Wanderings in North Africa

by traveler James Hamilton

One evening, just before sunset, when seated with Yusuf on the roof of my dwelling, four men, with guns, were seen on the rock which overhangs the house. They were observed just as they were creeping round a corner, by a servant who was bringing a chibouque, our backs being turned to them; a cry was immediately raised, people were dispatched to arrest them, and two were secured, the others escaping. Yusuf had no power to do anything with them, he being, in fact, as much a prisoner as myself; and was fain to accept their explanation, that they had come to shoot crows, in order to obtain their galls, with which to anoint the eyes of some one who had an ophthalmia.

Other trivial annoyances, many of them so childish as to be merely amusing, were with great ingenuity resorted to. The little children used to assemble round my house, calling out, “Oh, Consul, there is no God but God!” and singing songs which I suspect were not altogether complimentary. Nosrani and Consul were the names I was known by among the people when they spoke of me to one another. I had declined the latter title, to which I had no pretension; and would not be called Hawadjah, which is the polite name generally given to Franks in Egypt, even by the Government, in its correspondence with the foreign Consuls, and which means a small trader or pedlar; Yusuf, therefore, gave me the title of El Senhor, which I have retained to this day. The people were forbidden to sell me anything, and it was with no small difficulty that Yusuf procured for me the very meagre fare with which I was fain to be satisfied; a couple of tame fowls, some rice or lentils, butter and dates, were the provision for four persons; and this scanty supply cost, on an average, more than a guinea a-day. One of the wealthier people sold me a goose one day, for which he was cited before the Mejlis, and beaten, though his brother was one of the sheikhs.

Time wore on, and the twentieth day, on which I expected an answer to my letter would arrive, had come and gone. Some Arabs from the west brought a report that the Viceroy had been murdered, and some of the sheikhs did not fail to come to me the next day to see how I took the news. Of course, I made light of it, telling them that if Abbas were dead, Said would be Viceroy, and that the English Government, which does not die, would take as good care of me under the one as under the other. When, however, a second report to the same effect arrived, a few days afterwards, I acknowledge that I felt less unconcern than I cared to show, for such an event, if true, would have probably prolonged my detention, if it did not endanger my life and that of my protector Yusuf, and my servants.

The time which I had calculated would bring an answer to my letters (for I had found means to send a second letter on the chance of the first having miscarried) had long past; and I had no easy task to keep Yusuf and his friends in good spirits. They were becoming very uneasy, for they had committed themselves both to the Egyptian government and the Sewiyah; the first would render them responsible for my safety, the second would never forgive the protection afforded to the Christian. At length, one day, a hot south wind arose, and blew with great violence during that and the three following days; hereon a hundred and forty of the men, who felt themselves most guilty, left Siwah for the Arab encampments on the Okbah; for now they believed, most of them for the first time, that something would come of my complaint, as a hot south wind in Siwah, such as this, is regarded by them as the unfailing signal of some coming calamity. One is almost tempted to think they must be a remnant of the Psylli, who had escaped the general destruction of their nation, and still dread their old enemy. Yusuf’s adjurations and threats had had no effect in persuading them that they would rue their inhospitable conduct to a stranger, but this day of hot wind convinced them that what he said was true.

From this time forward there were constant applications from the sheikhs and principal people of the Lifayah, to see the Nosrani; and those whom I admitted, came to protest that they had taken no part in anything that had befallen me, charitably throwing the blame on the others. Each, in fact, was the only innocent man in the place; and all felt the tenderest affection for my person. Such evidences of esteem and consideration were, of course, most gratifying to my feelings, and made me the more regret that they had put it out of my power to be serviceable to them; having applied to the English Consul-General, and he, of course, to the Viceroy, any decision in the matter now depended, not on me, but on them.

Such scenes were not, however, my only amusements. During the day I picked up some scraps of information about the manners and superstitions of the country from my various visitors. From a Fezyan Fikhi I got some quaint lessons in theological lore; and from a Moghrabi treasure-seeker I heard a good deal of the excavations which he had at different times made, not, however, to seek the antiquities which he seems to have found, but the hidden wealth, which, judging from his appearance, I should say had escaped him. Every evening after dinner, Sheikh Yusuf and a dozen of his friends used to come, and sit with me for two or three hours. Their favourite conversation turned upon the wickedness of the Lifayah, whom they seemed to regard as the greatest monsters in the world; my guests would tell how they had beaten their last governor, and killed Yusuf’s father, and how they fired upon travellers. Then they would expatiate with monkey-like chuckling on the exasperation which their conduct would produce in the Pacha; what he would do to this one, what to that—all subjects which my friends wore threadbare, without ever seeming to tire of them. Sometimes the entertainment was varied by stories which Yusuf told with great native humour; or we killed time and tried to satisfy our impatience by practising the method of divination called Derb-er-raml.

The stories I will spare the reader, who has had enough of Arab tales in every shape, though I am sadly tempted to tell how the two little donkeys were welded into a big one, or how the ass stuck in the mud, and the hyæna ate him, notwithstanding his long horns.

The inhabitants of Siwah speak a dialect of the Berbery, and only a very few of them know any word of Arabic; they are unquestionably an Aboriginal people, probably the descendants of one of the Nomad tribes, who inhabited the interior of Libya, and who may have succeeded to the possession of the Oasis of Ammon, after the extinction of the Roman power in this country. The entire population consists of the inhabitants of Siwah Proper, which is divided into east and west, and those of Agharmy, a small town about two miles to the east, in all little more than four thousand souls. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the town, my enemies, are called Sharkyin, or Lifayah, and these are again subdivided into three clans. The Westerns or Gharbyin are, in the same way, composed of three clans, and each clan has two sheikhs; these, with the Mufti and Cadi, form the Mejlis, presided over until his deposition by Yusuf as Sheikh-el-Beled. Their own account of their origin is, that, excepting three families of the old race, whose genealogy goes back to the remotest times, the whole of them are Arabs, Moghrabin, or Fellahs; none of whom have been settled here for more than four generations. Judging from their features, I should think that there must be a much greater mixture of the blood of an older race; nor is it likely, if Arabic had been the original language of the immense majority, that it should be now only known to so few persons, after this short lapse of time. Of the women there is hardly one who understands anything but the Siwy Berbery.

They are a singularly ugly race, with dark-brown complexion, and a truly bestial expression, but with no trace of the negro type, while they are still further removed from the Arab and Copt. Their fierce disposition makes them dreaded by the Arabs, who come to Siwah to buy dates, and who are subjected during their stay there to a most rigorous police. Those of the women whom I saw through my telescope on the roofs of the houses, were not more agreeable in appearance than the men; and even childhood is here devoid of the engaging graces of its age.

The dress of the men is a long shirt with drawers; a skull-cap of cotton, to which a milaya, such as is worn by the Egyptian women, is added. The head-dress of the women is curious. The front hair is plaited into twelve small braids, which hang straight over the forehead; on each side is a similar short bunch, looking like nothing but the cords of a mop, and round the head are wound two long plaits brought from behind. Over this the milaya is thrown, and a dark blue shirt completes the costume. They are kept very strictly confined to the house, which the wealthier never leave, and no respectable woman goes out excepting at night. These precautions of the Siwy are said to be as efficacious as those of the Djin, who kept his lady-love in a box; and the moral character of the Siwah fair is such, that had he reigned here, Pheron would probably never have recovered his eye-sight.