In summer-time the people sleep on the flat roofs of their houses, which for that reason are surrounded by low mud walls to ensure privacy from the neighbours. They lie on the roofs, men, women and children, always with their faces covered from the moon, because they say moonlight on sleeping faces causes madness. In the daytime the women gossip on the housetops and carry on intrigues, for there is nothing easier than hopping over the walls from one roof to the other, and it is not considered comme il faut for husbands to frequent the roofs in daytime. Often when I climbed up to the citadel and looked down over the town I saw a group of girls sitting on the roofs, generally singing and dressing each other’s hair. When they caught sight of an intruder watching them from above they bolted down the steep stairs like rabbits to their burrows. One sees real rabbits, too. Almost all the natives breed them, and for safety’s sake they are kept on the housetops.
One of the features of Siwa town are the “Dululas,” or sun shelters. They consist of spaces shaded from the sun by a roof of rushes and mud, supported by mud pillars. Often in the centre there is a stone basin containing water, which is kept always full at the expense of one of the sheikhs in memory of a deceased relation. Here the greybeards of the town assemble in the evenings, strangers sit and gossip when they visit the town, and the Camel Corps men wander through to hear the latest news. It is a sort of public club, and one hears even more gossip than at a club at home. The largest of these sun shelters has become a little market, and a few decrepit old men spread out their wares in its shade—a few baskets, a dozen onions, an old silk, tattered waistcoat and some red pepper would be the stock-in-trade of one of these hawkers. What they say in the “suk” corresponds to the “bazaar talk” in India, and it is incredible how soon the most secret facts are known there.
The Siwans are a distinct race quite apart from the Arabs of the Western Desert, but in appearance they differ very slightly from their bedouin neighbours. Owing to their isolated dwelling-place they have retained their original language, which appears to be an aboriginal Berber dialect. They are unquestionably the remnants of an aboriginal people of Berber stock, but constant intermarriage with outsiders has obliterated any universal feature in their appearance, and through intermarriage with Sudanese they have acquired a darker complexion and in some few cases negroid features. On the whole one does not see the Arab type, or the Fellah, or the Coptic type among the Siwans.
The men are tall and powerfully built, with slightly fairer complexions than the Arabs. In some cases they have light straight hair and blue eyes, and one whole family has red hair and pink cheeks, though they themselves do not know where this originated. Most of the younger men are singularly ugly and have a fierce and bestial expression, but with age they improve, and the elders of the town are pleasant, dignified-looking men, though effeminate in their manners. The children are pallid and unhealthy in appearance. The Siwans have high cheek-bones, straight noses, and short, weak chins. They are very conceited and think much of their looks; on feast days even the oldest men darken their eyes with “kohl” and soak themselves with evil-smelling scent.
The wealthy Siwans wear the usual Arab dress—white robes, a long silk shawl twisted round the body and flung over one shoulder, a soft red, blue-tasselled cap and yellow leather shoes. On gala days they appear in brilliant silks from Cairo, and coloured robes from Tripoli and Morocco, but on ordinary occasions the predominating colour is white. The servants and labourers, who form the bulk of the population, and include many Sudanese who were brought from the south as slaves, wear a long white shirt, white drawers, a skull cap and sometimes a curious sack-like garment made of locally spun wool ornamented by brightly coloured patterns in silk or dye. Siwa is the only place in Egypt where one does not see the natives apeing European dress or slouching about in khaki trousers or tunics—remnants of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
The women are small and slender, and very pale owing to the inactivity of strict seclusion. The palest women are the most admired. Their large black eyes are ornamented with “kohl,” and their small hands are tinted with henna. In public they wear a universal dress which is quite distinctive. It consists of a dark blue striped robe, reaching below the knees, with full sleeves, cut square and embroidered round the neck, white drawers with a strip of embroidery round the ankles, and a large square grey shawl with a dark blue border, which covers them when they go abroad. Their ornaments consist of innumerable silver ear-rings, with bunches of silver chains and little bells, silver bangles, anklets, and necklaces. An unmarried girl is distinguished by a “virginity disc,” which is an engraved silver disc about the size of a saucer, suspended round the neck by a heavy silver ring. These rings are generally very old and beautifully engraved with arabesques. When a Siwan woman is wearing all her silver ornaments she tinkles like a tinsmith’s cart, but her husband poetically compares her to a caparisoned pony. Their general appearance is quite pleasing, but they are very unlike the handsome, healthy-looking Arab women of the coast.
At home the wealthier women wear coloured silks and richer clothes. They wear their straight black hair thickly oiled and dressed in a complicated coiffure. A fringe of short curls hangs above the eyes, and a number of plaited braids are worn on each side of the face, like the fringe of a mop. Strips of scarlet leather are twisted into the tresses, which must always be of an uneven number, and on the ends of the leather are hung silver bells, rings and amulets. One of the first travellers to Siwa remarked on the strength of an ear that could bear such heavy silver ear-rings, but instead of hanging from the actual ear the rings are fastened to a leather band across the top of the head. All the material for women’s clothes is made by one family of Egyptian merchants at Kerdassa, near the Pyramids. One brother has a shop in Siwa, and the others live in Egypt. Owing to this the price of clothing is very great, yet none of the Siwan merchants have ever considered setting up an opposition trade.
Women of the upper classes rarely appear in public during the day, except at funerals, when hundreds of them squat round the house, like a crowd of grey crows, howling and shrieking. When one rides past they hop up from the ground and run a few steps, with long grey shawls trailing behind them on the ground, and then they squat down again, like vultures scared off a carcase. They never work in the fields or drive the flocks to pasturage like the Arab women, or the fellahin, but occupy themselves in making baskets, or pottery, and in household duties. When one woman calls on another she wears all the clothes she possesses, and gradually discards them in order to impress the people she is visiting with her wealth. When I met a woman in the streets she would scuttle into the nearest doorway, or if there was not one handy she would pull a shawl over her face and flatten herself against a wall; even hideous old harridans affected an ecstasy of shyness on seeing an Englishman. Hardly any of the women can speak Arabic, and it is owing to their strange secretive lives that the Siwans have retained their language and are so unprogressive to-day. They resolutely oppose all innovations, refusing even the help and advice of the Egyptian Government doctor. It is to their influence as mothers that the women owe what power they have, because Siwan men care very little for their wives. Most men keep one wife only at a time, but they often marry as many as twenty or thirty, if they can afford to, divorcing each one when she ceases to please.
The Siwans are typically Oriental. They are hospitable, dishonest, lazy, picturesque, ignorant, superstitious, cheerful, cunning, easily moved to joy or anger, fond of intrigue and ultra conservative. They are not immoral, they simply have no morals. The men are notoriously degenerate and resemble in their habits the Pathans of India. They seem to consider that every vice and indulgence is lawful. It is strange that these people who are among the most fanatical Mohammedans of Africa should have become the most vicious. Yet most of the Siwans are Senussi, members of that Mohammedan sect which corresponds in a way to the Puritanism of Christianity. It advocates a simple and abstemious life, and condemns severely smoking, drinking and luxury. Yet the most religious sheikhs are generally the most flagrantly outrageous.
In spite of their unenviable reputation the Siwans are quite satisfied with themselves, and speak with tolerant pity of the Arabs and the Sudanese. The Siwan Sudanese have become like their original masters, and do not seem to object to being called “slaves,” but there are constantly furious rows between the natives and the Camel Corps originating with the word “slave” being used with reference to the latter. The Arabs, and to a greater extent the Siwans, consider themselves very superior to the Sudanese who, until quite recently, they could buy and sell.