There is another even more fantastic story that sometimes at midnight one of the witches swings a cord from her house on the battlements to the top of the tall minaret of a mosque just below. She then steps off the wall and walks along the rope, which is suspended in mid-air, like a tight-rope dancer. People also assert that it is a practice of the witches to creep out into the graveyards at night, to dig up a body, tear off the head, and carry it back in their mouths like animals. This gruesome habit was ascribed to werewolves in the olden days.
Often when there is a case of theft in the town one of the “wise women” is summoned to help discover the thief and the whereabouts of the stolen property. She occasionally finds the property, but very rarely exposes the culprit. One day a rich merchant came to my office in a great fuss and complained that a quantity of silver ornaments belonging to his wife had disappeared from his house. I held an official inquiry, but there were no clues, and nothing was found out. Then the merchant invited the help of an old woman called Marika, who according to popular opinion was assisted by a familiar jinn. He offered her a substantial reward if she could trace the jewellery. About a week later Marika came to the merchant and asked him to collect every single person in his household outside the door of the house at a certain time that night. The door was closed on the empty house and the old woman hobbled up and down outside it for about ten minutes, muttering incantations and watched with considerable awe by the whole household. After this proceeding she flung open the door and led the merchant to one of the lower rooms where the missing ornaments were found lying on the floor near the window. She explained that a jinn had brought them back; the merchant paid her a reward and she then retired. Nobody thought of trying to discover who had replaced the stuff, and my suggestion that the lady herself had some knowledge of the culprit was indignantly dismissed. These old women have access to all the harems and have a considerable influence over the women, so they are able to collect an enormous amount of information which helps them in affairs like these, though they are by no means always so successful.
If a number of people are implicated in a theft another very curious system is used for discovering the culprit. A smooth, round dish, or a flat, round piece of wood about the size of a plate is produced and inscribed with curious hieroglyphics and verses from the Koran. Two men, one of them who has to be an expert, sit down on the ground facing each other, holding the dish in the air about a foot from the ground, balanced on the tips of their fingers. Each of the suspects come in one by one and places a scrap of paper or rag on the middle of the round piece of wood. If they are innocent nothing happens, but when the guilty man has dropped his piece of paper on to it the wood begins to revolve. I have seen this performance done three times; on two occasions nothing happened, but the other time the wood certainly did move round, although I could not see how it was manipulated.
Divination, which is considered to be a form of satanic magic among good Mohammedans, is much practised at Siwa. Perhaps it is the idea of oracular communication which has lingered in the oasis since the days when Siwa was famous for its oracle. Its most frequent form is the interpretation of dreams, but future events are also discovered by examining certain bones in animals that are slaughtered for food, in a similar manner to the Roman augeries. The lines on certain bones of a sheep denote coming events. One old man, after examining the thigh bone of a young kid, announced to me that ten men and six camels would arrive on the morrow from Jerabub, and also that a large convoy was moving from the coast to Jerabub. Part of the prediction turned out to be true, but I expect that he found out about the camels before he made the prophecy.
The interpretation of dreams is considered the most reliable guidance of this kind. When a man has a difficult problem to decide he pays fees to a Fiki and gives him some small article that belongs to him. The Fiki takes the article, a cap for instance, and goes to the tomb of Sidi Suliman or another sheikh; he prays and then lies down and sleeps. Afterwards he interprets his dream as an answer to his client’s questions. Sometimes he has to visit the tomb many times before being able to give any advice, so in an urgent case this system would not be a success. The art of divination at tombs is hereditary, and there is a kind of code which attaches definite meanings to certain things that the man dreams about. The ancient Berbers who believed in an after life consulted at the graves of their chiefs in a similar manner.
One of the Fikis, an old man who has performed the Pilgrimage four times, is an expert fortune-teller. His methods are many, but his favourite one seems to be a complicated system by which he draws a species of chart in the sand or on paper, with a number of little squares or “houses” which he fills in with figures depending on his client’s birth date. He has other ways of working with sand alone, or by opening a certain Arabic book on necromancy at random, and reading from the page at which he happens to open it. The natives have great faith in him, and say that his predictions are very accurate—but this was not my opinion when I once consulted him as an experiment.
When there is an epidemic in Siwa, such as the “Spanish Influenza” which carried off an enormous proportion of the population in 1918, a ceremony takes place which must have originated when the Berbers of Siwa made sacrifices to appease their gods. The wealthy men of the town subscribe together and buy a young heifer. For several days it is allowed to roam about feeding as it likes in anybody’s garden. On an appointed day the people assemble in the square before the tomb of Sidi Suliman, and the heifer is brought forward and decorated with wreaths and flowers. It is then led seven times round the walls, followed by a procession of the sheikhs and a band of men and boys playing on cymbals, drums and pipes. It is led to the gate of the principal mosque, Gama el Atik; a man steps forward and slits its right ear with a knife, drawing blood, and then throws the knife away. Afterwards the butchers slaughter it, cutting up the meat into innumerable minute pieces and distributing it so that each household in Siwa has one small piece. The people take the scraps of meat home and hang them up in their house, and this, so they say, has the effect of removing any plague or disease that affects the town. Herodotus describes almost the same ceremony as being a custom among the ancient Libyans.
Every Mohammedan is supposed, once in his lifetime, to perform the Pilgrimage to Mecca. But only very few Siwans have enough money to do this. Generally, every summer, two or three men go from Siwa, taking with them a sum of money, the proceeds of the sale of dates from certain trees which have been dedicated by their owners as offerings to the mosque at Mecca. Endowments of this description, either for the support of a mosque or religious school, or for the giving of alms to the poor on certain days in the year, are often made by wealthy Mohammedans. A gift of this kind is called a “wakf,” and there is a special branch of the Egyptian Government which deals with them, but in Siwa the “wakfs” are administered by one of the sheikhs, and this gives cause for a great deal of quarrelling and libels. The pilgrims from Siwa carry the money with them, though it often amounts to well over a hundred pounds, which among Arabs is a very considerable sum, but the sanctity of their purpose protects them from robbery. They generally accompany a caravan of Arabs going direct to Alexandria, via the oasis of Gara.
On the day of their departure the whole town turns out to see them off, escorting them to the most distant spring on the eastern edge of the oasis. The wives of the pilgrims accompany them, and when they arrive at the parting-point the following quaint ceremony takes place. The crowd form up in the background, leaving the pilgrims and their wives on an open space by the side of the spring. A near relative takes from the wife of the pilgrim her round silver bangles and rolls them along the ground, a distance of about a hundred yards, to where the husband stands facing the east. The wife, who on this occasion is dressed entirely in white, runs along behind him and gathers up a little sand from each place where the bracelets stopped rolling and fell to the ground. She puts the sand carefully into a little leather bag. After this she stands under a certain very tall palm tree near the spring while the relative climbs up and cuts off three long palm fronds which he gives to her. After farewells have been said the caravan goes on its way, the camels driven along in a bunch in front, followed by the Arabs and the pilgrims; the wives and people return to Siwa, the women wailing noisily, and the men beating tom-toms and singing. The spring is about a mile beyond Aghourmi, and generally on that day the sheikh of the village gives an entertainment and a luncheon to some of the people.
On arrival at her house the wife of the pilgrim, with the women of the family and one near male relation, goes up to the roof and ties the three palm branches firmly to one corner; she puts the sand into a little green linen bag and fastens it to the tips of the three palm fronds, so that they bend towards the east—towards Mecca. This ensures the pilgrim a safe journey and also serves to let everybody know that the owner of the house is doing the Pilgrimage.