I’ve been remiss in not writing these last few days about my trip to Siwa, which was probably the highlight of my time in Egypt. The plan is to correct that.
After driving through the desert, all the sudden there are palm trees by the thousands. Then there are small buildings and dusty roads. And then the bust stops in front of a nondescript mudbrick building and everyone gets off and is greeted by boys on donkey-driven taxis offering to take you to hotels. This is Siwa.
I knew already where I wanted to stay, so I just asked one of the kids how to get there and walked on. The hotel itself was a nice mudbrick place among palm trees a little ways off from the town’s main square. Very quiet, with a nice big room with a private bath, which had been my main requirement for staying in Siwa after the hotel from the night before. I got the key to my room and immediately showered.
Siwa is populated by Berbers, the native people of North Africa who inhabited the region before the Arabs took over. Everyone speaks Arabic, except for the very old and very young, but everyone also speaks taSwit, a Berber language. Siwa was once a very important town, the cite of the Oracle of Amun, one of the most important oracles of Ancient Egypt. Every Pharaoh would travel Siwa to seek the Oracle’s confirmation that he was the sun of god. Alexander the Great, wishing to lend legitimacy to his rule over Egypt, also trekked to Siwa to consult the Oracle of Amun, and the place left such an impression on him that he vowed to be buried there.
In medieval times, not much is known about Siwa. They resisted the initial Arab invasion of Egypt but eventually converted to Islam. Still, they remained disconnected from the greater empire and hostile to outsiders. Siwa did not accept that it was a part Egypt until well into the 20th Century, and pavement roads only connected it to the rest of the country in the 1980s.
Throughout its history, Siwa was fertile land that produced some of the best dates and olives in the region. During harvest season, the town would be raided by bedouins trying to steal their crops, and the Siwans would retreat into a mud brick fortress on a hill that rose five stories above the surrouding land. These ruins remained inhabited until the 1920s, when a three day rain caused much of the structure to literally melt. A few buildings on the edges are still in use, and the ruins still stand on a hill in the middle of Siwa village as the most imposing structure in the oasis.
The evening of my arrival, after my shower, I decided I wanted to try to climb to the top of the fortress, called the Shali. I walked near it, but couldn’t find a place to climb, but while going through some back neighborhood streets I ran into three young boys who tried to talk to me. The conversation mostly consisted of them wanting the names of various animals in English, or their saying what they thought were the names of animals in English. Dog, rabbit, etc. The best one was when one of the kids said what I was pretty sure was “boobies.” We had been talking about animals, so I looked at him confused and asked, “boobies?” He told me in Arabic, “small dog.” He was saying, “puppies.”
I asked the kids if it was possible to climb the Shali and whether they would show me where I could get up. They ran off and I followed them to a sort-of-path up the side of the hill. They then asked me if I had a pen, and I gave them the one that I had and they seemed very excited. I know this is fairly common among children in places like this – asking for pens – but I’m not sure why.
I climed all around on the Shali and then sat down on the highest part to watch the sunset. It was very pretty and from there I could see all of the town, the orchards of the oasis, the huge salt lake nearby, and, of course, the desert only a short distance away in every direction. The contrast between the incredibly dense date trees that seemed to suddenly stop at the far-off dunes was almost surreal.
After sunset, I had a mediocre dinner at the most popular and oldest restaurant in town. Dinner was nothing special, but it was nice to sit outside in the time square and watch what rural life was like here. Slower, less crazy, maybe more friendly. People are poor in Siwa, like everywhere in Egypt, but I have to think that even the poorest Siwans are better off than the poorest Cairenes. Siwa, at least, has clean, abundant water for its crops and a great deal of income from tourists.
I noticed almost immediately on that first night that, from an outsider’s perspective, the town must have no women. In Cairo, women work in shops and other places, and you seem them on the streets everywhere. In Siwa, they are hidden. None work, and they don’t even walk around if they don’t have to. When they do, they where a black veil that hides their whole face and a very distinctive blue cloak that covers their head and body, called a tarfotet. They walk mostly in the back alleys, and when you seem them in the town square they are sitting in the back of a donkey cart or pickup truck being driven somewhere.
On my first morning in Siwa, the first thing I did was go and rent a bike. Bikes, along with donkey carts, are one of the preferred methods of transportation in Siwa, and there are several bike rental shops along the town square where you can rent a bike for the day for about $2. Mine was a hot pink girl’s bike with no brakes and a basket on the front. It was pretty awesome.
The thing I most wanted to do in Siwa was take a trip to the desert, and so I called a tour guide that I had met on the ride to Siwa who seemed quite nice, but he didn’t answer. Then I rode by the tourist office, knowing that they could help with safaris, but it was closed because it was Friday morning. So, I went to my hotel and talked to the manager, who had tried to get me to do a safari with his friend the day before. Having no other options, I agreed to that offer after I talked the price down a bit (though I thought the final price we arrived at was still too high). The safari was to leave at four that afternoon.
Having that figured out, I rode to Gebel Moutas, a hill a couple kilometers away where hundreds of tombs had been carved for wealthy ancient Egyptians. I climbed around there and looked at the view of the oasis and the many tombs, some of which had some pretty cool paintings still intact. While leaving the hill, I ran into a Canadian girl and her Siwi guide. We talked for a few minutes and they both seemed friendly and interesting. They mentioned they were going to the desert to spend the night that night and asked if I wanted to come along. I said I may want to and got Hilal’s phone number – I had a reservation already, but this one seemed with better people and cheaper.
So, I went back to my hotel to talk to the manager and cancel the safari reservation, which was much easier than I expected. The manager gave me back the deposit I’d give him without trouble and I called Hilal to let him know that I’d like to go with them.
My next excursion on my bike was an attempt to reach Fatnas Island, a small island in the big salt lake about six kilometers from town. I road for a while in the direction that I assumed was towards Fatnas for several miles over sandy, potholed roads. Eventually oasis turned to desert, and I kept riding through sandy fields where people were trying with various degrees of success to grow crops. I feel as though I must have looked pretty absurd riding a a pink girl’s bike through the desert. I felt absurd.
I went back again to my hotel to get my passport from the manager. He had it because I’d given it to him to get permission from the mukhabarat to go on safari – you need permission to go to the desert – and I needed it back so I could give it to Hilal to get permission to go with them. He was friendly and invited me to have tea, so we went and drank on the shady roof of the building. He gave me some dates from his private stash, which were excellent, and we talked about Siwa and other things in a mix of Arabic and English. I mentioned that the hotel seemed empty, and he said that this time of the year was the worst for tourism – that there were only four people in the hotel, but that in November it would be full. Right now it’s too hot for most people.
I brought my passport to a friend of Hilal’s to get my permission and then had a lunch at the same mediocre restaurant as the night before before setting out to try to find Fatnas Island again on bike. This time I actually asked some kids for directions. Again, I rode for miles through the desert, but this time eventually did reach the water. On the island is a small spring-fed pool with very pretty blue water. No one was swimming, though there were sandals and clothes nearby. A little bit futher along the path is a small ahwa outside on the edge of the island. No one was there, not even an employee, though it looked open. The island isn’t as pretty as it once was, apparently, because the town has had to drain the lake some to keep the area from getting too salinated, which would kill the crops. Now the island is surrounded more by mudflats than water, though the lake itself remains quite nice looking.
Riding back, I passed an area with incredibly red, almost martian looking soil and little puddles grown over with a hard white substance. Apparently it was salt, and I spent some time walking around among the salt pools as I’d never seen anything similar.
After six miles of desert biking I was hot, so I went to an ahwa and had a glass of chilled karkaday tea and talked to a man from Tanta who had just opened an animal feed shop in Siwa. He was very friendly and asked me to come have tea with him again in the evening with another friend who spoke better English, but I had to turn him down since I was going to the desert that night.
At five that afternoon, I met Hilal in the town square. We walked to a back alley where a 4×4 was parked, and he told me to wait there. A driver showed up and told me to get in. I didn’t know who he was, but I did what he said, and then we went to meet Hilal, Danielle, and her friend Tamalyn to go out to the desert.
As it turns out, Tamalyn was very familiar with Siwa. She’s apparently a famous American bellydance instructor, about 50 years old, who has been to Siwa eight times. She wrote a book about some of her travels and included a chapter on the Oasis, which I read and which gave an interesting view of its culture and history. Hilal, the guide, was a good friend of hers. Danielle, the Canadian, is also a dancer, and knew Tamalyn from having taken a dance workshop from her.
We all headed out towards the desert with our driver, Tushtush. Like almost all the drivers who take tourists to the desert, Tushtush is a bedouin and has an incredibly deep knowledge of the desert. Later in the evening he would tell us all sorts of stories about his childhood and his adventures in the desert. He grew up in a small Bedouin town in the oasis but when he was young worked in Libya. To get to work, he would walk two days through the desert with his donkey. He claimed to be able to go anywhere in the desert one time and then return righ there without a problem at any later time. He said he could drive hundreds of kilometers into a desert whose landmarks are constantly shifting and be able to drive directly back to Siwa because he just always knew what direction it was in. Many people I met in Siwa said that Tushtush was the best driver around.
We drove into the desert, and almost at once everyone in the truck seemed stunned by the beauty of the desert. The dunes are huge, bigger than I would have thought, and the wind blows them into amazing shapes and gives them razor edges. From a distance, they look incredibly soft, almost blurry. For a while we just drove around looking, with Tushtush occasionally speeding over the peaks of dunes, turning the 4×4 into a rollercoaster.
Our first stop in the desert was a hot spring. Tamalyn and Hilal swam, but I just put my feet in. Like everyone in Siwa, Hilal wears a galabiyya and headdress most of the time, and when he said he was swimming I figured he would swim in his galabiyya. Instead, though, shocking both me and the several Japanese girls also hanging out there, he stripped right down to his briefs to get in. Not something I expected in this conservataive, rural town.
After the hot springs we went to a cool lake in the valley of several dunes called Bir Wahed. There were fish there, small ones, and I’m not sure how they got there. While we were hanging out at the lake, Hilal yelled something at us that we couldn’t catch and then ran off to the truck and sped away with Tushtush. We were confused, especially when another driver also sped off without his passengers. They sped off and up a huge dune nearby where it appeared that a 4×4 was stuck at the top. The drivers helped unstick the truck and came back for us. Hilal told us that the driver of that truck was a particularly dangerous driver. “If you want danger, go with him,” he said. “Of course, I ride with him, but not with tourists. I wouldn’t know what I would do if a tourist got hurt.” And, indeed, a tourist did get hurt, as evidenced by the bandages I saw this one Spanish girl wearing later that evening on her hand and ankle.
We drove on to an area of the desert where, in a valley between dunes, the ground is a giant mass of compressed sea shells and coral. This all used to be ocean.
It was nearing sunset by this time, so we drove to the top of a huge dune to watch. It looked pretty incredible, with really amazing colors. The five of us sat chatting on top of this dune long after the sun had gone down and the first stars had begun to rise.
Finally, we went to the place where we would be spending the night. It’s an area with one building where many of the safari drivers take their tours to sleep. There is a guy who cooks everyone dinner, and there are a number of people, both local and tourists, hanging out. When we arrived, long after the other few trucks of tourists, we had to wait a while for our dinner. When it was finally ready, they brought over dinner only for Tamaly, Danielle, and I, thinking that Hilal and Tushtush would eat off to the side like most of the other locals. I noticed at this point that, indeed, there was no mixing between the tourists and the Siwans other than in our little group, and it made me thankful to be with those I was with. We got a couple more plates and all ate together and had a great time.
Tushtush was wonderful, and he told us great stories as we sat after dinner. Tushtush is maybe 45 or 50 and just had a new baby about a month ago, and he was telling us just about how much he loved his wife, especially her long hair (his love on long hair came up many times over the night). He told us about how he would go out on safari for a week or more and miss her and then come home and say to her, “I missed you, take a shower and put on perfume,” and when he told us this he made hilarious hand motions. His wife, he said, would just reply, “Go away Tushtush, you’re too old for that.”
He told us about a pretty European woman who had been on safari with him several times over the years, and said, jokingly, “I could take another wife, but my wife, she would kill me in my sleep.”
After dinner, Tushtush and some other locals sat around a fire and started singing and playing music. Tamalyn and Danielle, being dancers, wanted more music and Hilal decided to get a group of local Siwan musicians to come out and play for us. We figured we could get the people at the camp to all kick in a few pounds to pay them.
After a couple hours, the musicians showed up, a group of fifteen men with various instruments. No one in the camp but us seemed interested in what they were doing, so we went off a ways from the camp and all sat down together for them to do their music. Interesting, traditional Siwan music is essentially only played by musicians who are drunk and stoned. Both hash and alcohol, though, are illegal in Siwa, so they drink homemade date wine. The men started playing, and did so for several hours while continuously passing around a bong and shot glasses of date wine poured from plastic water bottles. At one point, a cop from town showed up and the musicians were all afraid to play anymore. Hilal, though, talked to the cop, a friend, who assured him that he wasn’t there to get anyone in trouble. He was a cop in Siwa, he said, not in the desert. The music started again and went until they hash and liquor ran out. Then the musicians simply disappeared before I really even noticed.
While the music played, Hilal, Tamalyn, Danielle, and another guy named Fathi all danced. Siwan dance, traditionally, is a masculine thing, and it’s very, very interesting. The men, stoned and drunk, hike up their galabiyyas above their knees by tying a scarf around their waste and they do a dance that is sensual and sexual, with movements that, anywhere else, would be assumed to be associated almost exclusively with female dance. There is a long history of homosexuality among unmarried Siwan men (who are completely segregated from women before marriage), and the dance often becomes very homoerotic. According to Tamalyn’s book, the men often simulate sex with each other, and while I didn’t see it get to that point, Fathi humped the ground to the great delight of the other men watching.
Around 2AM, the music ended and it was time for bed. Danielle slept in a small tent that Hilal had brought, but the rest of us slept under heavy wool blankets on top of a tarp laid out on the sand. Tushtush slept nearby, driving his truck up next to us and sleeping right by the driver’s side door.
Sleeping in the desert wasn’t that easy – there were some mosquitoes and the ground was uneven – but lying down on my back and being able to look at the millions of stars in the dark desert sky was a pretty special feeling.
I woke up before sunrise the next morning, the first person awake in the camp, and I climbed up a nearby dune hill to watch. It was pretty spectacular, and it was amazing the way it went so quickly from cold to warm when the sun came over the horizon.
Eventually, the sun rose high enough to wake everyone else up, and we left to head back to town around 9:00AM. I headed back to my hotel to take a shower, feeling sandy and dirty from my night in the desert. Most of that day I spent lounging, reading at the restaurant where I was eating lunch and then at an ahwa. At the ahwa, I ran into the same guy from the day before and we talked again. I also ordered hot tea. It’s testament to the ways in which Egypt has changed me that, on a hut desert afternoon, I decided to sit outside and drink hot tea to relax.
In the evening, I met up with Danielle and another girl who she had met in Siwa for dinner. We ate at Daniell’e hotel, and the food was actually quite good. I had a date milkshake and lamb shank, both of which were very tasty. Danielle and I had decided to ride back to Cairo together the next morning. and we decided to look around at the craft stores to see if there was anything we needed. She wanted a Siwan wedding dress, which are big black, silk dresses with very intricate embroidery all over. She found one she liked in the store owned by Fathi, the young man who had danced with us the night before. She asked Hilal to go and try to negotiate the price down some, and he did try but didn’t get it down any more than she had.
We all ended up drinking tea sitting on the floor of Fathi’s shop until midnight. One of the guys there was a congenitally deaf guy about 20 years old named Shazali. He had of course never learned formal sign language, but he and the other Siwan guys seemed able to communicate pretty easily, even talking about old memories, and it was very cool to watch this sort of organic sign language in action. I also had the unique experience of being made fun of by a deaf Siwan in invented sign language: Shazali, in good humor, made fun of my sunburn while we were sitting together taking some.
I went home and a while after going to my room heard someone outside say “salaam aleikum.” I went back outside to see what was up, and there was an old Siwan man standing outside my room. I asked him what was up, and he just said he was going to be sleeping on the couch in the common room. We talked for a minute, but the Siwan accent to his Arabic made his speech nearly incomprehensible to me. I guess he wanted to let me know he was there so it wouldn’t startle me, but I’m really not sure.
The next morning Danielle and I caught a bus back to Cairo. The first leg, to Marsa Matruh, had no air conditioning and was pretty miserable. It also stopped, again, at the desert rest stop with the world’s worst restroom. Thankfully, there was good air conditioning from Matruh to Cairo.
As we approached the city, I began to think about how, after several days in beautiful, calm, and quiet Siwa I was heading back to dirty, crazy, loud Cairo. I imagined stepping off the bus and being assaulted by the smog and the noise and wondering what I was doing here.
But it didn’t happen like that. Instead, we drove into Cairo through some of the most beautiful land I’d seen in Egypt, farmland lusher than any in Siwa that made me remember that it was Cairo and the Nile, not the oases, that were once the breadbasket of the Roman empire. The city was loud, and the air was dirty, but it seemed not so offensive as I thought it would. And after getting home, I walked to my favorite neighborhood restaurant to get koshari and I ran into Max. We got a few bowls and went up to the roof of our building and had a pleasant dinner and then tea with Safi, and it was very nice. And I realized that for all its problems, I’m really going to miss Cairo when I leave it.
