It took place at night in the courtyard of a house discreetly surrounded by high, windowless walls. A space on the ground was spread with carpets, with some cushions at one side, and the moon shone down and illuminated the scene. A little wooden door in the wall was pushed open and about a dozen girls, followed by an old woman, and a small boy carrying a brazier of smoking incense, shuffled into the court and squatted down in a line on one side. The girls wore the usual Siwan dress, a blue striped robe reaching below the knees, and white silk-embroidered trousers; but besides this each of them wore a long silk, coloured scarf, hiding her face and shoulders, and a quantity of jingling silver ornaments and heavy bangles which they took off and gave to the old woman to hold while they danced. Three or four of them had small drums which they beat as they sang. At first they sat in a row, very carefully veiled, singing quietly to the accompaniment of the little tom-toms. Then one of them got up, with the thin coloured veil hiding her face, and began to dance, slowly at first, keeping time to the music, but gradually moving faster as the music grew wilder. The dancing began by simple steps and swaying gestures of the arms, then the movements became more rapid, and one saw a confused mass of swirling draperies and silver chains.
After each girl had danced for a few minutes the motif of music changed, becoming more sensuous, and the prima danseuse took the floor again. This time she performed a variety of the danse de ventre, which consists of queer quivering movements and swaying the body from the hips, keeping the upper part still, with arms stretched down and painted hands pointing outwards. This was varied by an occasional rapid twirl which gave the audience a sight of the dancer’s features; a pale face with long “kohl” tinted eyes and a scarlet painted mouth, set in a frame of black braided hair, oiled and shiny. Finally, the lilt of the music became even more seductive, and the dancer swung off the long, fringed, silk scarf and danced unveiled, swaying more violently, with her arms stretched above her head, stamping on the ground in time to the rhythm of the music, and finally subsiding into her place in an ecstasy of amorous excitement.
It was not an attractive performance, although the dance is one which is very much admired by natives, who consider it intensely alluring. One sees it in various forms all over Africa, and everywhere it is equally ugly and dull.
CONCLUSION
MANY people have at various times carefully considered the agricultural possibilities of Siwa from a commercial point of view. Undoubtedly the cultivation in the oasis could be greatly developed, as there is enough water to irrigate a much larger area of ground than that which is now being cultivated. At present the natives have only the most primitive ideas of agriculture; for instance, they neglect most of the fruit trees by doing no pruning, and through sheer laziness they have allowed various species to die out completely. They are handicapped, too, by having no proper tools or machinery. The dates of Siwa are exceptionally fine, famous all over Egypt, and besides these there is a quantity of other fruit whose quality could be much improved by proper care. Olive oil is a valuable product and commands a very high price on the coast and in Egypt. No wine is made from the grapes, and no one has experimented in drying fruit, which is a simple and lucrative industry.
But the difficulty that faces one in all commercial schemes is the means of transport. Camels can only be hired from the coast at rare intervals and during the season when the Arabs do not mind visiting the oasis, and their hire is so prohibitive as to make any heavy transport hardly worth while. The ex-Khedive went to Siwa for the purpose of seeing whether it would be worth running a light railway from the coast to the oasis, and since then the project has been seriously thought of more than once, but it has always been considered impracticable on account of the expense and the great difficulty of crossing such an expanse of waterless desert.
An alternative scheme of running a service of motor lorries is a more likely proposition, and when once started it might be highly remunerative. Some of the richest and most progressive Siwans were very anxious to buy a lorry and send their olive oil direct to Alexandria, but they failed to appreciate that one lorry alone would be useless, and the minimum number would have to be four.
Apart from the possibilities of trade Siwa is valuable as a field for excavators. So far very little digging has been done in Siwa and the adjoining oases, and undoubtedly there are great possibilities in this direction. Labour is cheap and one could hire enough men in the place to do any work of this kind. Nobody has attempted to locate and examine the subterranean passages which connect Aghourmi and the temple, and Siwa town with the Hill of the Dead. There is also the possibility of rediscovering the emerald mines which brought fame to the oasis many centuries ago, and which are now so completely forgotten that I doubt whether half a dozen people have ever heard of their existence. Under the present regime, though one does not know how long it will last, an Englishman can live at Siwa in perfect safety, and though the climate is certainly very hot in summer-time it is quite agreeable during more than half the year.
But Siwa will never become a much-visited place, which is perhaps all for the best, owing to the strip of desert which stretches between it and the coast. Otherwise it might have developed into another Biskra, which is the oasis in Algeria that Hitchens describes so wonderfully in The Garden of Allah. Quite lately I noticed in a travel book called Kufara, the Secret of the Sahara, by Mrs. Rosita Forbes, a mention of this very desert between Siwa and the coast which was described as a “tame desert.” This expression, used by a lady with such great knowledge of deserts in all parts of the world, surprised me—and I own that it annoyed me! Her only experience of this particular desert was acquired during the one day in which she motored up from Siwa to Matruh in the company of several officers of the F.D.A. who met her there. But people on the Western Desert can remember, only too well, a terrible fatality which occurred less than a year ago in which three Englishmen were involved, and which proved conclusively that no waterless desert is safe or “tame,” even in these days when cars can travel across it.