There are several cemeteries round the town, some of them belong to the easterners and some to the westerners. Almost all the roads into the town cross burying-grounds. Until a few years ago it was the custom to cover the grave with two split palm logs and a thin layer of earth, which usually subsided, leaving nothing but wood on the top. These old graves are still a source of danger, as often when one rides over them, without knowing, the wood gives way. Graves of sheikhs are distinguished by a roughly shaped headstone, and generally a little heap of earthenware braziers, left by the women who come to the cemetery and burn incense. When a particularly religious or important Siwan dies, his family keep a guard over the grave at night for about a fortnight after his death, which they say is necessary to prevent the ghoulish old witches from profaning it by digging up the corpse and stealing the dead man’s hair and finger-nails for their charms.
The fear of the Evil Eye is almost more deeply rooted in Siwa than in Egypt. It is thought that ill-disposed and jealous people can cast a malignant influence over others, and also over animals and inanimate objects. The Prophet Mohammed permitted the use of charms against the Evil Eye, although he forbade them for any other purposes. For this reason innumerable charms are worn and exhibited by the Siwans; houses, gardens and olive presses are protected from the much-dreaded curse by bundles of old bones, animals’ skulls, or black earthenware pots stuck upside down and set along the roofs. In many houses and in tombs an aloe plant is hung just inside the entrance, swinging from the ceiling, which prevents any envious person from doing harm. Special charms are made for animals by the witches and the Fikis. The charm used to protect a donkey consists of some ashes, a spider’s web, a little salt, and a scrap of paper inscribed with a verse from the Koran, tied in a black bag and hung round the animal’s neck. Some of the most valuable donkeys have quite a cluster of amulets hung round them. The ingredients of the various charms manufactured by the women are very similar to those used by the witches in Macbeth, those that are the most difficult to obtain being the most efficacious.
But in spite of innumerable precautions people are constantly under the impression that they have incurred the Evil Eye, and then complicated rites have to be performed in order to raise the curse. This can be done in various ways. If the evil wisher is known his victim follows him without being seen and collects a little sand from his footprints which he takes to the Fiki. The Fiki, for a small fee, recites certain verses over it, which removes the curse. Another system is for the victim to go on a Friday, without speaking to anybody on the way, to a male date palm. He pulls off some of the stringy, brown fibre and brings it back to the Fiki who twists it into a cord and binds it round the man’s head. The patient keeps this on his head during the day, and in the evening he again visits the Fiki who unties the cord and reads some appropriate passages from the Koran, after which the object is no longer in danger. There is another method which is frequently practised in more serious cases. The Fiki takes a hen’s egg—presumably a fresh one—and inscribes certain cabalistic signs upon it. He then burns a great deal of incense and mutters charms; when the patient has become thoroughly bewildered he takes the egg and moves it seven times round the victim’s head. He then breaks it in a basin, gazes fixedly at it, discovers whose is the Evil Eye, and destroys its power by scattering it on the floor.
Any individual who was popularly supposed to possess an Evil Eye was carefully avoided. There was one old woman who was particularly feared on this account. She was quite old and rather mad, but she certainly had an exceptionally evil expression, and she showed her face more than most of them. Anybody who met her in the morning, starting out to his garden or on some expedition, would attribute any mishap that occurred during the day to her malevolent glance.
The witches of Siwa live among some ruined houses in the highest part of the old town. Their leader is a little blind woman who is said to be 100 years old. She looks exactly like one of the shrivelled mummies that are found in some of the tombs near Siwa, but her scanty wisps of hair are dyed red which gives a most sinister effect. She creeps about leaning on a staff, like the regular witch in Grimm’s fairy tales, and although she is quite blind she manages to slip about the high battlements like a lizard, knowing by force of habit every stone in the place. When a client wishes to consult her he comes after nightfall to a certain place among the ruins high up in the town, where a number of dark passages converge, and then he calls her. She lives somewhere up above with two or three others. She mystifies her visitors by appearing suddenly, quite close to them, noiselessly and apparently from nowhere.
I once sent a message saying that I should like to make her acquaintance. One night after dinner I walked over to the town, taking a man with me who knew the place well. We scrambled up and up, through pitch-dark passages to the highest part of the town and eventually arrived at a little low door about 4 feet high, in one of the narrowest and steepest tunnels. After knocking several times it was opened. I lit a match and saw the little old woman herself. She led me up several more dark flights of steps to the roof of the house, and there, sitting in the moonlight, I drank tea with her. The tea was served by her grandchild, a Sudanese boy. Unfortunately I could hardly understand a word she said, but the tea was excellent, and the view was very fine.
It was a hot summer night, but the high roof was cool with even a faint breeze blowing across it. Looking down over the parapet one saw white-wrapped, sleeping figures on the roofs below, and in the distance there sounded the faint, mysterious melody of reed pipes and a tom-tom. These Libyan nights are very wonderful; the sky is a deep, dark blue, powdered with myriads of stars, and every few minutes a long-tailed meteor flashes downwards. Shooting stars are said to be hurled by the angels in heaven at the jinns on the earth below, but the Siwans fear them as they say that each star kills a palm tree. They prove this statement by arguing that when a tree dies in a natural way it withers from the bottom, but when it withers from the top, as many do, it is caused by a falling star.
When a Siwan girl thinks that it is about time that she was married, and no suitors are forthcoming, she adopts the following custom. On a Friday, when the muezzins on the mosques are calling the Faithful to pray at noon, she leaves the house, carrying some sugar in her right hand and a little salt tightly clutched in her left hand. She covers her face with her long, grey shawl and hurries through the streets, avoiding everybody, to a little hill outside the town—close to the Camel Corps barracks—which is crowned by the tomb of a very venerated Siwan sheikh. When she arrives she runs seven times round the tomb, eating the sugar and the salt and calling on the sheikh to help her. She does this on three Fridays in succession, and after that somebody comes to her parents and asks for her hand. Later, if she has a child, she distributes food to the poor at the tomb of the sheikh as a thank-offering. The actual tomb of Sheikh Abu Arash is inside a little whitewashed mud building. The tomb is covered with white linen, which is renewed by devotees of the saint, and a number of ostrich eggs, brought many years ago from the Sudan, are suspended from the ceiling. Sometimes women bring flowers and palm boughs and lay them on the tomb. Often on a Friday I have noticed a woman hurrying round it, muttering earnestly to herself and hoping for a husband. I wondered at one time whether the proximity of the Camel Corps barracks had anything to do with this recipe for obtaining a husband—but the belief has been held for many years, long before the Camel Corps were thought of.
Another way of obtaining a husband is as follows. The girl summons one of the “wise women” to her house and provides her with a basket, which is, by the way, a perquisite. The old woman takes the basket and goes round to each mosque in the town collecting a handful of dust from the ground immediately in front of each door. She then brings the basket full of dust back to the girl and they mix it with olive oil, making a kind of putty. The girl then brings in a round tin or a large round dish and takes a bath, using the putty as soap. The old woman carefully collects the water which has been used in an earthenware pitcher. She goes out at night again to each mosque and sprinkles a little of the water round the doors. The next day, when the men come in and out of the mosques they tread on the place where the water was poured, and probably some of the mud sticks to their feet. One of them is sure to demand the girl in marriage. There are various other methods of attaining the same ends; amulets and charms are manufactured by the witches, which are supposed to attract a certain man, especially if the ingredients of the charm include something that once belonged to him. The whole idea is very much the same as the system of love philtres and charms that were used in Europe in the Middle Ages.
The witches are supposed to be able to summon jinns whenever they want to, but any ordinary person has to follow out a complicated proceeding before being able to do so. The system used for invoking jinns is only practised secretly, and by women, but it is implicitly believed in by everybody. For forty-five days the woman eats no meat, feeding entirely on bread, rice, lentils and fruits. Every evening she bakes a loaf of wheaten bread, unsalted and flavoured with red pepper, which is the favourite flavouring among jinns. She takes the loaf, naked, with her hair hanging loose, to the rubbish heap outside her house, where she leaves it. On the forty-fourth night a jinn appears in the form of some familiar animal: a camel, donkey, or cow. If the woman is afraid it kills her at once, but if she is brave, and speaks to it, it does her bidding. The jinn tells her to prepare a dinner on the following night for six of his brothers. Next day she makes six loaves and flavours them with spiders’ webs besides pepper, and takes them out to the dust heap as before. She leaves them and returns an hour later. Then she finds the chief of the jinns, Iblis himself, waiting for her, a monstrous creature with flaming eyes, horns and great hooked teeth, breathing out fire from his mouth. This individual asks her what she desires and promises to carry out her wishes on the condition that from henceforth she never utters the name of Allah.