CHAPTER SIXI set out for the Oasis of Siwa in the Libyan Desert. At Mersa Matruh I meet Greek sponge-fishers. I cross the desert to the Oasis, see what remains of the temple of Jupiter Amman, visit the Fountain of the Sun, and make a few friends. I drink green tea, attend a dance, and return eventually to Alexandria.
§ I
THE train from Alexandria pounded along the flat north-western coast of Egypt. It is a train that travels only once a day, at a steady twenty miles an hour, along a track laid on sand and liable to be washed away every year when the rains fall.
I think I was the only European on the train. My fellow-passengers showed a partiality for the floors rather than for the seats of their compartments. At every wayside station we took on a few more of them, some carrying wooden crates full of indignant turkeys and philosophic hens, others with their teeth sunk in green and purple stems of sugar-cane.
It became hot, and I resisted the temptation to pull down the shutters with which all Egyptian railway carriages are fitted. I was in a strange country and I wanted to see as much of it as I could, even though it was as dull as this relentless desert proved to be. A thin khaki dust as fine as talc found its way even into my packet of sandwiches. Now and again the tedium of the journey was relieved by a glimpse of the sea, lying hard and blue like a sapphire in the hot light.
I was going to a place which, since I was a boy at school, has lived in my imagination as one of the most mysterious spots in the world: I was going to the Oasis of Siwa. It was there in ancient times, far off in the wastes of the Libyan Desert, that the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon uttered prophecies and gave advice to those who journeyed from ten to twenty days across the wilderness to consult him. I wonder what really happened in the darkness of the sanctuary, when the travellers who had journeyed across sea and sand came at last face to face with the ram-headed god. Did his statue speak with a human voice ? Did it move its arms or head ?
Even in an age like ours, which is not without its superstitions, it is difficult to understand the oracles of antiquity, those supernatural spas scattered about the world where the divine wisdom bubbled from fathomless sources to issue from the mouths of mediums like the Pythia of Delphi, or the statue of Ammon at Siwa. That men of the greatest intellectual attainments consulted and believed in these oracles seems evident; and we cannot dismiss them all as superstitious fools.
There must have been something singularly impressive about Ammon, something in addition to the remoteness of his desert home and the mystery with which the priests no doubt surrounded him, which made cities despatch embassies across the seas in order to ask his advice on affairs of state, and to make men like Hannibal and Alexander present themselves humbly at his shrine.
The most famous of Ammon's visitors was Alexander the Great, the young conqueror of Egypt. He went there with a small retinue, and every schoolboy who has read Arrian knows that on the way Alexander was nearly lost in the waste of desert, but was led onward by two crows which flew ahead of the army, though some say he was guided by two serpents. The result of Alexander's visit was his formal proclamation as Pharaoh, the divine Son of the Sun, the successor to a long line of Ammon's sons. While there is no reason to think that Alexander believed in his own divinity, such fictions were credited in his time. But whether he did so or not, Alexander was aware of its political significance and the interview with Ammon had an important influence on his life, as indeed it had on the future history of kingship. It was from this remote African oasis that the theory of the divine right of kings eventually crossed the Mediterranean into Europe.
After Alexander's visit, the Oracle at Siwa became the foremost oracle in Egypt, and, at one period, in the world. With the coming of the Romans to Egypt, however, its influence began to wane, until gradually the wells of prophecy became dry and the lips of Ammon no longer spoke; after Diodorus Siculus described the Ammonium about 20 A.D., the oasis disappears from history for nearly seventeen centuries.
There is something more fascinating than any tale of buried treasure in the emergence, after centuries of oblivion, of a place once known throughout the world. Siwa owes its rediscovery to a brave, rather prosy Englishman called W. G. Browne, who went there in disguise with Arab merchants in 1792. He was the first European to set eyes on the Oasis of Ammon since the days of the Romans, but he was not a welcome visitor.
Browne found that Siwa was inhabited by a fanatical tribe who penetrated his disguise and stoned him; and he was obliged to make what observations he could under difficult circumstances and leave the oasis after a stay of two or three days. Twenty-one years afterwards Browne was murdered in Persia when, disregarding the advice of people on the spot, he insisted on entering that country dressed as a Turk.
Once Siwa was replaced on the map, it exercised a fascination over a small group of travellers. But the fanaticism of the people was so great, and the journey so difficult, that few men attempted it. Until the war not more than twenty travellers had visited Siwa.
When the war broke out, the Germans and Turks were quick to see in the Senussi an admirable instrument for attacking Egypt. It was their " Revolt in the Desert." British forces consisting of Yeomanry, Territorials, Australians and New Zealanders, with a detachment of Indians and Egyptians, operated against the tribesmen from November, 1915, until the early part of the following year. There was a further outbreak of fighting in 1917, when Siwa was the scene of a spirited armoured-car engagement which finally broke the power of the Senussi. Since that time Egypt has been able to exert her authority over this wayward oasis, which is now part of the Western Desert Province.
When I proposed to go to Siwa, the efficient Frontiers Administraton in Cairo, which looks after the Libyan and Arabian deserts, advised me to take the train from Alexandria to a desert outpost on the coast called Mersa Matruh; from there I could cross the two hundred miles of desert to the oasis by the way of the date convoys. This, incidentally, was the route taken by Alexander the Great.
I was given a letter to the officer commanding at Mersa Matruh, for there was a chance that he might be able to send nie across in a military patrol car. Knowing that there are times when military patrol cars are not available, I decided to have a car fitted with desert tyres in Cairo and sent on by road to Mersa Matruh, to make certain of my transport. This car was owned by a polite but hard-bitten Syrian who, like most Syrians, was called Mikhail. He looked slightly shattered when I told him where I wanted to go, but raised no objections. He promised to fit the car with desert tyres and to take chains and other tackle with him.
All through the hot afternoon the train shed portions of its inhabitants at desolate desert villages whose houses were made of old kerosene tins. The entire population would stand on the station to greet the travellers, and the home-comers would step from the train bearing the strangest loot from the great city. Some wrestled with gigantic packages which might have contained anything from a bicycle to a new wife; others walked sadly down the platform carrying a bunch of carrots or a few lettuce leaves.
As dusk fell the train gradually emptied, and I seemed to be travelling alone through a moonless night of stars. I could smell the sea at one window. The cool air was blowing in over hundreds of miles of Mediterranean. Eventually the engine gave a long mournful whistle, and we arrived at the end of the railway line—and Mersa Matruh. A military car, driven by a Sudanese, was waiting for me. We shot across a sandy track and came to a lonely building standing among sandhills. I could hear the sea quite close.
I was prepared for an hotel with no curtains on the windows and sheets bearing the imprint of the last occupant. Instead I entered a little hotel which might have flown over from the South of France. The hall was lit in the most modern French manner, and I could hear a petrol engine popping away somewhere, making electricity. The rooms were well furnished, and although there seemed to be no other guests, a man in a white jacket stood behind an American bar. I asked how it was possible that such a place could exist away out in the Western Desert. He told me that rich Greeks from Alexandria came there to bathe in the summer time.
As I was wandering round the empty lounge later that night, I learned that the British Air Force is also no stranger to the place. Aeroplanes often descend on frontier defence work. I discovered the following curious exiles on a table, among the unreadable technical literature which is distributed free to all hotels, no matter how remote they may be.
A Window in Thrums, by J. M. Barrie (" From Ethel. Aug. 2, 1918," on the fly-leaf), The Countess Dubarry (R.A.F., Jerusalem), Self Help, by Samuel Smiles, The Judgment of the Sword, by Maud Diver (Station Recreational Library, R.A.F., Uxbridge).
What a queer, lost company to discover on the edge of the Libyan desert.
§ 2
Although I knew that I had arrived at a lonely and romantic spot, no one had told me that Mersa Matruh is one of the most beautiful places in Egypt. When I opened the shutters in the morning, I looked out on a scene that sent my mind back over the years to Ballantyne's Coral Island and Stacpoole's Blue Lagoon. Here was the perfect desert place of romantic fiction: white breakers curling in the morning sunlight on a half-moon of gold; sandhills, white as snow, rising above lagoons as blue as grape hyacinths;
and far to the east a little harbour where a few ancient rigged ships rode at anchor.A land-locked lagoon lay about twenty yards from my balcony. Even in lona I have never seen such colours. Light, striking through the lagoon, turns the water in its deepest parts to the colour of an emerald, and in the shallows to a delicate shade of apple-green. And there were many other colours: sudden vivid streaks of mauve and purple, where beds of weed were lying, and curious, pale patches of amethyst, and even touches of amber, as if dyes had been poured on the water. And beyond the coloured shallows and white hills, a hard line of Prussian blue was drawn across the sky: the deeper waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
The hotel stands by itself, about a mile from the village, and after breakfast I set off to explore. The treeless little outpost cowered in the sunlight, on the edge of the sea. It reminded me of those wild-west townships of the early films, where horses were always tethered to posts until their owners slouched out of a saloon easing the pistols in their holsters. But someone has ambitions for Mersa Matruh. Wide and optimistic roads with firm, rectangular convictions run here and there, but only three or four little bungalows stand along them, smiling nervously behind their garden fences.
The most permanent-looking structures are the shops of Greek grocers, for the wily Ulysses sells soap, biscuits, chocolate, tea-pots, and always ouzo and retsinata, where even a Jew would starve. He is to-day, as he has been since Hellenistic times, the enterprising commercial adventurer of Egypt. Above some of the Greek shops I noticed the half-effaced words in English, " Out of bounds," a memory of the Abyssinian trouble, when British troops were stationed at Mersa Matruh, which is only two hundred miles from the Italian frontier of Tripoli.
I was surprised to see a small modern Greek church and a Greek cemetery. The half-dozen Greek grocers in the town must be extraordinarily devout men to build such a church, I thought. It was so surprising that I went into a Greek shop to find out. Before I knew where I was, I had bought some chocolate, a tin of biscuits, a supply of matches, and a fly-whisk. I believe these up-country Greeks are the best salesmen in the world: no wonder they grow rich in the desert. The man in this shop was a square little brown man from Andros. He wore a felt hat on the back of his head, and he stood in his shirt-sleeves among a truly amazing stock which not only covered the counters and shelves, but was also suspended from the ceiling like the astrologer's crocodile. He gazed at me with brown eyes full of an uncanny intelligence, and was delighted to show off his English.
" This church," I asked, " why is it here? "
" Ah," he replied, " it is the church of the sponge-fishermen. Mersa Matruh is a famous place for the sponge-fishing. Greeks come from the islands every year—many, many ships —and fish for sponges as far up the coast as Sollum. The best sponges in the world come from here, not the little brown sponges that men sell in the streets of Athens, but the big, soft sponges that make much money in England."
" Have you got any for sale? "
He put his head on one side, shut his eyes, and lifted up his hand with the palm held level with his shoulder, which in the Greek sign language, understood all over the Near East, means " no ": but not a nasty " no," a soft, deprecating, apologetic "no"; a wistful "no," a "no" full of
genuine regret." It is not permitted," he explained. " The merchants, they come and buy all the sponges and take them away to Alexandria. We cannot buy here."
He told me that the few rigged ships which I had seen from my balcony were the only sponge-ships left, for the season was over.
" And the cemetery? " I said. " It is for Greeks only? "
" Ah," he replied, " sponge-fishing is much dangerous. There are always much dead men."And here again he made another of those signs which Greeks make everywhere in the world. He pursed up his lips and lightly fanned the air with one hand in the direction of his face. This means riches, abundance, much, many, and at this particular moment it meant " much dead sponge-fishers." When I left the shop, the little man bowed himself almost under the counter in humble gratitude.
The largest building in the town is the headquarters of the Western Desert Province of Egypt. This wonderful department, half military, half police, and entirely nursemaid, mother, doctor, and detective of the desert, was once a British organisation, but under Egypt's new status it is now run by Egyptians. If the Bedouin's camels die, if his wife runs away, if his crops fail, if someone bewitches his donkey or his camel, he treks sometimes a hundred miles to tell the frontier post all about it. In fact he tells the frontier post everything except the name of tils man who murdered his best friend. That is something which everyone in his own circle knows, but the frontiers people must find it out for themselves.
Having heard a lot about the benevolent activities of this force, I was not surprised to find the headquarters surrounded by hundreds of Bedouin waiting for a free gift of barley. They had come from miles around.
I was told a sad story by the officer who was doling out grain. There had been no rain for six years. The tribes were famished. Their horses and camels had died of hunger and thirst. The people themselves were hardly more than skin and bone, as I could see for myself. And now the blessed rain had fallen and the Bedouin had come in from every part of the desert, crying for barley to sow. Soon, if the rain continued, the edge of the desert would be covered with green crops. The tribes would stay camped in the coastal areas until the barley was ripe in April or May, and then, their pitifully meagre needs satisfied, they would disappear southwards into the metallic blaze of heat.
I entered the Frontiers Office to pay my respects to the Governor of the Western Desert. He was a newly appointed Egyptian colonel, who had arrived only the day before to take up his duties. He had, however, received a letter about my journey to Siwa. A map of his district, an area about the size of Wales, hung on the wall. A Sudanese orderly appeared with cups of coffee and we began to talk of my journey.
He suggested that I should start at five o'clock on the following morning, if my car arrived in time, and he would send a desert-patrol lorry as escort. No car is allowed to cross the desert by itself. A young Egyptian officer who had been to Siwa was called in. He said that if everything went well, and we had no breakdowns, we should do the journey in one day. This surprised me, for I had expected to spend at least a night in the open. The journey which cars can now perform in one day used to take eight to ten days by camel.
In the afternoon I walked to the harbour to see the sponge-fishermen. I noticed in the -low, limestone hills signs of ancient terraces on which vines and olives once grew, and many a Greek marble pillar has been dredged from the lagoon or dug up from the white sandhills. Such relics are all that remain of the small Greek port of Parastonium from which Alexander set out for Siwa, and where centuries later Cleopatra is said to have had a summer-house on the lagoon. An admirable little guide-book, which I bought in Alexandria, contains the strange statement that " those immortal lovers, Antony and Cleopatra, repaired to Paraetonium to be alone with their bliss, and a better place could not be found throughout the length and breadth of Egypt for a summer idyll." Unfortunately there was no bliss and nothing of a summer idyll about their stay in Paraetonium. They arrived there in despair from Actium, the first ship to touch Egypt with news of the defeat. Cleopatra bravely left for Alexandria with her ships decked as if for victory, and minstrels playing, for it was essential that she should obtain control of the palace and the garrison before the truth leaked out. Meanwhile Antony paced the sands of Parastonium with two friends, and it was in this lovely place that he contemplated suicide when he learned that four legions which he had left in Africa had joined the enemy. But his two friends dissuaded him and prevailed upon him to join the queen in Alexandria.
Until a year or so ago every drop of water was brought by sea in large tankers, and it was puzzling to understand how a town could have stood here in Ptolemaic times. The mystery was solved by the recent discovery of underground tunnels half a mile in length, and full of fresh water. Twenty-five manholes give access to the conduit, and when first discovered, there was something like 78,000 tons of sweet water lying underground waiting to be used. This is the ancient water supply, and it is now being used again and still runs through the old channels.
I hired a rowing-boat and went out to look at the sponge-ships. The scene might have been an illustration from Treasure Island. The ships lay in a sheltered bay as if on a sheet of dark-blue glass. So clear was the water that I could see fish, coral, and living sponges lying on the sand and rocks thirty feet below. Four wooden sailing-ships lay at anchor, their rigging festooned with the crew's washing, a happy touch which reminded me that when pirates reach a hidden and sheltered bay, they always indulge in such cheerful domesticity! As I drew nearer, I saw men who might have sailed the seas with Captain Kidd, blue-chinned, hairy, and half-naked, lounging about the decks or sprawled in sleep. I noticed that most of the ships came from Rhodes and ^Egina.
The men answered my questions with surly suspicion. I could see their Greek minds wondering why I had taken the trouble to row out to them in the heat of the afternoon. They told me that the season was over. Most of the ships had gone home.
Sponge-fishing is a dangerous occupation. The men told me that a sponge-diver does not often live to be over forty, but a hundred pounds for a few months' fishing is real money in the Greek islands. If a diver is not killed by a defective helmet—and both masters and men are criminally careless— he may get diver's paralysis, caused by working under the water.
The most primitive method of sponge-diving, and probably less dangerous in the long run than a bad diving suit, is to plunge naked into the clear water, roped to a heavy stone. In the few seconds while he is on the sea bed the diver detaches a sponge or two and, letting the rope go, shoots up to the surface of the water. Some divers are able to stay below water for several minutes.
Another method is to hack at the sponges with a spear or trident, but this method often damages the sponges. A third method is the use of a diving suit, but I was told some horrible stories of the badly-fitting helmets in use and the capricious supply of air.
The sponge-divers' cemetery at Matruh tells the tragic story eloquently enough. Hardly a season passes but some divers leave their bones in Egypt. Some are killed by sharks, others die of paralysis or of diseases caused by under-water pressure on lungs and heart.
Standing in this lonely little graveyard, I remembered the small brown boys who dive for pennies round the lovely islands of Greece. They swim beneath the water like seals and come up with a penny in their white teeth, shaking the water out of their eyes and laughing with triumph. That is how the sponge-divers begin their short and dangerous lives.
Later that afternoon, just as I was beginning to feel anxious, a tired, dusty Mikhail arrived with an incredibly dusty car. He had had a rough journey from. Cairo. I told him to have the car overhauled at the Frontiers Force garage and then to go straight to bed, which he was only too ready to do.
§ 3
A man came into my bedroom with a cup of tea. The stars were shining and waves were breaking on the sand below the window. It was cold, and I hated the idea of getting up.
In the darkness below two cars were waiting to set out across the desert: my car and a military patrol lorry driven by a Sudanese soldier. There were two other figures wrapped to the eyes in drapery, who were also attached to me: one was a Sudanese cook and the other a young Egyptian servant.
I was delighted to discover that the cook, the waiter, and Mikhail were as excited as I was at the prospect of travelling to Siwa. That lonely oasis was as strange to them as it was
to me." Have you ever been there before? " I asked the lorry driver.
He sloped arms, brought his hand smack down on the butt of his rifle, and said:
" Yes, sir. Me go one time." " When do you think we shall get there ? "
" If no breakdowns," he said, casting a reproachful look at Mikhail's car, " we arrive to-night." " Right. Let's start."
The patrol car roared off in the darkness and we followed its tail light into the desert. In two hours the sun came up and we looked out over a high tableland as bare and featureless as the sea.
The Libyan Desert, or rather that small part of it between the coast and Siwa, must be among the most monotonous portions of the earth's surface. It is unlike the conventional idea of a desert. There are no picturesque, undulating hills of golden sand. No palm trees strike the horizon. As far as you can see there is nothing but a brown plain li.ke an ocean bed, scattered with millions of stones. It is a dirty khaki colour.
At first we saw camels grazing on the thorn bushes that grow here and there; then life ceased as we journeyed on into the wilderness, and there was nothing but the sun beating on thousands of miles of brown sterility.
The road was merely a track made by the wheels of lorries. The wheel ruts turned and twisted among boulders and would suddenly run off at a tangent to avoid dips in which water gathered in the rainy season. At more or less regular intervals we came across hard sandy stretches as flat as a race track, on which it was possible to travel at sixty miles an hour for a minute or so before the track began again with its jolts and sudden crashes on axle springs.
At first we looked forward to the crest of ridges, hoping that when we reached them there would be a different view, something—anything—on which the eye could linger with interest, but it was always the same: a stone-scattered khaki plain, treeless, shrubless, lifeless.
The fate of the fifty thousand Persians who perished in this desert on the way to Siwa is too awful to contemplate. They were sent out by Cambyses in 525 B.C. to sack Siwa and wreck the shrine of the Oracle. They did not arrive and were never seen or heard of again. It is conjectured that they were either overwhelmed in a sand storm, or, losing the way, wandered over the desert until they went mad or perished of thirst.
Will some fortunate archaeologist ever solve the mystery of this lost army? Somewhere along the road to Siwa fifty thousand Persians lie beneath the sand with their armour and equipment, just as they fell five centuries before Christ.
Noon came . . . one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, and we continued to journey through the same nightmare land. I called a halt so that we could eat our sandwiches at one of the five wells that lie at distances of about forty miles along the route. Although there is water, there is no vegetation,
As Mikhail stepped from the car, he gave a howl of real terror, and looking through the window, I saw that he had almost stepped on the most deadly snake in Egypt—the horned viper. It was long and thin, almost the colour of sand, with a small flat head and a tail ending in a thin pale point. I have been told that its bite can bring death to a man in twenty minutes. It is one of the few snakes that will deliberately attack a man, and among its horrible peculiarities is the speed with which it can travel not only backwards and forwards, but sideways as well.
Fortunately for Mikhail, the reptile had been driven out of its hole during hibernation and was in a comatose condition. We shouted to the soldier to bring his rifle, but he did not understand. So taking the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be my photographic tripod, we took our courage in both hands and killed the viper. We then congratulated Mikhail on being alive and had our frugal lunch in the shadow of the cars.
We continued our journey: I to bump unhappily from side to side of the car, and the patrol lorry, with its better springs, to dart ahead with surprising speed. There were no birds. Incredible as it may sound, there were no flies. We were in a dead portion of the world.
Some thirty-five miles to the east of the track is a slight hill which the Bedouin call Jebel Iskander, the Hill of Alexander. They do not know that Alexander's guides lost their way to Siwa: the name has just come down from mouth to mouth through the centuries. After the war a British officer, who had been told by the Arabs that pots were to be found on this hill, went there and unearthed eight perfect amphorae of the Hellenistic period. I saw one in a garden at Mersa Matruh. It was made of red clay and was about four feet high, with a pointed base, a bulbous body, a long neck, and two handles. If these are some water-jars of Alexander's expedition, as it seems they may be, one wonders what other relics might be found on that lonely spot.
As the sun was setting, we left the plain and entered one of the most fantastic bits of country imaginable. I think the mountains of the moon must look like this. It seemed that Nature, conscious of the bleakness of the past two hundred miles, had crowded all the fantasy of which it is capable into a small space. The valley was surrounded on all sides by weird dead hills, each one carved into some improbable shape, a cone, a cube, a queer isolated pinnacle, a ridge that from a distance looked like a battlemented castle with turrets. Other hills rose up like the ruins of old cities. In this strange valley we cried out:
" Look! A bird! "
It was the first bird we had seen since early morning, and a sign that we were approaching Siwa.
For an hour or so we travelled slowly downhill through the moon mountains: then emerging suddenly from the gorge, we saw below us thousands of date palms standing in the pink flush of the sunset.
As we drew near, the superb fantasy of Siwa revealed itself: a rock covered with mud dwellings piled up like skyscrapers, like some queer African Manhattan Island. The date-palms formed a green sea from which this hill of houses rose against the sky.
Soon we were running in the shadow of this hill, and we realised that there was something uncanny about it. No people came out on the roof-tops to look at us. There was no movement at the small square windows which pierced the high walls.
We learned afterwards that the old town had been condemned as unsafe a few years ago and is deserted. The inhabitants have built a new village round about it, a cluster of low, flat-roofed, white houses made of mud and roofed with palm branches.
I went to the police-station, where the Mamur, the district Government official, was expecting me. The Mamur, the doctor, and the officer of the local camel corps, all Egyptians, are the only resident officials. There are no Europeans in Siwa.
The Mamur said that he had opened the Government rest-house for my reception, and off we went for about a mile through a palm grove and came to a gaunt building of whitewashed mud, standing alone on a hill. Every window was closely meshed with mosquito netting, which delighted me, • for I am one of those people whom mosquitoes love.
A sad air of departed grandeur hung about the house. King Fuad had stayed there when he visited Siwa, and a memory of that visit remains in a hand-rope covered with frayed blue velvet which still hangs, though a trifle listlessly, beside the stairs. There is also a bathroom, doubtless the strangest sight in Siwa, but its capabilities would not deceive the most optimistic wanderer.
I was given the royal bed-chamber, where a brass four-poster rose in the shadows, and from this room a step led into a pleasant living-room furnished with a wooden table and two canvas chairs. The usual portrait of his late Majesty, wearing a tarbush and a frock coat, gazed from the wall. A long window covered in wire netting ran along one side of the room and afforded a superb view of Siwa beyond the palm grove.
Sounds of dismay and confusion from the courtyard below indicated that the cook, the waiter, Mikhail, and the patrol-car driver were attempting to coerce a reluctant paraffin stove in the kitchen. Glancing out of the window, I saw the cook walking below, holding a dead cockerel. Soon I smelt a strange chorus of smells which indicated that the cook, with the passionate enthusiasm of one who finds himself alone and on his mettle, was preparing a tremendous meal.
The sun sank and darkness fell upon this lonely place. Stars snapped above the palm trees, the bats were flying; and a mile away the weird outline of the dead town rose on its hill, grey and ghostly.
The waiter came in with a paraffin lamp, and a dinner was served which only a Sudanese cook could have prepared in this remote place. There was soup, an omelette, fish from Mersa Matruh, roast chicken, tinned peaches, a cheese savoury, and oranges.
As I went to bed that night, I saw a big gold moon sail into the sky and hang above the dark palm groves. No dog barked; no jackal cried; no night-bird called. The oasis lay in a pool of green light, frozen in silence like a land under snow.
§ 4
In the early morning Siwa is like a Gaugin or a Van Gogh. It is a reckless exercise in hot colour: ochre-brown hills; golden sand; vivid green trees; a hard sky of blue untouched by any cloud. Heat throbs in the open places. Goats run in blinding light to the welcome shadow of the palm-groves. White pigeons rise from feathery tree-tops to wheel sparkling in the sun. All the sounds are little sounds: the note of a bell on a goat's neck, the lazy song of a man working in one of the water-gardens, the bright click of a donkey's hoof against a stone, and the padded sound of camels walking.
From the window of the guest-house I could see to the west a narrow lake of intensely blue water, streaked with bands of snowy white. This is a salt lake which dries up in summer, so that it is possible to walk across on bricks of sparkling salt. In ancient times the priests of Ammon exported this salt, which was used in the temples of Egypt and Persia. The natives say that the sword, the seal, and the ring of Solomon lie hidden on an island in the lake. One of Siwa's early explorers, the French engineer Colonel Boutin, took with him a collapsible canvas boat in the hope of reaching this island, but the Siwans would not let him use it. Had he gone there in the summer, he could have walked across without difficulty along a causeway of solid salt.
As I was dabbing a mosquito bite with ammonia, I wondered how many people in chemists' shops all over the world realise that they invoke the name of the Oracle every time they ask for ammoniated quinine or salammoniac; for it was here in Ammonia, near the temple of Ammon, that ammonia chloride is believed to have first been made from the dung of camels. I wondered, also, as my nose approached too near the bottle, whether the asphyxiating fumes of this chemical had anything to do with the Oracle. The Delphic Pythia sat on a tripod directly over a chasm which was supposed to emit vapours, and Plutarch believed that the prophetic frenzy was stimulated by breathing the fumes, just as diviners among certain tribes of Hindoo Koosh, the Dainyals, are said to work themselves into a prophetic condition by first inhaling the smoke of burning cedar wood.
The Mamur arrived while I was having breakfast, a large man in a sun helmet, and suit of khaki drill. We sat down to talk about Siwa.
The population is about five thousand, and there are more men than women. There is no polygamy, but divorce is so frequent, and so little thought of, that a proportion of the female population is in constant circulation; and one Siwan has been known to divorce as many as forty wives. The Siwans still hold to the Senussi faith, but their fanaticism and hatred of outsiders has broken down since the war. Cairo does not seem so far away now that aeroplanes can reach the oasis in a few hours, and the motor patrol cars bring it within a day's journey of Mersa Matruh, instead of a week or ten days. But the Siwans are still difficult, and ready to quarrel among themselves.
They are riddled with superstition and firmly believe in all forms of witchcraft. The Government doctor has a hard time to convince them that his knowledge can be more useful than the spells and poultices of witch doctors and wise women. Most of the work is done by the descendants of Sudanese slaves and the poorer Siwans; they are not paid in money but in food, which is given to them every six months. The Government pays for work in money at the rate of y. 6d. a week. This is considered lavish. But there is nothing to spend money on in Siwa, except green tea, the only extravagance of the oasis. Coffee is forbidden to the Senussi, therefore the Siwans have taken to tea, which they drink in enormous quantities and on every possible occasion. The only real object of money is to purchase a wife, and the price of a wife has been stabilised for many years at 120 piastres, which is about twenty-four shillings. As women are in a minority and are always sure to find suitors, and as large numbers of the men receive no money and could never save twenty-four shillings, a proportion of the population is resigned to life-long bachelorhood.
The rulers of Siwa are the sheiks, who own large date groves. The oasis possesses 600,000 date palms, which produce some of the best dates in Egypt. Each tree is taxed, and the oasis pays an annual tax of just under two thousand pounds to the Egyptian government. This has cost a certain amount of bloodshed in the past, but like most people under llie influence of civilisation, the Siwans are now becoming resigned to taxation.
The dates are sold in an open market and are taken away by motor-lorry. The old date caravans, which once used to come to Siwa from Egypt every year, are no longer seen, although merchant caravans do sometimes come from Tripoli. The end of the camel caravan traffic has had one curious effect on the Siwan exchequer. One of the main sources of revenue was derived from the sale of the camel manure left on the public square during the date market season. This has now ceased and the budget is down accordingly. The only industry in Siwa is a Government date-packing factory, recently established, where the dates are dried, washed, and sent away in boxes to Cairo and Alexandria.
The absence of dogs and cats in Siwa is due to the fact that the Siwans eat them. They also eat the jerboa, the rat, and the mouse. They make an intoxicating drink from the sap of palm-trees, called lubchi. Under its potent influence they become violent, and in times now past the east and the west ends of the town, which have always been at enmity, used to drink lubchi and engage in pitched battles in the main square, which invariably ended in considerable loss of life.
The Mamur and I set off to see the wonders of the oasis, and, as we passed through narrow streets between rows of mud houses, I asked the Mamur why so many skulls, bones, and inverted pots were built into the walls and set over the doors.
" Everyone believes in the Evil Eye," he replied. " It is thought that any possessor of it will look at things like the skull of that donkey over there, and so avert it from human beings."
We came into the wide main square above which rise the fantastic battlements of old Siwa. Nothing more crazy has ever been erected. For many centuries house has been built on top of house in a casual, haphazard manner, undl the outside walls are nearly two hundred feet high in places. The streets that tunnel through this human ant-heap run in complete darkness and wind up to the top, giving through an occasional airhole a bright snapshot of the world outside.
When the old town was inhabited, it must have been an • eerie experience to pass crouching along the dim, narrow streets, more like shafts in a coal-mine than anything else, and to hear nothing but women pounding corn in the dark, or the voices of invisible people in the houses on either side.
There were once nine gates to the town, which were guarded day and night, and when darkness fell all unmarried men were expelled to spend the night in huts outside. They were not admitted until morning.
I had heard that there was some excitement in Siwa, for a merchant caravan had arrived from Italian Tripoli, the first for many months. This sounded romantic, and I expected something rather spectacular. But when we came to a small market-house roofed with palm trunks and branches, I saw four Bedouin squatting on the floor, with knotted handkerchiefs in front of them. This, I was told, was the caravan from Tripoli. They opened their handkerchiefs and exposed a few poor silver trinkets. They had travelled for days and nights all the way across the desert, moving from well to well, striking camp and moving on, to bring these pitiful little things to the oasis. I thought this was an insight into the grim energy of such primitive commerce. Archaeologists often wonder how a silver ring could have got here or there. I suppose there have always been men like these merchants from Tripoli, who would bring a ring across the whole world just for the pleasure of having a cup of tea and a gossip at the end of the journey.
The market itself was an object lesson in the simplicity of life in this oasis. There were not more than ten merchants, and each sat cross-legged, with a sack in front of him. One sack would hold about four pounds of granulated sugar, another two or three pounds of tea; in a third would be some beans or lentils. To people accustomed to such a frugal market, no doubt the handkerchiefs of the Tripolitan Bedouin must have looked like Cartier's window in Bond Street.
We entered the date market not far away, a large open space floored with dates drying in the sun: some were a rich gold, some yellow, and some the colour of horse chestnuts. The Mamur explained that the dates are of many kinds, each with its own name. Some Siwans are so expert in date culture that they can tell from which garden a particular date has come.
It is a custom that anyone can enter this market during the date harvest and eat as many dates as he likes. But he must not put one in his pocket.
The date is to Siwa what the olive is to the Mediterranean. The poorer people live almost entirely on dates. The trunks of the date palm provide the builder with wood. Palm wood is used as fuel. Fences are made of palm fronds, and houses and huts are roofed with them. From the fibre of the palm tree the women make beautiful mats, and baskets so closely woven that they will hold water.
The Siwan donkeys, which are remarkable for strength and size, are said to owe their perfect condition to a diet of dates, and in a corner of the market I saw a donkey eating his date ration with enjoyment.
We passed again through the streets of Siwa, and small brown girls about ten or twelve years old, each one like an ancient Egyptian statuette, stood frozen in curiosity as we approached, waiting until we were within a few yards before running to cover. They were the belles of Siwa. Their faces were mature, but their bodies were those of children. Their plaited hair gave them a curiously archaic look, as if they were wearing the festival wigs of the women in ancient Egypt. They wear their hair in a number of tight plaits, and a fringe of them falls over the forehead in a straight line. It is dressed with an oily, scented unguent in which fig-leaves have been pounded.
Each little girl wore round her neck a hoop of silver, to some of which were attached silver discs about the size of a saucer. These are " Virginity discs," which the girls wear until their marriage. On the marriage eve the bride, attended by girls, goes to bathe in one of the springs of Siwa. She takes the disc from her neck and flings it into the spring; then, slipping off her garments, she dives into the water. One small boy is generally allowed to be present at such ceremonies, and as soon as the ritual is over, he dives down and retrieves the silver disc, which is preserved for the bride to hand on to her daughter.
When in full dress, these little girls are loaded with barbaric jewellery. Enormous ear-rings are attached to their hair, carrying long chains to which bells are fixed, and huge necklaces, often made of beads taken from mummies, encircle their necks.
I saw these children everywhere, but not once did I see a woman between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. Nowhere are married women more rigorously secluded, and it is only when you glance up at the houses that you sometimes see an eye gazing down curiously into the street.
§ 5
When I came to know Siwa better and could find my way about, I never became weary of sitting beside the springs. There are about two hundred, some of fresh water, some of salt, some sulphurous, some warm, and some cold: a little Harrogate in a setting by Gaugin.
This varied volume of water has been pouring itself through the desert sand for centuries, and the explanation I like best is the theory that an underground river from the Congo shoots up through cracks and holes in the desert's crust. Nearly all the springs look like circular swimming-baths full of green and blue water, for it is green in the sunlight and blue where palm-trees cast their shadows. Most of the springs are lined with hewn stones, and have parapets on which you can sit and gaze through fifty feet of limpid blue-greenness to floors of tinted stalagmites.
Gazing into still water is the historical occupation of the vain, and there is not much to be said for it unless you are very fond of your own face; but in Siwa the springs hold your attention by the hour because they are alive with ascending strings of pearls. These quicksilver bubbles come at times in such numbers that the whole surface of the spring moves with the escaping air, as if hundreds of invisible fish are mouthing the water. Then for no apparent reason the movement ceases and you look down into still, green cellophane. I can understand how these springs excited the imagination of antiquity, as indeed they still excite the superstitions of modern Siwans, for there is nothing mechanical about their queer aerated vitality: the bubbles are blown as if at the whim of some underground giant who becomes tired and starts again, or who goes away for a rest and returns, sometimes blowing chains of little silver peas and sometimes sending up one as large as an orange.
The clearings in which these springs lie are hot, sunny openings in green jungles. All around, like masts in harbour, rise the jointed, matted boles of date palms. Bright green leaves are spotted with the flushed rind of ripe pomegranates, or the delicious green-yellowness of sweet limes. And as you look into these springs, you can see clusters of dates reflected from the trees overhead, lying in the water like swarms of polished brown bees.
Dragon-flies of red, green, and orange dart and quiver over the springs, and sometimes a hoopoe, which is tame here as elsewhere in Egypt, will fly down and look at you with a speculative eye, head cocked sideways, its plume of feathers rising like a question mark.
The springs of Siwa are of course the life-blood of the oasis, and the little channels carry the water into the gardens. Each spring has a guardian, and each guardian has a book in which is written the amount of water due to every strip of land. The guardians preside over toy canal systems of water tracks, some of which are carried over others through hollow palm trunks. When the time comes for a certain garden to be watered, the guardian approaches the water channel leading to it and kicks down a mud dam, which thus allows the water to flow in the right direction. And that is how the Israelites watered their gardens in Egypt long ago, as described in Deuteronomy xi. 10: "Where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs." And the guardian who waters the gardens of Siwa with his foot has no watch. He takes his time from the sun, and when the sun sinks he listens for the muezzin, whose clear call he can hear in the still air; and when there is no sound from the mosque, he has the stars.
The Fountain of the Sun is the most famous and the most beautiful of Siwa's springs. Herodotus said that it was cold at mid-day but grew warmer towards midnight, a story which the Siwans repeat. There is also a legend that black sightless fish once lived in the spring and were connected with the worship of the Oracle of Ammon, whose temple was not far away. While I was sitting by this spring, a dignified figure in a Roman toga, for that is how all Libyans wear their white robes, came towards me through the trees. He wore a little red cap from which hung a blue silk tassel, and he grasped a black umbrella. This was the sheik of the village of Aghourmi, and he had come to show me the ruins af the temple of Jupiter Ammon.
§ 6
First we went to see a ruin not far from the Fountain of the Sun, which must be the remains of the smaller temple mentioned by Diodorus. There is nothing left now but a few stones which once formed a gateway or a pylon. They are covered with figures who are making offerings to the god Ammon. From the broken character of the ground, it is clear that a large building once stood in this place. Leaning gracefully on his umbrella, the sheik told me that long ago a Turkish governor had blown up the temple with gunpowder to obtain stones for the police station.
We ascended a small hill towards the old village of Aghourmi, which I thought even more impressive and interesting than Siwa. Its mud houses completely cover a rock that rises abruptly above the palm forests. From a distance it looks like a brown, mastless hulk drifting on a sea of palm fronds and, like Siwa, this village is now abandoned as unsafe, and the villagers have built new houses some distance away.
The main street wound steeply up between mud walls, losing itself now and then in an incredible rat-run of narrow tunnels which led to dark little houses now inhabited only by jackals and snakes.
We emerged on the ramparts, where we had a superb view of the oasis. The feathery heads of the palm forests lay below us mile after mile, and beyond them the Libyan desert stretched to the horizon like a gold ocean.
Climbing in darkness over steep piles of rubbish and fallen walls, my electric torch revealed the splendid stones of an Egyptian temple and the remains of a massive gateway. Some of the stones were as large as the stones of the Pyramids of Giza.
This temple on the hill, lilted so high above the palm groves, was the shrine of the Oracle, and somewhere beneath the mass of mud buildings and tunnels is the place where Alexander the Great stood face to face with Jupiter Ammon.
The Siwans believe that an underground tunnel connected the temple at Aghourmi with the lesser temple near the Fountain of the Sun. They say that a monarch called King Menec-lush lies buried with his horse underneath Aghourmi. Who Meneclush was they do not know. They say he was a king who lived long ago and kept four speaking statues in his palace. These images spoke when the sun touched them. This must surely be some old memory of the Oracle.
The oracular god of Siwa, like the Oracle of Amun-Re at Thebes, of which he was a duplicate, was a statue of a god with a man's body and the head of a ram. It was made so that the head, and, no doubt, the arms, could be made to move in answer to the questions put to it. As the ancient Egyptians thought of the sky as an ocean on which the sun and the moon sailed in their barks, the god was exhibited either standing or seated in his shrine, which was placed amidships of a slender canoe-like ship covered with plates of hammered gold.
At Siwa the god's golden bark was covered with silver discs which hung down on each side, and when the curtain was drawn away from the shrine the god was seen inside, shining with green malachite, which is often mistranslated as emeralds. There were rings at the corners of the boat through which poles were thrust, so that on festival days the priests might shoulder boat and deity and carry them in procession round the temple.
It was a fiction from remote times that every pharaoh who came to the throne of Egypt was the divine son of the Sun God, and apparently during the Eighteenth Dynasty it was a necessary preliminary of coronation, to be recognised as the legitimate successor by the Oracle of the God at Thebes. Apparently the god had also the power to depose a king and appoint a successor.
Why did Alexander go to Siwa ? Any man who wished to legalise his conquest of Egypt would first receive recognition of solar descent from Amun-Re. But that this was not Alexander's intention seems clear from the fact that he did not immediately publish his interview with the Oracle when he reached Memphis, where it would have been received with respect by an Egyptian audience. His silence on this matter in Egypt and in Greece leads one to suppose that his visit to the Oracle was entirely a personal affair: he went there from purely romantic and private motives, and what these were it is difficult to say.
When he arrived in Siwa, eighty shaven priests in robes of white linen came to meet him, bearing to the entrance of the temple the golden ship of the Sun God. The air shook with the silver sound of sistra, and incense hung in clouds round the statue of Ammon.
What took place in the sanctuary will remain for ever unknown. Alexander alone was allowed to approach the god, dusty as he was from his ride across the desert. His retinue were obliged to change their clothes and to wait in the outer court of the temple. When he came out, Alexander had altered. He had received something in the shrine at Siwa which affected him powerfully for the rest of his life.
We cannot hope now to know what happened or what words passed between the young conqueror of the world apd the father of the gods. But that it was satisfactory goes without saying, for it was the business of the priests of Siwa, of Delphi, and of Dodona to know all the desires in the hearts of men.
§ 7
The sheik invited me to drink tea at his house. I have already said that the drinking of green tea is an inevitable act in Siwa, so I rose and followed him through the ruins and into a palm grove.
His house was a short walk away, a large, square mud house from whose upper windows I caught a fleeting glance of curious feminine eyes. We climbed a flight of mud stairs and emerged on a square roof exposed to the blaze of the sun. Several doors led from the roof to rooms built around it, and in one of them we found a table covered with food. There were biscuits, sweet limes, pomegranates, a soft delicious kind of date called Shengbel, which must be eaten straight from the tree, bananas, and little plates of nuts.
Two or three young men came in, the sons of the house, and after some polite conversation, I was asked to help myself to dates and pomegranates, while the sheik performed the solemn rite of tea-making.
I watched his preparations with interest. It is a great compliment to be asked to pour, but it is not etiquette for a newcomer to accept; he must throw up his hands in feigned dismay and say that he is unworthy to do so. The man who makes the tea is called the " Sultan," and when Siwans gather together on social occasions, they elect one of their number to be the " Sultan " of the party.
The sheik first rinsed little glasses in boiling water from a kettle that stood on a brazier of charcoal. He then opened a chest containing several compartments. One was full of green tea, one full of black tea, a third held soft sugar, and a fourth mint leaves.
He carefully and judiciously measured a small quantity of green tea, added a pinch or two of black tea, and poured a little boiling water into the pot. He smelt the aroma and poured the whole brew away. His next effort was more successful. He added more boiling water and poured himself a small quantity of the tea, which he sipped critically once or twice. At the first sip he appeared doubtful, and I thought he was going to pour it away again; but a second sip reassured him, and he handed me a little glass full of the scalding liquid.
The ceremony was immediately repeated. A second glass was given to me, and this time the tea was sweet with sugar. When, with many compliments, I had drunk this, tea-making took place for the third time. The third glass was sweet and flavoured with mint.
It is etiquette always to drink at least three glasses. You must never refuse. The Siwans believe that tea is good for you, but should you feel ill after too much of it, they recommend the eating of sweet limes.
A gilded scimitar, which King Fuad had presented to the sheik, was produced for my admiration. I sat with it across my knees and was given first a sweet lime and then a red pomegranate, a fruit I cannot remember eating since I was a child. It is a difficult and disappointing fruit. When you open it, you might have opened a box of rubies, but the ultimate result is a mouthful of pips and mildly scented water.
The sheik sat fanning away flies with a palm frond and pressing upon me chocolate biscuits of English make, whose appearance in Siwa struck me as one of the romances of commerce.
Our conversation was so trivial that we might have been a couple of visiting kings on some formal occasion. I did not ask the questions about the oasis which I wanted to ask, and after a number of compliments I departed at the moment which I felt was indicated by etiquette.
§ 8
I looked out of the guest-house window one afternoon and saw a group of men putting up what I thought was a gibbet. They told me that as I was departing in the morning, a dance had been arranged in my honour, and the gibbet was to hold an acetylene lamp.
About nine o'clock that night, with a moon silvering the palm groves and lying green over the desert, the sheiks and notables began to arrive on donkeys. I had sacked the guest-house for chairs, which I arranged in a row opposite the gibbet. The largest chair had been reserved for the Mamur, and the three next best chairs for the doctor, the officer of the Camel Corps, and myself. On either side of us sat the sheiks and village notables.
I had already sent down to the village for a pound of tea, and by this time I knew too much about local custom to ask my cook to prepare it. When the sheiks had all gathered, I suggested that the time had come to elect a " sultan." There followed a ridiculous scene of pure social hypocrisy, first one sheik pretending to be unworthy of the honour, then another, and again a third, until finally it was necessary to lead the elected one—who happened to be the most important and would have been deeply insulted had he not been chosen—almost by force to the brazier. He wasted quite a lot of my pound of tea in concocting brews which he tasted and poured away, and I began to wonder if we should have enough to go round.
At last his palate was satisfied, and he produced a large tin pot full of bitter fluid which everyone seemed to think the best cup of tea ever brewed in Siwa. Holding little glasses which I had borrowed from the police station, we sat in the moonlight waiting for the dancers to approach from the distant village.
Coming nearer across the stretch of sand we heard the beat of a tom-tom. Someone lit the acetylene lamp and it threw a circle of white light brighter than the moonlight.
As the dancers drew nearer, we could hear a flute as well as the tom-tom, and every now and then the dancers gave a wild cry, a rhythmic repetition of the same sentence, a wailing, plaintive sound which ceased as suddenly as it began. Into the circle of lamplight came a barbaric gathering escorted by a gaffiy with a long whip and a policeman with a rifle across his shoulders, strange guardians for a dance party!
Before the Siwans dance, they drink deeply of lubchi, and these men and boys, for there were no women in the crowd, had evidently worked themselves up into a state of exhilaration. They advanced clapping their hands and gyrating as they surrounded the drummer and two flute players.
Seating itself on the ground, the band played a monotonous but attractive air. I wished I had enough musical talent to write it down. I believe the technical term for such music is " hot jazz." This, however, was several degrees hotter than anything I have ever heard, even in Harlem. It had the pathos and savagery of the Libyan Desert, and also a plaintive beauty, and a hunger which is the hunger and splendour of the desert.
At a certain point in the tune the whirling dancers sang the verse which we had heard as they were approaching over the sand. It was in the Siwan language, which the Egyptian doctor could not understand. I asked one of the sheiks to tell me what it meant.
" It is a love song," he said. " The dancers say that the beauty of the loved one is so great that their eyes do not close at night. ..."
The dance itself was the most barbaric posturing that can be imagined. The men circled round the musicians, suddenly leaping in the air with wild cries, or revolving in a curious crouching attitude. There was also a bounding forward step, and now and again the whole horde of dancers, as if animated by the same insanity, crouched and took three forward leaps.
It was done with a meticulous regard for rhythm, and none of the steps was essentially more ridiculous than the dance steps made popular in the last twenty years. During the war there was a step which consisted of three quick runs and a dip, that compares not unfavourably with the Siwan technique.
The dreary thing about this dancing, in London as in Siwa, is its monotony. As the lubchi began to work, the dancers became absolutely tireless. I was told that they could keep it up all night.
I began to talk to the young doctor. He was an Egyptian who had spent many years in the desert and had come to Siwa from the oasis of Bahariya, where, he told me, the women dance instead of the men. They dance a peculiar and ancient dance. Standing with backs to their audience, they move their hips in time to drums and flutes. The Bahariya women are kept in the strictest seclusion, except on dance nights.
" I remember," said the doctor, " that once I had to go to a sheik and tell him that unless his wife saw me she would probably die.
" ' All right,' he replied. ' See her; but as soon as she is well again, I shall divorce her.' And he did so."
" What impression have you formed of these desert people ? " " They are —— primitive man. If an anthropologist wants to study primitive man, why should he dig up skulls that are thousands of years old when he can come out to the oases and study the living human being? Customs and beliefs going back beyond ancient Egypt into an unknown past have been handed down in these places, and every doctor is up against witchcraft in some guise or other."
A touch of variety was given by the arrival of a remarkably coy elderly woman. Her hair was dyed a bright auburn, her cheeks were rouged, and her hands were loaded with jewels. She was a shapeless bunch of rather garish garments, and her feet were encased in delicate little heelless Arab boots of soft crimson leather.
" Who is she? " I whispered to the doctor.
" She is a dancer," he replied. " She came from Tripoli long ago, when she was so very beautiful that men contended for her charms."
As soon as she arrived, a rival dance ring was formed. Another drummer and flute-player appeared and squatted in the centre. After many coy preliminaries, the dancer glided into the circle with a queer, undulating movement and with a black veil completely hiding her face. As she had appeared unveiled, I was surprised.
" No woman must dance without a veil. It is the custom," explained the doctor.
I was hoping that the beauty from Tripoli would infuse a little charm into the proceedings, but her motions, which were just a rhythmic sideways movement of the hips, became as tedious as the movements of the rival dance ring. She kept this up for nearly an hour, after which a man leapt into the ring and danced with her.
I began to feel that the evening had outlived its first careless rapture, but the Siwans were as fresh as ever. The sand flies were now biting without mercy, and I suggested that perhaps the time had come to break up the party.
The policeman with the rifle and the man with the whip instantly flung themselves into the dance, but the dancers declined to stop. They said that they would dance as long as the music went on playing. The band said that they would play as long as anyone wanted to dance. I seemed to have heard these sentiments before, but far from these desert sands!
Eventually a happy compromise was reached. The band was persuaded to return, still playing, to the town. As they moved away, the dancers clustered round them like a swarm of bees about the queen.
The sound of the tom-tom and the monotonous chant faded in the distance: but all that night the tom-toms beat in Siwa, and only in the hours before the dawn did the dancers fall down exhausted.
§ 9
I was awakened at a quarter to five. The moon was still up and I could hear the servants packing in the courtyard below. Looking out of the window, I saw Siwa lying hushed in a wash of green light, the tracks running across the sand, the dark trees standing motionless, and the old village on its hill, silent and dark as a place of tombs.
We had managed to buy a couple of eggs the night before, and these came to the table in the light of a paraffin lamp. The moon was still shining, when we started at six o'clock, though the first hint of dawn was in the air. A bird flying near in the darkness uttered a sweet note, but though I looked everywhere, I could not see it. Someone said that it was the Haj Mawla, a bird known only in Siwa.
The patrol car roared off across the sand, and we followed into the silent, sleeping village. We stopped at the police station, where the driver of the patrol car had left his rifle. The Sudanese cook and the waiter sat crowded together in the patrol car, their heads swathed in white cloths like people with toothache. Their dark faces peered out at the fretted walls and the black shadows, and up to the old village which lay massed in inky darkness, its turrets touched with green moonlight; and they were strangely quiet. The driver came down the steps of the police station carrying his rifle and bandolier. He slung the bandolier across his shoulder, leaned the rifle against his seat, and climbed up. The police sentry sloped arms and wished us a good journey, and we sped off into the white moon mountains. I looked back and saw Siwa lying dark among its palm trees, with the stars burning in a sky that was growing lighter with approaching day. Then for some time we went on through the pass with the moon on our left and daylight coming in a pink pulsation on the right. Soon all the east was throbbing in livid incandescence, and when we reached the plateau we saw for one second a burning rim rise over the desert's edge, then the sun was shining and the air grew warm.
All that day we journeyed to the north through the heartless land. We saw the sun cross the sky. We became tired, hot, and thirsty. We saw the stars come out. In the first hour of darkness a camel ran across our headlights and we knew that we were nearing the end of the plateau and the long descent to the sea at Mersa Matruh. Suddenly we looked down and saw the lights of the town shining on the edge of the sea.
In the morning, while another dawn was rushing upward from the east, I got into Mikhail's car and we drove along the coast to Alexandria. The villages through which we passed rose treeless on a brown plain, and sometimes we saw to our left the blue line of the Mediterranean shining across a mile of sand. We bought petrol in a village made of petrol tins and inhabited by men who wore their jurds like Roman togas. The man who lifted the cover of our radiator was draped like a statue of Augustus.
As darkness was falling, we saw the lights of Alexandria covering the flat land for miles, and we were soon running through the confusion of its streets.