March 2000
Siwa is one of those untouched places left in Egypt. The townspeople use donkey carts for transportation, almost all the women are completely veiled from head to toe in black--one doesn't even see their eyes--while the men wear light violet galabeyas. This was the place where Alexander consulted the oracle and the place where he wanted to be buried. It is surrounded by large salt lakes and the salt penetrates the soil of the oases which resulted in melted towns when the once every fifty year rain came down. There are two ruins of these ancient towns, one is right in the middle of the market square which rises above the existing bustle of their commerce today. You can still walk the streets of this ancient town and peer through the windows left in crumbling walls. From the top you look out over palm trees and across the salt lake to what they call the sand sea desert. Siwa is 35 kilometers from the border of Libya.
It took us two days by bus to get to Siwa from Cairo. One has to go to Marsa Martrouh a resort town on the coast with sandy beaches and beautiful turquoise water. It is about three hours west of Alexandria and the place has obviously been built up recently probably all in the past twenty years. This is reflected in the reaction of the locals towards us. It is the first time in Egypt that I felt as if I was an alien. The men followed us and made themselves look ridiculous, a woman I tried to ask for directions walked by me without stopping. At least half the women here were completely veiled. And we only saw three other tourists. We had been hoping to be able to take advantage of the beach, we had booked a hotel where women are allowed to wear bathing suits. On the other beaches closer to town, the women have to remain completely covered and they wade into the water wearing their long galabeyas. But this time of year it is too cold to even think of swimming. Even for me!
The next morning it was the 7 a.m. bus that would take us to Siwa through a desert that was completely flat and barren. This was the most desolate desert I have ever seen and it is hard to imagine the eight days camel ride from Marsa Martrouh to Siwa that Alexander must have experienced. Taking the public buses one gets a good dose of movies whether you want them or not. All in all we saw (or heard anyway) six, one of which was Brave Heart. Egyptians can't imagine traveling in silence. If it is not the movies it is loud music or the prayers blasting from speakers set every two seats apart. It was a surprise to us when in the middle of the trip the bus stopped. I looked out the window and it was a small pickup truck turned over in the sand. Immediately, with no announcement from the driver, all the men (which most everybody on the bus) silently left their seats, gathered behind the car and righted it. They didn't show any sign of surprise or need to discuss how anything should be done, they just worked as a unit, did their job and returned to the bus as if this was a normal, scripted, part of the ride. The driver of the pickup stayed behind with his car, neither seemed to be hurt (I guess sand is soft) and I assume he continued on his way to Marsa Martrouh. This road only goes to Siwa and MM and only has one stop in between, a little cafe with outdoor primitive toilets that looked like made over stalls for animals. The toilets were not separated by sex as is usually the case but I noticed most men went behind the building to relieve themselves. Of the six stalls in the space, only two had doors on them. I think it is things like this that make it impossible for Egyptian women to conceive of traveling without a male companion who of course should be a family member.
The best part of Siwa is the town itself seen best by sitting in the cafes watching the donkey carts. Sometimes you see a donkey wandering around pulling his cart with no owner in sight, or roosters running by with no apparent place to go. Siwans still make olive oil by hand pushing wooden pestles that grind the olives; one feels as if the place operates as it has been done for centuries. This holiday was Eid which is a religious holiday commemorating Abraham's near sacrifice of his son. In Egypt it is Ismail not Isaac who they talk about. In Siwa the call to prayer that wakes you at 5 a.m. is one that reverberates throughout the whole town. It comes from the various mosques all slightly off beat with each other so it is a round of songs that repeat over and over, each sheik with a different style of invocation and rhythm. It would be hard to live there as an atheist.
We went out into the desert, this time accompanied by the local Berber guides, a culture different from that of the Bedouin.The people of Siwa have their own language which sounds more African to me than Arab. The trip in the desert was less organized and certainly less efficient with time than any of our other excursions. Obviously tourism is a new phenomenon here. We had asked to see a new eco-lodge which is not yet open but is almost finished. It is built in the old style of architecture blending in with the cliff it abuts and circling up to look out over the salt lake. The place only has candles for light, no electricity and is simple and elegant. Unfortunately it will also be expensive. I could easily have stayed there by the pool under the palm trees for the rest of the afternoon. But we wanted to get into the sand sea. This is the first time the desert has looked like I always imagined it to look – like the sand dunes in Lawrence of Arabia. In the past the rock outcroppings had been the main feature, here it was the dunes. They looked so innocuous until our driver decided to drive straight down one. It is the only time I have been scared in a car here. The ride was like a roller coaster and I decided to look out the back at the sun above the edge of the dune which rose behind me as we descended or rather fell through the sand which actually gently held us in a glide all the way to the bottom. I think it looks much scarier than it actually is. But one has to know how to drive in sand. For the first hour we were in a caravan that had to keep stopping to pull out the cars (driven by Cairenes on vacation).
Dinner was the best meal I have had in the desert. All over Egypt lambs had been slaughtered as part of the ritual of the holiday and tonight we were having lamb stew under the stars by the fire amidst sand dunes. It was wonderful. This night was the perfect temperature, not the freezing cold of other desert nights we had experienced. The Siwa desert also has hot and cold springs which are a great attraction for the tourists. Our group, though, wanted to feel isolated in the desert so we were happy away from the water and the people. Back at the hotel enough time was spent at the pool and I came back to Cairo looking less white but still no one really notices, I've had two people ask me this week, "Did you cut your hair?" By comparison I will always look white.
Siwan culture is quite different from Arab culture. Divorce is common and they have their own rituals around marriage and death. We visited the Mountain of the Dead which is a mountain completely cut up into tombs. As you walk across the top it is pock marked with holes. I was impressed with the quality of painting left intact in one tomb. The drawing looked very Greek although the gods and goddesses were Egyptian. The drawing was skilled and sensitive on the walls though completely unskilled on the ceiling. The stars around the image on the ceiling were reminiscent of those seen in Luxor. At the back of an adjacent tomb I saw molded serpents, 21 in all, decorating the door to the chamber leading to the sarcophagus.These three-dimensional little statues stuck to the wall are different from anything I have seen in Egypt. From what I have seen so far, it seems Egyptians created reliefs by carving into the wall, not placing objects that project out from it, and their sense of space and three dimensions is implied rather than stated. Siwa, being the only place in the region for traders to stop seems somehow to have incorporated a number of cultures and yet through its isolation has retained its own interpretation of them.
Tomorrow I give a lecture on my work and its relation to poetry to an English class at Cairo University. Although AUC seems quite Egyptian to me, it is criticized for being too Western so I am curious to see the local public university.
Seems hard to believe I will be back in Vermont in two months. There still is a trip to Turkey in between. Inshallah.
So good to hear all of your news!
Marrin