The work is very fine indeed, so fine that in some cases the baskets will even hold water. They are made in various shapes, but generally round with a conical cover. Besides baskets they make dishes and platters with covers to them, which are used for carrying food and fruit. These baskets are exceedingly attractive and useful and command a high price in Cairo and in England. They are very light and can be made in “nests” of five or six, in order to be more easily conveyed. They are very distinctive and quite different to those that are made at Assuan, in Sinai, or the Sudan.
Siwan women also make a rough kind of pottery. They get the clay from a hill near Siwa, and another kind of clay which they make into paint from another place on the oasis. The pottery is all made by hand, not on a wheel, so it is very rough, but it acquires a good colour and a slight glaze. It is used for making bowls, dishes, pitchers and little braziers for a charcoal fire on which the kettle is kept hot when the Siwans make tea. These utensils are ornamented with rude patterns of a darker colour, the ground being generally yellow, or a reddish brown. I found that there was one old man in Siwa who was a professional toy-maker, which is an occupation that one rarely comes across among Mohammedans, all forms of statues or images being forbidden by the Koran as tending towards the worship of idols. But the Siwan children have dolls and toy animals, and they are very cleverly made, too. This old man made them chiefly of rags stuffed with sawdust, and they really compared very favourably with the “Teddy bears” and other monstrosities that one sees at home. Siwan children are queer little things, very solemn and not as lively as the small Sudanese. They start working at an early age, and before that they seem to spend most of their time dabbling about in the streams among the gardens. One difference that one notices between these small children and ones of the same age at home is that the former are not given to the tiresome habit of continually asking questions.
In trying to develop the basket-making industry one meets with many difficulties. The women are casual and lazy, so that it is almost impossible to ensure a definite supply of baskets by a certain date. The fact that the baskets are made only by women who live in strict seclusion is a great disadvantage, as one has to explain everything through a third person. Once as a great privilege I was allowed to see a woman at work on some baskets. She was the mother of one of the policemen, quite a venerable old thing, but for the occasion she sat swathed in a thick veil with only one eye showing, and thus with great difficulty she gave a demonstration of how baskets were made. I suggested several new shapes and patterns which she very quickly understood and taught to the others.
SIWA TOWN FROM THE SOUTH
With the bedouin women it is different. During the war, especially at the close of the Senussi operations, there was great destitution among the Arabs. Numbers of men who had served with the Senussi were killed, and many others retired over the frontier and never returned. Their wives and children were left unprovided for. As usual the English, against whom they had been fighting, turned and helped these refugees. Miss Baird, the daughter of the late Sir Alexander Baird, collected a number of these women and their children at Amria, in the desert west of Alexandria, and in conjunction with the F.D.A. started a carpet-making industry. She lived amongst them herself, superintended the work, and by degrees she acquired a wonderful influence over them. She became somewhat like Lady Hester Stanhope in the Lebanon, only her influence was not due to religious superstition. I once stopped at Amria on my way from Cairo to Sollum by camel in the early days of the industry, and I shall never forget my first impression of the four or five hundred wild bedouin women working away at the carpets like girls in a factory at home, absolutely controlled by one young Englishwoman right out in the desert. Miss Baird’s death in 1919 was a very great loss, but the work that she began is still being carried on by the F.D.A., who have moved the factory from Amria and installed it in an imposing building at Behig, which is the headquarters of the Eastern District of the Western Desert.
One of the things that is noticeable at Siwa is the absence of flowers. Owing to there being no rain there is no sudden burst of vegetation in the spring, as there is along the coast. At certain times there is blossom in the gardens on the various trees—apples, almonds, pomegranates, lemons, etc.—and for a month or two there are roses and a very heavily scented flowering shrub called “tamar-el-hindi.” But one does not see the riot of colour that follows on the track of the rains. There are very few wild animals, too. In the neighbouring oases one sees gazelle and a few foxes, and in Siwa itself there are quantities of jackals. According to the natives an animal which they call “Bakhr wahash”—wild ox—is to be found at a place called Gagub, an uninhabited oasis, consisting of a salt lake surrounded by sterile palm trees, between Siwa and Jerabub. But when I went there I saw no signs of the creature. It is described as being the size of a donkey, of a yellowish brown colour, with two horns like a cow’s.
In Siwa there are very few domestic animals. None of the people keep camels, partly because they have no need for them, and partly owing to the presence of the “ghaffar” fly which inoculates camels and horses with a disease that shortens their life very considerably. For this reason one set of camels belonging to the F.D.A. remain permanently at Siwa in order to avoid spreading the disease among the camels on the coast. Almost every man in Siwa has a donkey, and some of the large landowners have thirty or forty. One meets them everywhere, in the streets trotting along under enormous loads, but carrying them apparently with the greatest ease. The Siwans rarely walk any distance, they always ride. The donkeys are stout little beasts and are better treated on the whole than in Egypt. They are imported by the Gawazi Arabs from Upper Egypt and the Fayum, via Farafra, the oasis of “Bubbling Springs,” which lies south-east of Siwa, but they breed freely in Siwa, and their diet of dry dates seems to suit them well.
Donkeys are also used as a threshing machine. When the barley is ripe it is cut and collected and spread out in a circle on a smooth, hard piece of ground. Ten or fifteen donkeys are harnessed abreast, in line, and driven round and round over the barley; when they wheel the innermost donkey moves very slowly, and the outer ones trot fast. In this way the corn is crushed out of the husks. Afterwards it is winnowed by the simple process of throwing it up into the air so that the straw blows away and leaves only grain. There are about a hundred cows in Siwa; they are small animals, about the size of a Jersey, but they give very good milk.
At certain times one sees quite a number of birds at Siwa, but they are mostly migratory. I have noticed crane, duck, flamingo and geese on the salt lakes; hawks, crows, ravens and owls among the cliffs; doves, pigeon, hoopoes, wagtails and several varieties of small singing birds in the gardens. Some of them nest in the oasis, and I collected about a dozen different kinds of eggs, but unfortunately they all got broken. There is one bird which is, I believe, indigenous to Siwa, it is known by the natives as “Haj Mawla.” It is about the size of a thrush, black with white feathers in its tail, and a very pretty song somewhat similar to the note of a robin.