and she showed her face more than most of them. Anybody who met her in the morning, starting out to his garden or on some expedition, would attribute any mishap that occurred during the day to her malevolent glance.
The witches of Siwa live among some ruined houses in the highest part of the old town. Their leader is a little blind woman who is said to be 100 years old. She looks exactly like one of theshrivelled mummies that are found in some of the tombs near Siwa, but her scanty wisps of hair are dyed red which gives a most sinister effect. She creeps about leaning on a staff, like the regular witch in Grimm’s fairy tales, and although she is quite blind she manages to slip about the high battlements like a lizard, knowing by force of habit every stone in the place. When a client wishes to consult her he comes after nightfall to a certain place among the ruins high up in the town, where a number of dark passages converge, and then he calls her. She lives somewhere up above with two or three others. She mystifies her visitors by appearing suddenly, quite close to them, noiselessly and apparently from nowhere.
I once sent a message saying that I should like to make her acquaintance. One night after dinner I walked over to the town, taking a man with me who knew the place well. We scrambled up and up, through pitch-dark passages to the highest part of the town and eventually arrived at a little low door about 4 feet high, in one of the narrowest and steepest tunnels. After knocking several times it was opened. I lit a match and saw the little old woman herself. She led me up several more dark flights of steps to the roof of the house, and there, sitting in the moonlight, I drank tea with her. The tea was served by her grandchild, a Sudanese boy. Unfortunately I could hardly understand a word she said, but the tea was excellent, and the view was very fine.
It was a hot summer night, but the high roof wascool with even a faint breeze blowing across it. Looking down over the parapet one saw white-wrapped, sleeping figures on the roofs below, and in the distance there sounded the faint, mysterious melody of reed pipes and a tom-tom. These Libyan nights are very wonderful; the sky is a deep, dark blue, powdered with myriads of stars, and every few minutes a long-tailed meteor flashes downwards. Shooting stars are said to be hurled by the angels in heaven at the jinns on the earth below, but the Siwans fear them as they say that each star kills a palm tree. They prove this statement by arguing that when a tree dies in a natural way it withers from the bottom, but when it withers from the top, as many do, it is caused by a falling star.
When a Siwan girl thinks that it is about time that she was married, and no suitors are forthcoming, she adopts the following custom. On a Friday, when the muezzins on the mosques are calling the Faithful to pray at noon, she leaves the house, carrying some sugar in her right hand and a little salt tightly clutched in her left hand. She covers her face with her long, grey shawl and hurries through the streets, avoiding everybody, to a little hill outside the town—close to the Camel Corps barracks—which is crowned by the tomb of a very venerated Siwan sheikh. When she arrives she runs seven times round the tomb, eating the sugar and the salt and calling on the sheikh to help her. She does this on three Fridays in succession, and after that somebody comes to her parents and asks for her hand. Later, if shehas a child, she distributes food to the poor at the tomb of the sheikh as a thank-offering. The actual tomb of Sheikh Abu Arash is inside a little whitewashed mud building. The tomb is covered with white linen, which is renewed by devotees of the saint, and a number of ostrich eggs, brought many years ago from the Sudan, are suspended from the ceiling. Sometimes women bring flowers and palm boughs and lay them on the tomb. Often on a Friday I have noticed a woman hurrying round it, muttering earnestly to herself and hoping for a husband. I wondered at one time whether the proximity of the Camel Corps barracks had anything to do with this recipe for obtaining a husband—but the belief has been held for many years, long before the Camel Corps were thought of.
Another way of obtaining a husband is as follows. The girl summons one of the “wise women” to her house and provides her with a basket, which is, by the way, a perquisite. The old woman takes the basket and goes round to each mosque in the town collecting a handful of dust from the ground immediately in front of each door. She then brings the basket full of dust back to the girl and they mix it with olive oil, making a kind of putty. The girl then brings in a round tin or a large round dish and takes a bath, using the putty as soap. The old woman carefully collects the water which has been used in an earthenware pitcher. She goes out at night again to each mosque and sprinkles a little of the water round the doors. The next day, when the men come in andout of the mosques they tread on the place where the water was poured, and probably some of the mud sticks to their feet. One of them is sure to demand the girl in marriage. There are various other methods of attaining the same ends; amulets and charms are manufactured by the witches, which are supposed to attract a certain man, especially if the ingredients of the charm include something that once belonged to him. The whole idea is very much the same as the system of love philtres and charms that were used in Europe in the Middle Ages.
The witches are supposed to be able to summon jinns whenever they want to, but any ordinary person has to follow out a complicated proceeding before being able to do so. The system used for invoking jinns is only practised secretly, and by women, but it is implicitly believed in by everybody. For forty-five days the woman eats no meat, feeding entirely on bread, rice, lentils and fruits. Every evening she bakes a loaf of wheaten bread, unsalted and flavoured with red pepper, which is the favourite flavouring among jinns. She takes the loaf, naked, with her hair hanging loose, to the rubbish heap outside her house, where she leaves it. On the forty-fourth night a jinn appears in the form of some familiar animal: a camel, donkey, or cow. If the woman is afraid it kills her at once, but if she is brave, and speaks to it, it does her bidding. The jinn tells her to prepare a dinner on the following night for six of his brothers. Next day she makes six loaves and flavours them with spiders’ webs besides pepper, andtakes them out to the dust heap as before. She leaves them and returns an hour later. Then she finds the chief of the jinns, Iblis himself, waiting for her, a monstrous creature with flaming eyes, horns and great hooked teeth, breathing out fire from his mouth. This individual asks her what she desires and promises to carry out her wishes on the condition that from henceforth she never utters the name of Allah.
There is another even more fantastic story that sometimes at midnight one of the witches swings a cord from her house on the battlements to the top of the tall minaret of a mosque just below. She then steps off the wall and walks along the rope, which is suspended in mid-air, like a tight-rope dancer. People also assert that it is a practice of the witches to creep out into the graveyards at night, to dig up a body, tear off the head, and carry it back in their mouths like animals. This gruesome habit was ascribed to werewolves in the olden days.
Often when there is a case of theft in the town one of the “wise women” is summoned to help discover the thief and the whereabouts of the stolen property. She occasionally finds the property, but very rarely exposes the culprit. One day a rich merchant came to my office in a great fuss and complained that a quantity of silver ornaments belonging to his wife had disappeared from his house. I held an official inquiry, but there were no clues, and nothing was found out. Then the merchant invited the help of an old woman called Marika, who according topopular opinion was assisted by a familiar jinn. He offered her a substantial reward if she could trace the jewellery. About a week later Marika came to the merchant and asked him to collect every single person in his household outside the door of the house at a certain time that night. The door was closed on the empty house and the old woman hobbled up and down outside it for about ten minutes, muttering incantations and watched with considerable awe by the whole household. After this proceeding she flung open the door and led the merchant to one of the lower rooms where the missing ornaments were found lying on the floor near the window. She explained that a jinn had brought them back; the merchant paid her a reward and she then retired. Nobody thought of trying to discover who had replaced the stuff, and my suggestion that the lady herself had some knowledge of the culprit was indignantly dismissed. These old women have access to all the harems and have a considerable influence over the women, so they are able to collect an enormous amount of information which helps them in affairs like these, though they are by no means always so successful.
If a number of people are implicated in a theft another very curious system is used for discovering the culprit. A smooth, round dish, or a flat, round piece of wood about the size of a plate is produced and inscribed with curious hieroglyphics and verses from the Koran. Two men, one of them who has to be an expert, sit down on the ground facing eachother, holding the dish in the air about a foot from the ground, balanced on the tips of their fingers. Each of the suspects come in one by one and places a scrap of paper or rag on the middle of the round piece of wood. If they are innocent nothing happens, but when the guilty man has dropped his piece of paper on to it the wood begins to revolve. I have seen this performance done three times; on two occasions nothing happened, but the other time the wood certainly did move round, although I could not see how it was manipulated.
Divination, which is considered to be a form of satanic magic among good Mohammedans, is much practised at Siwa. Perhaps it is the idea of oracular communication which has lingered in the oasis since the days when Siwa was famous for its oracle. Its most frequent form is the interpretation of dreams, but future events are also discovered by examining certain bones in animals that are slaughtered for food, in a similar manner to the Roman augeries. The lines on certain bones of a sheep denote coming events. One old man, after examining the thigh bone of a young kid, announced to me that ten men and six camels would arrive on the morrow from Jerabub, and also that a large convoy was moving from the coast to Jerabub. Part of the prediction turned out to be true, but I expect that he found out about the camels before he made the prophecy.
The interpretation of dreams is considered the most reliable guidance of this kind. When a manhas a difficult problem to decide he pays fees to a Fiki and gives him some small article that belongs to him. The Fiki takes the article, a cap for instance, and goes to the tomb of Sidi Suliman or another sheikh; he prays and then lies down and sleeps. Afterwards he interprets his dream as an answer to his client’s questions. Sometimes he has to visit the tomb many times before being able to give any advice, so in an urgent case this system would not be a success. The art of divination at tombs is hereditary, and there is a kind of code which attaches definite meanings to certain things that the man dreams about. The ancient Berbers who believed in an after life consulted at the graves of their chiefs in a similar manner.
One of the Fikis, an old man who has performed the Pilgrimage four times, is an expert fortune-teller. His methods are many, but his favourite one seems to be a complicated system by which he draws a species of chart in the sand or on paper, with a number of little squares or “houses” which he fills in with figures depending on his client’s birth date. He has other ways of working with sand alone, or by opening a certain Arabic book on necromancy at random, and reading from the page at which he happens to open it. The natives have great faith in him, and say that his predictions are very accurate—but this was not my opinion when I once consulted him as an experiment.
When there is an epidemic in Siwa, such as the “Spanish Influenza” which carried off an enormousproportion of the population in 1918, a ceremony takes place which must have originated when the Berbers of Siwa made sacrifices to appease their gods. The wealthy men of the town subscribe together and buy a young heifer. For several days it is allowed to roam about feeding as it likes in anybody’s garden. On an appointed day the people assemble in the square before the tomb of Sidi Suliman, and the heifer is brought forward and decorated with wreaths and flowers. It is then led seven times round the walls, followed by a procession of the sheikhs and a band of men and boys playing on cymbals, drums and pipes. It is led to the gate of the principal mosque, Gama el Atik; a man steps forward and slits its right ear with a knife, drawing blood, and then throws the knife away. Afterwards the butchers slaughter it, cutting up the meat into innumerable minute pieces and distributing it so that each household in Siwa has one small piece. The people take the scraps of meat home and hang them up in their house, and this, so they say, has the effect of removing any plague or disease that affects the town. Herodotus describes almost the same ceremony as being a custom among the ancient Libyans.
Every Mohammedan is supposed, once in his lifetime, to perform the Pilgrimage to Mecca. But only very few Siwans have enough money to do this. Generally, every summer, two or three men go from Siwa, taking with them a sum of money, the proceeds of the sale of dates from certain trees which have been dedicated by their owners as offerings to themosque at Mecca. Endowments of this description, either for the support of a mosque or religious school, or for the giving of alms to the poor on certain days in the year, are often made by wealthy Mohammedans. A gift of this kind is called a “wakf,” and there is a special branch of the Egyptian Government which deals with them, but in Siwa the “wakfs” are administered by one of the sheikhs, and this gives cause for a great deal of quarrelling and libels. The pilgrims from Siwa carry the money with them, though it often amounts to well over a hundred pounds, which among Arabs is a very considerable sum, but the sanctity of their purpose protects them from robbery. They generally accompany a caravan of Arabs going direct to Alexandria, via the oasis of Gara.
On the day of their departure the whole town turns out to see them off, escorting them to the most distant spring on the eastern edge of the oasis. The wives of the pilgrims accompany them, and when they arrive at the parting-point the following quaint ceremony takes place. The crowd form up in the background, leaving the pilgrims and their wives on an open space by the side of the spring. A near relative takes from the wife of the pilgrim her round silver bangles and rolls them along the ground, a distance of about a hundred yards, to where the husband stands facing the east. The wife, who on this occasion is dressed entirely in white, runs along behind him and gathers up a little sand from each place where the bracelets stopped rolling and fell to the ground. Sheputs the sand carefully into a little leather bag. After this she stands under a certain very tall palm tree near the spring while the relative climbs up and cuts off three long palm fronds which he gives to her. After farewells have been said the caravan goes on its way, the camels driven along in a bunch in front, followed by the Arabs and the pilgrims; the wives and people return to Siwa, the women wailing noisily, and the men beating tom-toms and singing. The spring is about a mile beyond Aghourmi, and generally on that day the sheikh of the village gives an entertainment and a luncheon to some of the people.
On arrival at her house the wife of the pilgrim, with the women of the family and one near male relation, goes up to the roof and ties the three palm branches firmly to one corner; she puts the sand into a little green linen bag and fastens it to the tips of the three palm fronds, so that they bend towards the east—towards Mecca. This ensures the pilgrim a safe journey and also serves to let everybody know that the owner of the house is doing the Pilgrimage.
In two months’ time it is supposed that the pilgrims have reached Mecca. Their friends and relations have a feast on the roof and hold a reading of the Koran. Then the man who rolled the bracelets gets up and pierces the little green bag of sand so that the contents pour out; he then turns the palm branches round and fixes them in such a way that they point towards the west, in which position they remain till the pilgrim returns safely home again.
When it is known that the caravan has arrived at Ain Magahiz, or one of the outlying springs, a crowd of men ride out to welcome the returned pilgrims, but their women-folk stay at home, prepare a substantial meal, and then go on to the roof, take down the palm branches and watch the distant road for the cloud of dust that invariably announces a caravan.
There is one festival in Siwa which almost corresponds to our Christmas Day. It takes place in the winter, on the tenth day of the month of January. For several days before Yom el Ashur—the tenth day—the roofs of all the houses where there are children are decorated with palm branches, 10 or 20 feet long, with a torch soaked in oil fastened to each branch. After dark, on the eve of the day, all the children go up on to the roofs and set light to the torches. There is a blaze of illumination along the walls, and for a few minutes the whole town is lit by the flaming torches. It is a strange and beautiful sight, quite as effective as the most elaborate illuminations. The children on each roof sing songs to each other, and the wail of their voices sounds far on into the night in a monotonous sweet refrain.
On the following day the children visit each other and exchange presents which are very like “Christmas-trees.” Each child makes a square framework of palm branches a few feet long, the white wood is stained and dyed with coloured patterns, and on it are hung fruits, nuts and sweets. Some of the richer children give each other doves and rabbits, but generally they keep to sweets, the most favouritekind being pink and white sugared almonds which are imported by the merchants from Cairo. The children of Siwa look forward to Yom el Ashur with as much pleasure as their parents do to the annual mulids. It is really a very attractive sight to see these little Siwans, very clean and in fresh white clothes for the occasion, trooping solemnly along the streets on their way to visit their friends, while their papas sit outside their houses and chuckle at them, and the mammas watch them proudly from an upstairs window.
A LITTLE SIWAN GIRL
A LITTLE SIWAN GIRL
A LITTLE SIWAN GIRL
“FANTASIAS”
“A very merry, dancing, drinking,Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.”
“A very merry, dancing, drinking,Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.”
“A very merry, dancing, drinking,Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.”
“A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.”
“I hear the women singing, and the throbbing of the drum,And when the song is failing, or the drums a moment mute,The weirdly wistful wailing, of the melancholy flute.”
“I hear the women singing, and the throbbing of the drum,And when the song is failing, or the drums a moment mute,The weirdly wistful wailing, of the melancholy flute.”
“I hear the women singing, and the throbbing of the drum,And when the song is failing, or the drums a moment mute,The weirdly wistful wailing, of the melancholy flute.”
“I hear the women singing, and the throbbing of the drum,
And when the song is failing, or the drums a moment mute,
The weirdly wistful wailing, of the melancholy flute.”
SIWANS, on the whole, do not take life very seriously, and when they have an excuse for an entertainment they thoroughly let themselves go and are glad of an occasion, if they can afford it, for a terrific gastronomic display, at which an Englishman feels like a canary feeding among hungry ostriches. The poor people eat twice a day, in the morning and evening; the meal consists mainly of dates washed down by lubki and a few drops of tea. They are very sociable, fond of talk, of entertaining their friends and holding “fantasias,” but one notices very much the entire absence of communion between sexes. Men hardly ever speak to women in public, and it would be considered quite a scandal for anyone to be seen in company with his own wife, almost worse than if he was seen speaking to the wife of another man.
With the Arabs it is different. They meet about the camps, and especially at the wells, which fromthe time of Rebekah have been the scene of many flirtations and courtships. The young men often go and sit by the well-head watching the women drawing water, chaffing and talking to them and, very occasionally, helping them to haul up a heavy bucketful. I have often seen most amusing “goings-on” at a well. Lifting up the weighty tins and drawing up the skins of water gives the girls an opportunity for coquettish displays of neat arms and ankles, but an infinitely more modest expanse is exhibited by these Arabs than by the average young woman in England to-day. But in Siwa if one rode past a spring where women were washing clothes they would run off into the gardens as fast as they could, and even when a Siwan man came to the pool they retired hurriedly with shawls pulled over their faces, and waited some distance away.
In the hot summer evenings, when noises are hushed and the day’s work is over, men sit in little groups outside their doors on low mud benches, drinking tea, discussing the latest “cackle of the palm-tree town,” and watching the piping shepherds driving their flocks home from the grazing, raising clouds of golden dust as they come along the sandy roads. The women collect on the roofs up above, playing with their children and talking to each other. Each sheikh sits before his house surrounded by a little crowd of sycophants, sipping tea and adulation, and listening to the latest scandal told about his rival of the opposite faction. Passers-by are invited to join in, and if a stranger arrives there ensues alengthy greeting of much-repeated phrases, many hand-shakings, and polite expressions. When one walked through the market-place after sunset there would be a murmur of conversation from the shadowy white figures sitting and lying round the doorways, who rose up and bowed at one’s approach, and then sank down again silently. This Eastern deference is very impressive at first, but it does not take long to get accustomed to it.
In Siwa there is no lurid night life like that of Cairo, in which novelists revel. The people go early to bed and lights are very little used. Even the quarter of the women of the town is as quiet as the other streets. There are no noisy cafes with music and dancing girls, and no hidden houses where natives smoke hashish and opium. The Senussi religion forbids smoking, or “drinking tobacco,” as it is called, also coffee, which is supposed to be too stimulating for the passions, and for this reason tea is the universal drink. Life is a very leisurely affair, a pleasant monotony, and “Bukra—inshallah!”—to-morrow, if God wills—is the favourite expression. Very few games are played. Chess, which was invented in the East, is unknown, but one sometimes sees a couple of men deeply absorbed in a game called “helga,” which is rather like draughts, played with onions and camel-dung on a board which is marked out in the sand on the ground.
The younger men, especially the ones with black blood in their veins, are much addicted to drinking lubki, an inexpensive, intoxicating liquor madefrom the sap of palm trees. The branches that form the crown of the tree are cut off, leaving the heart of the palm tree bare. A groove is cut from the heart through the thick outer bark, and a jar is hung at the end of this groove which receives the juice when it oozes up from the tree. A palm which has been tapped in this way yields lubki for two or three months, and if the branches are allowed to grow again after some time the tree will continue to bear fruit, but the branches grow very ragged and trees that have been used for lubki acquire a rather drunken-looking appearance which always remains. One of the favourite tricks of small Siwan boys is to climb up the palm trunks and drink the lubki from the jar in which it is being collected by the owner of the garden. When freshly drawn it is as sweet and frothy as ginger-beer, but in a few days it becomes strongly alcoholic and tastes bitter, like sour milk. Labourers working in the gardens always retire to a spring and bathe after the day’s work, then they enjoy a long “sundowner” of lubki before they ride home to the town. All intoxicating drinks are forbidden by the Koran, but in Siwa the people satisfy their consciences by saying that the Prophet approved of all products of the palm tree, so lubki cannot be a forbidden drink.
The Siwans are most particular in their religious observances. There are a very large number of mosques in comparison to the population, and Friday—the Mohammedan Sabbath—is very strictly kept. On Thursday evening the prayers of the muezzinsare longer, as they remind the people that the morrow is Friday. On Friday all the men visit the mosques; no work is done in the gardens, and sometimes one of the sheikhs distributes alms to the poor outside a mosque, or at the tomb of one of his illustrious ancestors. For a long time before the event the “mesakin” (poor) of the town collect at the place; one sees old blind men, cripples, shrivelled hags, and ragged women carrying solemn little babies, every one trying hard to appear the most abjectly destitute, and therefore the most deserving case for alms. Then the sheikh arrives, fat and prosperous, holding an umbrella, and followed by some stout servants carrying huge bowls heaped with cold boiled rice spotted with dark-coloured lumps of camel flesh. The dishes are set down before the people, men and women sitting apart, with a servant standing near each dish to keep order and prevent free fights. The paupers snatch and claw at the food, grabbing it with skinny, dirty fingers, squabbling fiercely over yellowish-looking lumps of fat, shrieking vile abuse at each other and trying to hide tasty scraps of meat in their clothes. The sheikh looks on with a complacent smile and listens with much gratification while his friends make audible remarks about his excessive generosity and his liberal qualities.
The typical Arab sheikh of modern fiction (if he does not turn out to be an Englishman) is a young, dashing, handsome and intensely fascinating individual, well mannered and well washed; but in reallife one rarely meets such a person—I myself have never seen him. The typical sheikh at Siwa or on the Western Desert was elderly, bearded and only moderately clean. Some of them were certainly very fine-looking men, but utterly different to the personage that one would expect from the descriptions in a certain style of popular novel. The “guides” who swindle visitors in Cairo are much more like the sheikh of fiction in appearance than are the real sheikhs whom one meets and has dealings with on the desert.
One of the most curious, partly philanthropic institutions which has survived in Siwa is the “Beit el Mal,” a public fund used for providing shrouds for persons who die without money or relations, and also for repairing mosques, causeways and sun-shelters. The money is contributed from the sale of public land belonging to the community, and also from the sale of argoul, which is a plant that is used as manure, and rents for grazing paid by visiting Arabs. The fund is collected and administered by certain sheikhs, and in former days it included fines, inflicted as punishments, and taxes on strangers who visited the oasis. Any case which is considered deserving of charity is supplied from the money.
Ramadan, the Mohammedan Lent, the month in which the Koran was supposed to have been sent down from heaven, is kept very strictly in Siwa. During this month all good Mohammedans are expected to refrain from the pleasures of the table, the pipe and the harem; no morsel of food or dropof water may pass their lips during the day, but at night the revels commence and they feast and enjoy themselves till the unwelcome approach of morning. Night is turned into day, and at Siwa, during Ramadan, there is a continuous rumble of drums from sunset till the early morning; at first it is disturbing, but one grows accustomed to it before the month is out.
The words of the Koran are:
“Eat and drink until ye can plainly distinguish a black thread from a white thread by the daybreak; then keep the fast until night.”
It is possible to obtain a dispensation from keeping Ramadan, on medical grounds, and among the effendi class I noticed that this was frequently done; travellers are also excused from observing it, though I have often been out on trek during Ramadan with men who were strictly fasting. If the month occurs in the hot weather it is a very great strain on every one. Siwa, in the daytime, during Ramadan, is like a dead place; the minimum amount of work is done in the gardens, everybody stays indoors during the day, and one sees nobody about the streets except in the cool of the early morning and after sunset. Fasting, especially abstaining from drinking, is a severe strain; the sheikhs, when they come to the Markaz, look thin and ill, and one’s servants make the fast an excuse for doing nothing.
This arduous month is terminated by a festival lasting for three days known as the Minor Festival orKurban Bairam. It is celebrated with great festivities and rejoicings in Egypt; servants expect tips and every one appears in new clothes, but in Siwa it is not so important an occasion; the people merely take a rest after the trials of the fast month, reserving all their energy and money for the great local mulid which occurs a week or so later. The mulid of Sidi Suliman, the anniversary of the birth of Siwa’s patron sheikh, is the most important incident of the whole year. The festival generally lasts for three days, but the people take three more days to recover from it. All the year round everybody saves money in order to make a “splash” at the annual mulid.
For several days the women are busy cooking cakes and sweets; the best fruit in the gardens is carefully watched over to be ready at the mulid, and certain animals are fed up with a view to being slaughtered. If possible one or two camels are bought from the Arabs and kept at grass till they are fat enough to kill. On the eve of the feast there is a general spring cleaning of the town. The tombs of the sheikhs are freshly painted with whitewash, carpets and coloured blankets are hung from every roof, while the houses are swept and cleaned, and the place looks quite gay with its clean white tombs, and bright mats and rugs hanging out from roofs and windows. In the evening the sheep that are to be slaughtered on the morrow are led in from the fields, and everybody discusses with interest how many animals Sheikh So-and-So is going to kill. Sometimes the richest men kill as many as seven or eight sheep, and this isremembered and often mentioned to their credit, all through the year. One year there was a great scandal in the town because Sheikh Mohammed Hameid had boasted to everybody that he had killed six sheep, but one of his household let out that there had only been three old goats slaughtered. Enormous supplies of lubki are drawn before the holiday in order that it may stand long and become really strong.
On the morning of the mulid everybody puts on his best clothes, and even the poorest labourer dons a new shirt or a clean jibba. Every man goes to pray in his own particular mosque, and the women visit the tombs and lay palm branches on the graves of their relations. After this people retire to their houses and eat an enormous meal and as much meat as they can possibly swallow. When the men have eaten, the remainder of the food is sent to the harem, and when the harem have finished, it is sent out to the servants and labourers who pick the bones clean. After this heavy meal and during the two following days everybody calls on everybody else, and on this occasion one may see eastern sheikhs riding haughtily through the western quarter to call on their much-detested neighbours. In all the streets one meets the sheikhs riding along on their best donkeys, wearing gorgeous silk, coloured robes, which emerge from the chests in which they are locked up during most of the year, each followed by an escort of servants. The people let each other know at what time they will be “at home” and when they will ride out visiting.
On arriving at the house one finds servants waiting to hold the donkeys, and if one is so indiscreet as to look up at the little windows numbers of female heads pop out of sight. The owner of the house is found seated in his largest room, with the best carpets covering the floor, surrounded by about a dozen little tables with dishes of peaches, grapes, figs, melons, nuts, cakes and sweets, and one dish which contains the young, white pith of a palm tree, which is much esteemed as a delicacy. Along the side of the room there are more dishes, covered with napkins, heaped up with meat, generally smothered by a cloud of flies. The host offers tea, coffee, or an exceedingly disagreeable syrupy liquor made from a species of fruit “syrop” which should be taken cold with soda, but is served hot like tea, according to Siwan fashion. Strict etiquette enjoins that one must drink three cups of tea or coffee, and taste every dish in the room, except the meat, which is reserved for the family at each house.
The extra amount of food everywhere attracts swarms of flies, and the sticky smell of fruit and meat is rather overpowering, when the temperature is about 106 degrees in the shade. One year I rode round myself and paid calls, but the next time I was wiser and invited the sheikhs and notables to a light meal at the Markaz, after their own solid luncheon, and even then, although showing post-prandial symptoms, they managed to eat very heartily. It was at one of these entertainments that I learnt that the Siwans have special names for people who offendagainst the strict etiquette of eating. The following are all highly condemned:
The man who turns round and looks to see whether more is coming.
The individual who bites a piece of meat and replaces it in the dish.
The person who blows on his food to cool it.
The one who is undecided and fingers first one piece, then the other.
And finally the visitor who orders about his host’s servants, which I have noticed myself as being a very common habit.
In the afternoon of the mulid the younger men and boys go out into the gardens, where they lie singing and drinking lubki. At dusk the people begin to collect in the open space below the highest part of the old town, round the square, white tomb of Sidi Suliman, which is illuminated with candles and lanterns, and ornamented with banners stuck along the parapet of the roof. Crowds of men keep on passing up the steps and in and out of the tomb, shuffling off their shoes at the entrance and praying at the grave of the saint. Then everybody collects at his own particular mosque, in various parts of the town, and a great “zikr,” a kind of prayer-meeting and religious dance, is held outside the Medinia mosque in the eastern quarter of the town. It is a very wonderful sight, and is attended by four or five hundred devotees.
There is a large, open space outside the mosquesurrounded by tall houses, whose little black windows look like gaping eyes, and behind them one catches a glimpse of the tops of palm trees in some gardens darkly silhouetted against the deep blue African sky. The whole scene is flooded with brilliant moonlight, except where the cold, black shadows fall from the high houses. The ground is entirely carpeted with old rugs and mats whose faded colours show dimly in the moonlight; along one side, in front of the mosque, sit the sheikhs and notables of the Medinia sect, and on the other three sides of the square there is a vast congregation of white-robed, seated natives, row upon row of “dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed.” A carpeted space in the centre is kept empty.
Among the shadows of the houses there are more blurred white figures, and in one corner of the square kettles are being boiled on open fires, and men in flowing robes walk to and fro across the light from the flames. There is a subdued murmur of conversation. The first part of the entertainment is a solemn tea-drinking. Dozens of men move about, barefooted and silent, carrying trays and distributing hundreds of little glasses of tea, which is made and poured out by the sheikhs. After everybody has drunk three glasses the low tables in front of the sheikhs are carried away, and the audience becomes absolutely silent. Then the chief sheikh of the Medinia mosque, a handsome, bearded man wearing the green turban, whose looks belie his notoriously bad character, begins intoning verses from theKoran in a sonorous, impressive voice, sitting on the carpet with his hands spread on his knees. When he stops one of the other sheikhs begins, until most of them have had a turn. After this three men step into the space in the centre of the seated audience. One of them is quite a boy with a very beautiful voice, the other two are older men. They walk slowly round and round the square, abreast, singing together a tune which resembles the solemn grandeur of a Gregorian chant, and after each verse the whole audience, several hundred powerful male voices, intone the refrain. It is an intensely impressive performance and one feels thrilled at being the only white man present at such a spectacle. The bright moonlight shines down on the massed ranks of motionless natives whose faces look black, much darker than they actually are, in comparison with their white robes and white skull caps or turbans. For a background there are the high houses, and on the roofs, peering down at the square, a number of heavily veiled women, and “over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars.”
After some time everybody rises and all the full-grown men close up and form a circle, tightly wedged together. The old sheikh steps into the centre and begins repeating more prayers, quietly at first then with restrained violence. The audience join in, chanting the Mohammedan creed. Gradually the singing grows louder, the voice of the sheikh is drowned, and the ring of white-robed men beginswaying to and fro, backwards and forwards, their voices become hoarse and raucous; every man jerks to and fro in a frenzy of religious excitement, and the prayer becomes a violent repetition of the word “Allah—’la, ’la, ’la.” Then the sheikh who leads the prayer gradually slows down, and the congregation repeat more quietly the Mohammedan creed, “La ilahi illa—llah, wa Mohammed rasul Allah”—there is no deity but God, and Mohammed the prophet of God. The contrast between the performers at the beginning of the zikr, when they are calm and grave, and at its close, when they are hot, dishevelled and exhausted, is very remarkable.
Meanwhile the crowd in the Sidi Suliman square increases. From the various mosques come long processions of white-robed figures, singing and carrying banners; the light of their torches and lanterns flashes in and out as they slowly thread their way through the steep, winding streets of the town, and their voices become faint, then loud, as they pass through and out of the arches and tunnels. They assemble in the square, forming large circles and dancing zikrs. In one corner one sees a ring of old men singing and clashing cymbals; in another group there are a dozen men banging drums, while a half-naked young negro in their midst twirls rapidly round and round, then suddenly falls to the ground and rolls over and over till he reaches the tomb itself, where he is lifted up by his admiring and applauding friends and carried away unconscious. Behind the tomb there are fires where the drumscan be warmed, in order to tighten their parchment. Numbers of women squat on the outskirts of the crowd, huddled in their dark robes, hardly visible, except when the moon gleams on their silver ornaments and pale white faces. Some of them are burning incense in little earthenware braziers, and occasionally one of them creeps up to the white tomb and kisses the wall, if she can reach it before being driven off by the ghaffirs—watchmen.
A “FANTASIA” AT THE TOMB OF SIDI SULIMAN
A “FANTASIA” AT THE TOMB OF SIDI SULIMAN
A “FANTASIA” AT THE TOMB OF SIDI SULIMAN
The dancers in the centre of the circles move faster, keeping time to the drums and hand-clappings of the audience, and soon everybody is swaying to and fro. Away in the gardens outside the town there are flickering lights and a sound of singing. The great zikr before the Medinia mosque ceases and all the people come streaming out from the dark, shadowy lanes towards the tomb of Sidi Suliman, which shines white in the moonlight with orange lights blazing from its open door and little windows. The sheikhs walk slowly about from group to group, each followed by a little knot of men—servants carrying carpets and cushions, and some watchmen in tall brown tarbouches, holding staves. The police stand about in the crowd, and when one walks up to watch a dance they hurry forward and push people aside, saying, “Make way, make way!” The sound of distant singing in the gardens grows louder and nearer, and suddenly mobs of men and boys, mad with drink, half naked, come leaping and shrieking into the square, scattering fire from their blazing torches.
Then drums are beaten madly, cymbals crash, and the shrill screech of reed pipes rends the air. The crowd forms into a great circle round the mass of frenzied dancers who career round, drinking as they dance, shouting and yelling. In the centre there are a dozen men lashing away at cymbals and tom-toms. One of the dancers is an enormous blind giant, almost naked, who flourishes a jug of lubki, and some of the boys have wreaths round their heads and bunches of flowers stuck behind their ears.
As the night goes on the pandemonium becomes wilder; the exotic timbre of the music grows more frenzied; many of the dancers throw off their robes, and great pitchers full of potent lubki are distributed among the people. The fires in the square, heaped up with rushes, blaze more brightly when the honey-coloured moon sinks behind the high walls of the town, and frantically writhing figures are seen whirling round by the light of the shooting flames and torches. The whole scene becomes even moremacabre. Gradually boys and men among the audience, fascinated by the mad mob of dancers, plunge in among them, linking arms and revolving round the musicians in the centre, crouching, jumping, hopping, and running, each one executing strange steps and postures as he goes along. Sometimes the music is voluptuous and alluring, then the dance becomes frankly indecent; at other times it is wild and furious, and the performers seem to be overcome with savage transports of rage; but the whole time the music has a very definite rhythm whichurges them on. The light of many torches gleams on glistening black flesh and shining teeth and eyes; the air is thick with heavy fumes of incense, and the bitter smell of liquor. On the outskirts of the crowd one sees figures stretched like corpses on the ground, overcome with the orgy of drink and dancing. When the faint light of dawn shows in the sky, and the fires are dying down they begin to tire of the Bacchanalian revels, and one by one the dancers fall exhausted to the ground, lying where they fell, or crawl away, staggering through the silent streets, to sleep off the effects in readiness for the following day. Looking down on to this riotous African carnival from the highest roofs of the town one can imagine oneself, like Dante, watching damned souls writhing in hell.
The Siwans are extremely fond of music and singing. Their instruments are crude and simple, but they manage to obtain a surprising amount of music from them. Drums, or tom-toms, are of various kinds, either cylindrical gourds or basins with a skin stretched across one end, or large round tambourines with parchment covers. By striking first the side of the drum and then the resounding parchment, two different sounds are obtained, one hard, the other soft, and this again can be varied by using either the palm of the hand or the clenched fist. Flutes are usually made from the barrels of long Arab guns, or occasionally from reeds, and string instruments, like primitive guitars, are manufactured from a bowl covered with skin, a wooden frame, and string made from wire or gut which can be tightened or slackened.The combination of these simple instruments with human voices is singularly effective.
There is a similarity in all African music; in fact, all Eastern music is somewhat alike. The melody is monotonous and barbaric: sometimes a song sung in a tremulous, high-pitched voice which rises above the throbbing tom-toms, or a tune played on a shrill flute with an accompaniment of drums and twanging string instruments. The scale ranges from bass to treble, sometimes short, sad notes, and sometimes long drawn-out wails, varied by sudden, unexpected pauses. It is difficult to describe, but the general effect is somewhat sinister, at the same time very fascinating. To a stranger it may sound like an inharmonious wail, but in time one gets to appreciate the subtle undercurrent of half-notes which makes the melody. It is suggestive of fierce passions, vague longings, and vast desert spaces.
The characteristic song of the Western Arabs, a dreamy refrain with a reiterated note, which they sing to themselves as they ride alone across the desert, is very similar to the Swiss yeodling; but Siwan music is quite different. The Siwans have songs and tunes of a distinct individual style. With them certain notes have definite meanings; there is a language of sound. When some of their best singers, usually boys, are performing, the listeners can interpret the meaning of the song without needing to hear the words. They sing everywhere, and at all times, especially when at work in the gardens. Several men and boys working in different parts ofa big palm grove sing to each other, taking up the refrain and answering each other back, and these unaccompanied quartets and trios sound very attractive, especially when one hears them in the evening, now loud and clear, now faintly in the distance. Good voices are much esteemed, and the best singing boys are hired to perform at entertainments. The songs that have words are in the Siwan language, but when literally translated they are exceedingly indecent.
Dancing, too, is very different to the fashion of the Arabs or the Sudanese. In many parts of the Sudan one sees men and women dancing together, and among the Arabs there are dancing girls who perform in front of a mixed audience. On the Western Desert it is not considered shameful for respectable women to dance, although most of the best dancers are very decidedly not respectable. But in Siwa only the men dance in public, and it is very difficult to see women performing, but on one occasion I did see an entertainment of this kind.
It took place at night in the courtyard of a house discreetly surrounded by high, windowless walls. A space on the ground was spread with carpets, with some cushions at one side, and the moon shone down and illuminated the scene. A little wooden door in the wall was pushed open and about a dozen girls, followed by an old woman, and a small boy carrying a brazier of smoking incense, shuffled into the court and squatted down in a line on one side. The girls wore the usual Siwan dress, a blue stripedrobe reaching below the knees, and white silk-embroidered trousers; but besides this each of them wore a long silk, coloured scarf, hiding her face and shoulders, and a quantity of jingling silver ornaments and heavy bangles which they took off and gave to the old woman to hold while they danced. Three or four of them had small drums which they beat as they sang. At first they sat in a row, very carefully veiled, singing quietly to the accompaniment of the little tom-toms. Then one of them got up, with the thin coloured veil hiding her face, and began to dance, slowly at first, keeping time to the music, but gradually moving faster as the music grew wilder. The dancing began by simple steps and swaying gestures of the arms, then the movements became more rapid, and one saw a confused mass of swirling draperies and silver chains.
After each girl had danced for a few minutes themotifof music changed, becoming more sensuous, and theprima danseusetook the floor again. This time she performed a variety of thedanse de ventre, which consists of queer quivering movements and swaying the body from the hips, keeping the upper part still, with arms stretched down and painted hands pointing outwards. This was varied by an occasional rapid twirl which gave the audience a sight of the dancer’s features; a pale face with long “kohl” tinted eyes and a scarlet painted mouth, set in a frame of black braided hair, oiled and shiny. Finally, the lilt of the music became even more seductive, and the dancer swung off the long,fringed, silk scarf and danced unveiled, swaying more violently, with her arms stretched above her head, stamping on the ground in time to the rhythm of the music, and finally subsiding into her place in an ecstasy of amorous excitement.
It was not an attractive performance, although the dance is one which is very much admired by natives, who consider it intensely alluring. One sees it in various forms all over Africa, and everywhere it is equally ugly and dull.
MANY people have at various times carefully considered the agricultural possibilities of Siwa from a commercial point of view. Undoubtedly the cultivation in the oasis could be greatly developed, as there is enough water to irrigate a much larger area of ground than that which is now being cultivated. At present the natives have only the most primitive ideas of agriculture; for instance, they neglect most of the fruit trees by doing no pruning, and through sheer laziness they have allowed various species to die out completely. They are handicapped, too, by having no proper tools or machinery. The dates of Siwa are exceptionally fine, famous all over Egypt, and besides these there is a quantity of other fruit whose quality could be much improved by proper care. Olive oil is a valuable product and commands a very high price on the coast and in Egypt. No wine is made from the grapes, and no one has experimented in drying fruit, which is a simple and lucrative industry.
But the difficulty that faces one in all commercial schemes is the means of transport. Camels can only be hired from the coast at rare intervals and during the season when the Arabs do not mind visitingthe oasis, and their hire is so prohibitive as to make any heavy transport hardly worth while. The ex-Khedive went to Siwa for the purpose of seeing whether it would be worth running a light railway from the coast to the oasis, and since then the project has been seriously thought of more than once, but it has always been considered impracticable on account of the expense and the great difficulty of crossing such an expanse of waterless desert.
An alternative scheme of running a service of motor lorries is a more likely proposition, and when once started it might be highly remunerative. Some of the richest and most progressive Siwans were very anxious to buy a lorry and send their olive oil direct to Alexandria, but they failed to appreciate that one lorry alone would be useless, and the minimum number would have to be four.
Apart from the possibilities of trade Siwa is valuable as a field for excavators. So far very little digging has been done in Siwa and the adjoining oases, and undoubtedly there are great possibilities in this direction. Labour is cheap and one could hire enough men in the place to do any work of this kind. Nobody has attempted to locate and examine the subterranean passages which connect Aghourmi and the temple, and Siwa town with the Hill of the Dead. There is also the possibility of rediscovering the emerald mines which brought fame to the oasis many centuries ago, and which are now so completely forgotten that I doubt whether half a dozen people have ever heard of their existence. Under thepresent regime, though one does not know how long it will last, an Englishman can live at Siwa in perfect safety, and though the climate is certainly very hot in summer-time it is quite agreeable during more than half the year.
But Siwa will never become a much-visited place, which is perhaps all for the best, owing to the strip of desert which stretches between it and the coast. Otherwise it might have developed into another Biskra, which is the oasis in Algeria that Hitchens describes so wonderfully inThe Garden of Allah. Quite lately I noticed in a travel book calledKufara, the Secret of the Sahara, by Mrs. Rosita Forbes, a mention of this very desert between Siwa and the coast which was described as a “tame desert.” This expression, used by a lady with such great knowledge of deserts in all parts of the world, surprised me—and I own that it annoyed me! Her only experience of this particular desert was acquired during the one day in which she motored up from Siwa to Matruh in the company of several officers of the F.D.A. who met her there. But people on the Western Desert can remember, only too well, a terrible fatality which occurred less than a year ago in which three Englishmen were involved, and which proved conclusively that no waterless desert is safe or “tame,” even in these days when cars can travel across it.
I was not actually in Siwa when Hassanein Bey arrived there, accompanied by Mrs. Forbes, after their memorable journey to Kufra, but I returned there soon afterwards, and it was very interesting tohear of her exploit from the various natives who came in to Siwa from the west.
In spite of a climate that was sometimes trying, in spite of a bad bout of fever, and in spite of an occasional feeling of loneliness, the memory of the time that I spent at Siwa will always be a very happy one. Siwa is so absolutely unspoilt, and so entirely Eastern. Even the ubiquitous Greek trader has not penetrated this desert fastness. It is a place that grows on one, and the few who have been there, and who appreciate its curious fascination, find it very hard to leave.
There is a saying in Egypt that whoever tastes the water of the Nile must some time return there, and I am very sure that he who drinks from the Siwa springs will always wish to go there again. Walking by moonlight under those huge, towering battlements of the strange old town, through streets and squares deserted save for an occasional white-robed figure, one could almost credit the queer stories of ghosts, jinns and afreets that are believed by the Siwans to haunt every spot in this mysterious little oasis which lies hidden among the great barren tracts of the pitiless Libyan Desert.