25th.
Moved off at 4.30 a.m. by chilly but brilliant moonlight. Led the camels and walked for the first hour, then mounted and rode. The men made a long line riding along in file. Arrived at Bir Hamed, another cistern, at about 8 a.m. We stay here till to-morrow morning in order to give the camels a good day’s grazing and watering, as this is the last well before the real desert. Bir Hamed is a very wild, picturesque place among the rocky foot-hills below the Scarp. In the spring it becomes one mass of flowers, but now it looks dry and barren. The camels drank frantically and then went out to graze. There is still a fair amount of water in the well, which is icy cold and very refreshing. I, and almost all the men, had a bath, as it is the last opportunity till we get to Siwa. I spent a lazy day in my tent and the men slept most of the time. At four o’clock the camels were driven in to drink again, this time they were less eager to get to the water and sipped it in a mincing way like an affected old lady drinking tea.
CAMEL CORPS
After dinner, when I was sitting outside my tent in the moonlight, I heard a faint sound of shouting in the distance. I took a couple of men and walked in the direction the sound came from. About a mile from the camp we sighted a large number of black Arab tents that showed up clear in the moonlight on a slight rise in the ground. There had been a marriage in the tribe and the festivities were being concluded by a dance.
Two girls were slowly revolving round in the centre of an enormous circle of white-robed bedouins each holding in her hand, above her head, a long cane which she flourished in the manner that a dancer uses a bouquet of flowers. The girls wore the usual Arab dress, the black, long-sleeved robe and scarlet waist-band, but their faces were hidden by long black veils, and they wore white shawls fastened in flounces round the waist, which stuck out almost like a ballet girl’s skirt. The moon flashed on the heavy silver bangles on their arms and on their silver necklaces and earrings.
The audience were divided into four parties, the object of each party being to attract the dancers to them by the enthusiasm of their singing and hand-clapping. A man playing on a flute and another with a drum led the tune, which was wearily monotonous but strangely attractive and a fitting accompaniment to the scene. Gradually the singing became faster and louder, the white-robed Arabs swayed to and fro urging the dancers to fresh exertions; the girls revolved more rapidly and one of them began the “Dance de ventre,” which consists of rather sensuous quivering movements, not attractive to a European, but much admired by natives. The singing and hand-clapping became more violent and finally culminated in frenzied shouting when one of the girls halted, swaying, before the loudest section of the audience, and several men flung themselves on their knees, kissing her feet and exclaiming at her beauty, which if it existed was quite invisible to me, and praising her skill in dancing with high-flown speeches and compliments. Outside the circle of brown-faced, white-clad Arabs, and in the doors of the tents, there were a crowd of women watching the performance, and a group of dancing girls stood whispering to each other under their black veils, tinkling their ornaments, as they waited to step into the circle and relieve their companions.
I stood watching the dancing for a long time, and then returned to my tent. As I walked away I heard hoarse shouts of “Ya Ayesha—ya Khadiga,” as two new girls began to dance, and the whistle and the drum struck up another queer little melody. Not until almost dawn did quiet reign again on the desert, broken only by the occasional wail of a wandering jackal.
26th.
Moved off at 4 a.m. and marched till 9.30. We led the camels for the first two hours along the rocky, difficult ground below the Scarp, and then up a steep, stony pass to the top. I reached the top just as the “false dawn” glimmered with a streak of pale light in the east. There was a heavy dew; all the country down below looked grey and misty. Gradually the long, twisting line of led camels reached the summit, and as we rode off across the level upland towards Siwa the real sunrise began and the stars faded in the sky. The dew was so thick that the spiders’ webs on the bushes all sparkled. By midday it was intolerably hot. We halted at a place called Qur el Beid, a most depressing spot consisting of three low sand-hills and a tiny patch of vegetation which the camels sniffed at contemptuously, probably comparing it in their minds to the much superior grazing near Bir Hamed. I lunched lightly and lay sweating in my tent with Howa, my Silugi dog, lying openmouthed and panting at my side till we moved on again for the afternoon “shid”—march.