Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.”
“I hear the women singing, and the throbbing of the drum,
And when the song is failing, or the drums a moment mute,
The weirdly wistful wailing, of the melancholy flute.”
SIWANS, on the whole, do not take life very seriously, and when they have an excuse for an entertainment they thoroughly let themselves go and are glad of an occasion, if they can afford it, for a terrific gastronomic display, at which an Englishman feels like a canary feeding among hungry ostriches. The poor people eat twice a day, in the morning and evening; the meal consists mainly of dates washed down by lubki and a few drops of tea. They are very sociable, fond of talk, of entertaining their friends and holding “fantasias,” but one notices very much the entire absence of communion between sexes. Men hardly ever speak to women in public, and it would be considered quite a scandal for anyone to be seen in company with his own wife, almost worse than if he was seen speaking to the wife of another man.
With the Arabs it is different. They meet about the camps, and especially at the wells, which from the time of Rebekah have been the scene of many flirtations and courtships. The young men often go and sit by the well-head watching the women drawing water, chaffing and talking to them and, very occasionally, helping them to haul up a heavy bucketful. I have often seen most amusing “goings-on” at a well. Lifting up the weighty tins and drawing up the skins of water gives the girls an opportunity for coquettish displays of neat arms and ankles, but an infinitely more modest expanse is exhibited by these Arabs than by the average young woman in England to-day. But in Siwa if one rode past a spring where women were washing clothes they would run off into the gardens as fast as they could, and even when a Siwan man came to the pool they retired hurriedly with shawls pulled over their faces, and waited some distance away.
In the hot summer evenings, when noises are hushed and the day’s work is over, men sit in little groups outside their doors on low mud benches, drinking tea, discussing the latest “cackle of the palm-tree town,” and watching the piping shepherds driving their flocks home from the grazing, raising clouds of golden dust as they come along the sandy roads. The women collect on the roofs up above, playing with their children and talking to each other. Each sheikh sits before his house surrounded by a little crowd of sycophants, sipping tea and adulation, and listening to the latest scandal told about his rival of the opposite faction. Passers-by are invited to join in, and if a stranger arrives there ensues a lengthy greeting of much-repeated phrases, many hand-shakings, and polite expressions. When one walked through the market-place after sunset there would be a murmur of conversation from the shadowy white figures sitting and lying round the doorways, who rose up and bowed at one’s approach, and then sank down again silently. This Eastern deference is very impressive at first, but it does not take long to get accustomed to it.
In Siwa there is no lurid night life like that of Cairo, in which novelists revel. The people go early to bed and lights are very little used. Even the quarter of the women of the town is as quiet as the other streets. There are no noisy cafes with music and dancing girls, and no hidden houses where natives smoke hashish and opium. The Senussi religion forbids smoking, or “drinking tobacco,” as it is called, also coffee, which is supposed to be too stimulating for the passions, and for this reason tea is the universal drink. Life is a very leisurely affair, a pleasant monotony, and “Bukra—inshallah!”—to-morrow, if God wills—is the favourite expression. Very few games are played. Chess, which was invented in the East, is unknown, but one sometimes sees a couple of men deeply absorbed in a game called “helga,” which is rather like draughts, played with onions and camel-dung on a board which is marked out in the sand on the ground.
The younger men, especially the ones with black blood in their veins, are much addicted to drinking lubki, an inexpensive, intoxicating liquor made from the sap of palm trees. The branches that form the crown of the tree are cut off, leaving the heart of the palm tree bare. A groove is cut from the heart through the thick outer bark, and a jar is hung at the end of this groove which receives the juice when it oozes up from the tree. A palm which has been tapped in this way yields lubki for two or three months, and if the branches are allowed to grow again after some time the tree will continue to bear fruit, but the branches grow very ragged and trees that have been used for lubki acquire a rather drunken-looking appearance which always remains. One of the favourite tricks of small Siwan boys is to climb up the palm trunks and drink the lubki from the jar in which it is being collected by the owner of the garden. When freshly drawn it is as sweet and frothy as ginger-beer, but in a few days it becomes strongly alcoholic and tastes bitter, like sour milk. Labourers working in the gardens always retire to a spring and bathe after the day’s work, then they enjoy a long “sundowner” of lubki before they ride home to the town. All intoxicating drinks are forbidden by the Koran, but in Siwa the people satisfy their consciences by saying that the Prophet approved of all products of the palm tree, so lubki cannot be a forbidden drink.
The Siwans are most particular in their religious observances. There are a very large number of mosques in comparison to the population, and Friday—the Mohammedan Sabbath—is very strictly kept. On Thursday evening the prayers of the muezzins are longer, as they remind the people that the morrow is Friday. On Friday all the men visit the mosques; no work is done in the gardens, and sometimes one of the sheikhs distributes alms to the poor outside a mosque, or at the tomb of one of his illustrious ancestors. For a long time before the event the “mesakin” (poor) of the town collect at the place; one sees old blind men, cripples, shrivelled hags, and ragged women carrying solemn little babies, every one trying hard to appear the most abjectly destitute, and therefore the most deserving case for alms. Then the sheikh arrives, fat and prosperous, holding an umbrella, and followed by some stout servants carrying huge bowls heaped with cold boiled rice spotted with dark-coloured lumps of camel flesh. The dishes are set down before the people, men and women sitting apart, with a servant standing near each dish to keep order and prevent free fights. The paupers snatch and claw at the food, grabbing it with skinny, dirty fingers, squabbling fiercely over yellowish-looking lumps of fat, shrieking vile abuse at each other and trying to hide tasty scraps of meat in their clothes. The sheikh looks on with a complacent smile and listens with much gratification while his friends make audible remarks about his excessive generosity and his liberal qualities.