From the Markaz I rode home, and after a light lunch either painted, read, or went to sleep till about four, when I had another bathe, followed by tea. After tea I went over to the Camel Corps for “stables,” and then generally out for a walk. Sometimes I went to Gebel Muta, the Hill of the Dead, a rocky hill on the north of the town full of tombs hewn out of the living rock, some of them being large and lofty with as many as eight coffin spaces round the sides. In one of them there were the remains of a coloured wall painting with figures of men and animals. Other times I climbed up to the top of the town. The view from the flat roofs of the highest houses on the rock is very wonderful, especially at sunset. On the south of the town there is a long ridge of rolling yellow sand-hills which change their contours when the desert winds sweep across them, and become pink and salmon-coloured in the evenings; towards the north one looks across a sea of palm groves and brilliant green cultivation to the jagged range of mountains that separate Siwa from the desert; on the west there is a great square mountain with a gleaming silver salt lake at its foot, and in the east one sees the little village of Aghourmi crowning another high rock which rises above the tree-tops.
At sunset the scene is exquisite, the hills turn from pink to mauve, and from mauve to purple, and their peaks are sharply outlined against the gold and crimson sky; long violet shadows spread across the rosy-tinted sand-hills, and the palm groves seem to take on a more vivid shade of green. The smoke ascends in thin spirals from the evening fires, and a low murmur rises from the streets and squares below; then suddenly the prayer of the muezzin sounds from the many mosques, and one can see the white-robed figures swaying to and fro on the narrow pinnacles of the round towers that in Siwa take the place of minarets. When the call to prayer is over and the last mournful chant has echoed across the oasis, and the glow in the sky is fading away, one hears far down beneath the soft thudding of a tom-tom and perhaps the faint whine of a reed pipe. When the deep blue Libyan night covers the city the music becomes louder and seems to throb like a feverish pulse from the heart of the town.
Often in the evening I rode out and called on the Sheikh of Aghourmi, which is the little village on another rock two miles from Siwa. Mahdi Abdel Nebi had recently succeeded to his father as Sheikh of Aghourmi and was having some difficulty in sustaining his authority, even with the support of the Administration, against the plots and intrigues of an old cousin of his, one Haj Mohammed Hammam, a sly old man who was rich, influential, and a thorough scoundrel, and wished to oust his cousin and become sheikh himself. After the war Haj Hammam had carefully cultivated the acquaintance of any British officers who came to Siwa, and he was inordinately proud of knowing their names and of certain small gifts that they had given him—a broken compass, a highly coloured biscuit tin and some photographs. These he showed on every occasion, and also remarked that they used always to call him “The Sheikh of Aghourmi”—this apparently being his only claim to the title.
Hammam used to employ people to let him know immediately when I was riding out to Aghourmi, so that he, and not the sheikh, should be waiting to receive me at the gates; then he would try to persuade me to accept his hospitality instead of the sheikh’s. Sheikh Mahdi always invited his old cousin to the tea drinking, though I could well have dispensed with him, but one could not object to the presence of another guest. Sheikh Mahdi’s house was the only one in which a woman ever appeared when I was there. She was an old Sudanese slave woman who had been brought many years ago from the Sudan. Once I got her to tell me her story, but she spoke such a queer mixture of Arabic and Siwan that it was difficult to follow.
It appeared that when she was about eight years old she and her small brother were playing outside their village somewhere in the North-West Sudan, and a band of Arabs—slave raiders—swooped down and carried them off. They were taken up into Tripoli and there she was sold to another Arab who brought her to Siwa on his way to Egypt. She fell ill and almost died, so the Arab, who did not want to delay, sold her cheap to the Sheikh of Aghourmi, father of the present one; he handed her over to his wife who cured the child. She remained at Aghourmi for the rest of her life. She was a lively old body and told the story in a very cheerful way, giggling and laughing, not apparently feeling any wish to return to her own land.
SHEIKH MAHDI ABDEL NEBI, OF AGHOURMI WITH HIS DAUGHTER AND COUSIN
Aghourmi is almost more picturesque than Siwa. The road to the gate passes below the overhanging rock on which the houses stand, which is thickly surrounded by a luxuriant wilderness of apricot, fig and palm trees. The steep path to the village goes under three archways, each with an enormous wooden gateway, and this path is the only possible means of entering the place. Above one of the gates there is a high tower, and the houses alongside the path are loopholed so that an enemy making an attack could be safely fired at from all sides by the defenders. Inside the town there is the same dark maze of narrow streets as in Siwa, with wells and olive presses, but all on a smaller scale than those in Siwa town. There are a few houses below the walls. The sheikh lives in the middle of the town in a big, high house with a roof that has as fine a view as any that I have seen.
I got home after sunset and often had another bathe—by moonlight—before changing into flannels for dinner, which I had on the terrace in front of the house. I slept upstairs, on the roof, but I always kept a spare bed ready in the room as quite often a wild “haboob”—sand-storm—would blow up in the middle of the night, and even indoors one would be smothered and choked with sand. Such was the average day at Siwa, and by nine or ten o’clock one was glad to turn in.
Occasionally after dinner one of the natives who were employed as secret service agents would arrive very mysteriously at the house on some excuse and report that there were fire-arms in the house of So-and-So. Sometimes the information was no more than an exaggerated rumour, but if it sounded true I would make a night raid on the person who was supposed to have rifles. These night raids were very dramatic, but did not always yield the harvest that was expected. The informer would lead the way, disguised by a turban pulled low over his head and a scarf muffling his eyes. I followed with a dozen armed Sudanese. The difficulty was to prevent the owner of the house getting wind of us before we surrounded the building, and to surround a Siwan house which has dozens of doors and passages and exits over roofs is no easy matter. It was not a matter of entering a hostile town, but of surprising a household. We would pad silently into the town, and anybody who we met roaming the streets would be attached to the party to prevent his giving warning. On reaching the house the guide slipped away in the darkness, and I surrounded the house with men; then at a whistle each man lit a torch and I beat on the door and demanded admittance.