The three date markets are large walled-in squares where every merchant and family have a space to spread their dates for sale; one of them is common, the other two belong to east and west respectively. There is a little house by the entrance of each market where an old Sudanese watchman lives, paid in kind by contributions from everybody who uses the market. In the autumn thousands of Arabs come from Egypt and the west to buy dates, which are considered among the best in Egypt. Round the markets there are enclosures for camels and lodgings for the Arabs, who are only tolerated in the town because they come to trade. At the height of the season there is a busy scene. Hundreds of white-robed Arabs wander among the heaps of red, brown and yellow dates, arguing and bargaining loudly, while their camels gurgle and snarl outside, and over everything there rises a swarm of flies. Half-naked negroes toil and sweat as they load the camels with white palm-leaf baskets pressed down and full with sticky dates. Lively diversions occur when a shrill-voiced she-camel shakes off her load and runs wildly through the crowd, scattering the people, with her long neck stretched out like an agitated goose. Arab ponies squeal and shriek, donkeys bray and the pariah dogs snarl and yelp. There is a custom in Siwa that anybody may eat freely from the dates in the markets, but nobody is allowed to take any away; so the beggars, who are very numerous, crawl in among the buyers, clutching greedily with filthy hands at the best dates, and adding their whining complaints to the general din. Also all the dogs, children, chickens, goats and pigeons feed from the dates before the owners sell them. The most popular form of date food is a sort of “mush,” which consists of a solid mass of compressed dates with most, but not all, of the stones removed. I used to like dates, but after an hour in the markets one never wishes to eat another.
The square white tomb of Sidi Suliman dominates the date markets. Although not actually a mosque it is the most venerated building in Siwa. Around it there are a few white tombstones, and on most nights the building is illuminated with candles burnt by votaries at the shrine of the saint. Close by there is a large unfinished mosque which was built by the ex-Khedive, who left off the work owing to lack of funds. Mosques in Siwa are conspicuous by their curious minarets, which remind one of small factory chimneys, or brick kilns; otherwise they are very similar to houses, except that they generally include a large court with a roof supported by mud pillars. In several of the mosques there are schools, and one sees a number of small boys sitting on the ground, with bored expressions, droning long verses of the Koran in imitation of the old sheikh who teaches them.
Lately the “Powers that Be” decided that a regular school would be beneficial to the youth of Siwa. With some difficulty I secured a building and a teacher. The school began in great style. Almost every boy in the town attended. They learnt reading and writing, and after sunset they did “physical jerks” and drill, marching round the market square, much to the admiration of their parents. But the novelty palled. Attendance diminished. Attendance at school was to be quite voluntary, so I could do nothing. In about a month it had ceased to exist, and the little boys sat again at the feet of the old sheikhs in the mosque schools. Such is the conservatism of Siwa.
Shopping in Siwa is very simple. Each shop is a general shop and contains exactly the same as the others. Prices do not vary, so one deals exclusively with one merchant; the shops are sprinkled about the town and the customers of each are the people who live nearest. The shops themselves are hardly noticeable. There is no display of goods, nothing in fact to distinguish a shop. One enters a little door and the room inside looks rather more like a storeroom than a living room; sometimes there is a rough counter, some shelves and a weighing machine, but measures consist mostly of little baskets which are recognized as containing certain quantities. The sacks and cases round the room contain flour, beans, tea, rice and sugar; in one corner there are some rolls of calico and a bundle of coloured handkerchiefs hung on a nail from the ceiling.
In the storeroom which opens out of the shop there are more sacks, tins of oil, and perhaps a bundle of bedouin blankets. Yet some of the Siwan merchants clear over a thousand pounds a year by their shops and a little trade in dates. Egyptian money is used, the silver being much preferred to the paper currency, and credit is allowed, which enables the merchants to obtain mortgages and eventually possession of some of their customers’ gardens.
The merchants’ wives attend to the lady customers. There is a side door in every shop which leads to an upper room, and here the Siwan ladies buy their clothes, served by the wife or mother of the merchant. Their purchases are mainly “kohl” for darkening the eyes, henna for ornamenting fingers and hands, silver ornaments, soft scarlet leather shoes and boots, blue cotton material manufactured at Kerdassa, near Gizeh, grey shawls, silks for embroidery, dyes for colouring baskets and very expensive flashy silk handkerchiefs made in Manchester, which they wear round their heads when indoors. Some of the merchants’ wives sell charms and amulets besides clothes. The women are very conservative in their fashions, only certain colours being worn. I once wanted a piece of green material to use in making a flag. I sent to every single shop in the town, but without success. However, it caused great excitement, and I heard, on the following day, that the gossips of the town had come to the conclusion that I was going to marry, and the green stuff was to be part of the lady’s trousseau. They were disappointed.
There is nothing in Siwa that compares with the gorgeous bazaars of Cairo, or the gaily decked shops in the markets of provincial towns. These dark little shops have no colour, only a queer, rather pleasant smell, a potpourri of incense, spices, herbs, onions, olive oil and coffee. Meat is bought direct from the butchers, who combine and kill a sheep or a camel. Sugar and tea are the most popular necessities on the market. During the war, and for some time after, there was a sugar shortage. The supply for Siwa arrived at the coast, but rarely reached the oasis. When a small quantity did reach Siwa it was bought up immediately, and the merchants who obtained it took to gross profiteering. The price of an oke (2½ lbs.) reached as much as 40 piastres (8s.), which in Egypt is an excessively high price. Eventually the sale of sugar was supervised by the Government and sugar tickets were issued. Even then there were cases of sugar being smuggled across the frontier to Tripoli, where the shortage was even more severe. Arabs or Siwans are simply miserable if they have to go without sugar in their tea. It makes them cross and tiresome, and they say themselves that it injures their health. For the rest people depend on their garden produce, on dates, onions, fruit and coarse native bread. The women make their own clothes, and generally their husbands’ too, sometimes weaving the wool for the long “jibbas,” worn by the working men, on rough handlooms. There is a carpenter in the town and several masons, but as a shopping “centre” Siwa is not much of a catch.
Although Siwan houses are unprepossessing from the outside their interiors are comparatively comfortable. What I personally objected to was the exceeding lowness of the doors, and yet the Siwans on the whole are tall. They told me that doors were made small for the sake of warmth. Roughly the houses are built on the usual Arab pattern; on the ground floor there are storerooms, stables, and servants’ quarters, upstairs there are guest-rooms, harem, and living rooms. The entrance hall has seats of mud similar to the walls, and is usually screened from sight by a corner inside the door. Stairs are steep and narrow with sudden sharp turnings; they are always pitch dark, as only the rooms in the outer walls receive any light. Each house consists of two or three storeys and above them there is an open roof, sometimes with several rooms built on to it. The old houses of the high town are different, only those on the topmost level have open roofs. The immense thickness of the walls makes the houses cool in summer when the temperature often reaches 112 degrees in the shade, and warm in winter when icy winds sweep down from the high desert plateau. The rooms in the houses of the better classes are large and high, lit by little square windows, which are made in groups of three, one above and two below in order not to put unnecessary strain on the masonry. Each window has four divisions with a shutter to each division; these shutters are kept open in summer-time. The windows are very low, a few feet above the level of the floor, which allows people sitting on the ground to see out of them. The ceilings are made of palm trunks covered with rushes and a layer of mud; the ends of the trunks, if they are too long, project outside the walls and serve as pegs on which to hang bundles of bones to avert the “Evil Eye.” Mud, which becomes as hard as cement, is used not only for the walls, but for the stairs, the divans, ovens, and most of the kitchen utensils. Old stone coffins, discovered near the temple or in some of the rock tombs, are utilized as water-troughs in most houses. The floors are covered with palm matting, and an occasional old Turkish or Persian carpet; the divans are furnished with a few cushions, white bolster-like objects, or beautifully stamped leather from the Sudan. The walls are whitewashed and sometimes ornamented with crude coloured frescoes, and in almost every room there are several heavy wooden chests, handsomely carved, sometimes of great age, which are used for keeping valuables. Occasionally one sees a couple of chairs and a round tin table, like those which are used outside cafes, but personally I have always felt much more comfortable sitting cross-legged on a heap of cushions near the window than perched up on a rickety chair above my hosts. A brass tray, a low round table, a few baskets and an earthenware lamp hanging on the wall, completes the furniture of a guest-room. I have spent many pleasant hours sitting in one of these high rooms looking out over the feathery palm trees and watching the colours change as the sun sank behind the mountains, gossiping to some old sheikh, puffing a cigarette, and drinking little cups of sweet, green tea.
THE WESTERN QUARTER FROM AN EASTERN ROOF