Chapter VII: “fantasias”

“A very merry, dancing, drinking,

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.

The typical Arab sheikh of modern fiction (if he does not turn out to be an Englishman) is a young, dashing, handsome and intensely fascinating individual, well mannered and well washed; but in real life one rarely meets such a person—I myself have never seen him. The typical sheikh at Siwa or on the Western Desert was elderly, bearded and only moderately clean. Some of them were certainly very fine-looking men, but utterly different to the personage that one would expect from the descriptions in a certain style of popular novel. The “guides” who swindle visitors in Cairo are much more like the sheikh of fiction in appearance than are the real sheikhs whom one meets and has dealings with on the desert.

One of the most curious, partly philanthropic institutions which has survived in Siwa is the “Beit el Mal,” a public fund used for providing shrouds for persons who die without money or relations, and also for repairing mosques, causeways and sun-shelters. The money is contributed from the sale of public land belonging to the community, and also from the sale of argoul, which is a plant that is used as manure, and rents for grazing paid by visiting Arabs. The fund is collected and administered by certain sheikhs, and in former days it included fines, inflicted as punishments, and taxes on strangers who visited the oasis. Any case which is considered deserving of charity is supplied from the money.

Ramadan, the Mohammedan Lent, the month in which the Koran was supposed to have been sent down from heaven, is kept very strictly in Siwa. During this month all good Mohammedans are expected to refrain from the pleasures of the table, the pipe and the harem; no morsel of food or drop of water may pass their lips during the day, but at night the revels commence and they feast and enjoy themselves till the unwelcome approach of morning. Night is turned into day, and at Siwa, during Ramadan, there is a continuous rumble of drums from sunset till the early morning; at first it is disturbing, but one grows accustomed to it before the month is out.

The words of the Koran are:

“Eat and drink until ye can plainly distinguish a black thread from a white thread by the daybreak; then keep the fast until night.”

It is possible to obtain a dispensation from keeping Ramadan, on medical grounds, and among the effendi class I noticed that this was frequently done; travellers are also excused from observing it, though I have often been out on trek during Ramadan with men who were strictly fasting. If the month occurs in the hot weather it is a very great strain on every one. Siwa, in the daytime, during Ramadan, is like a dead place; the minimum amount of work is done in the gardens, everybody stays indoors during the day, and one sees nobody about the streets except in the cool of the early morning and after sunset. Fasting, especially abstaining from drinking, is a severe strain; the sheikhs, when they come to the Markaz, look thin and ill, and one’s servants make the fast an excuse for doing nothing.

This arduous month is terminated by a festival lasting for three days known as the Minor Festival or Kurban Bairam. It is celebrated with great festivities and rejoicings in Egypt; servants expect tips and every one appears in new clothes, but in Siwa it is not so important an occasion; the people merely take a rest after the trials of the fast month, reserving all their energy and money for the great local mulid which occurs a week or so later. The mulid of Sidi Suliman, the anniversary of the birth of Siwa’s patron sheikh, is the most important incident of the whole year. The festival generally lasts for three days, but the people take three more days to recover from it. All the year round everybody saves money in order to make a “splash” at the annual mulid.

For several days the women are busy cooking cakes and sweets; the best fruit in the gardens is carefully watched over to be ready at the mulid, and certain animals are fed up with a view to being slaughtered. If possible one or two camels are bought from the Arabs and kept at grass till they are fat enough to kill. On the eve of the feast there is a general spring cleaning of the town. The tombs of the sheikhs are freshly painted with whitewash, carpets and coloured blankets are hung from every roof, while the houses are swept and cleaned, and the place looks quite gay with its clean white tombs, and bright mats and rugs hanging out from roofs and windows. In the evening the sheep that are to be slaughtered on the morrow are led in from the fields, and everybody discusses with interest how many animals Sheikh So-and-So is going to kill. Sometimes the richest men kill as many as seven or eight sheep, and this is remembered and often mentioned to their credit, all through the year. One year there was a great scandal in the town because Sheikh Mohammed Hameid had boasted to everybody that he had killed six sheep, but one of his household let out that there had only been three old goats slaughtered. Enormous supplies of lubki are drawn before the holiday in order that it may stand long and become really strong.

On the morning of the mulid everybody puts on his best clothes, and even the poorest labourer dons a new shirt or a clean jibba. Every man goes to pray in his own particular mosque, and the women visit the tombs and lay palm branches on the graves of their relations. After this people retire to their houses and eat an enormous meal and as much meat as they can possibly swallow. When the men have eaten, the remainder of the food is sent to the harem, and when the harem have finished, it is sent out to the servants and labourers who pick the bones clean. After this heavy meal and during the two following days everybody calls on everybody else, and on this occasion one may see eastern sheikhs riding haughtily through the western quarter to call on their much-detested neighbours. In all the streets one meets the sheikhs riding along on their best donkeys, wearing gorgeous silk, coloured robes, which emerge from the chests in which they are locked up during most of the year, each followed by an escort of servants. The people let each other know at what time they will be “at home” and when they will ride out visiting.

On arriving at the house one finds servants waiting to hold the donkeys, and if one is so indiscreet as to look up at the little windows numbers of female heads pop out of sight. The owner of the house is found seated in his largest room, with the best carpets covering the floor, surrounded by about a dozen little tables with dishes of peaches, grapes, figs, melons, nuts, cakes and sweets, and one dish which contains the young, white pith of a palm tree, which is much esteemed as a delicacy. Along the side of the room there are more dishes, covered with napkins, heaped up with meat, generally smothered by a cloud of flies. The host offers tea, coffee, or an exceedingly disagreeable syrupy liquor made from a species of fruit “syrop” which should be taken cold with soda, but is served hot like tea, according to Siwan fashion. Strict etiquette enjoins that one must drink three cups of tea or coffee, and taste every dish in the room, except the meat, which is reserved for the family at each house.

The extra amount of food everywhere attracts swarms of flies, and the sticky smell of fruit and meat is rather overpowering, when the temperature is about 106 degrees in the shade. One year I rode round myself and paid calls, but the next time I was wiser and invited the sheikhs and notables to a light meal at the Markaz, after their own solid luncheon, and even then, although showing post-prandial symptoms, they managed to eat very heartily. It was at one of these entertainments that I learnt that the Siwans have special names for people who offend against the strict etiquette of eating. The following are all highly condemned:

The man who turns round and looks to see whether more is coming.

The individual who bites a piece of meat and replaces it in the dish.

The person who blows on his food to cool it.

The one who is undecided and fingers first one piece, then the other.

And finally the visitor who orders about his host’s servants,
which I have noticed myself as being a very common habit.

In the afternoon of the mulid the younger men and boys go out into the gardens, where they lie singing and drinking lubki. At dusk the people begin to collect in the open space below the highest part of the old town, round the square, white tomb of Sidi Suliman, which is illuminated with candles and lanterns, and ornamented with banners stuck along the parapet of the roof. Crowds of men keep on passing up the steps and in and out of the tomb, shuffling off their shoes at the entrance and praying at the grave of the saint. Then everybody collects at his own particular mosque, in various parts of the town, and a great “zikr,” a kind of prayer-meeting and religious dance, is held outside the Medinia mosque in the eastern quarter of the town. It is a very wonderful sight, and is attended by four or five hundred devotees.

There is a large, open space outside the mosque surrounded by tall houses, whose little black windows look like gaping eyes, and behind them one catches a glimpse of the tops of palm trees in some gardens darkly silhouetted against the deep blue African sky. The whole scene is flooded with brilliant moonlight, except where the cold, black shadows fall from the high houses. The ground is entirely carpeted with old rugs and mats whose faded colours show dimly in the moonlight; along one side, in front of the mosque, sit the sheikhs and notables of the Medinia sect, and on the other three sides of the square there is a vast congregation of white-robed, seated natives, row upon row of “dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed.” A carpeted space in the centre is kept empty.

Among the shadows of the houses there are more blurred white figures, and in one corner of the square kettles are being boiled on open fires, and men in flowing robes walk to and fro across the light from the flames. There is a subdued murmur of conversation. The first part of the entertainment is a solemn tea-drinking. Dozens of men move about, barefooted and silent, carrying trays and distributing hundreds of little glasses of tea, which is made and poured out by the sheikhs. After everybody has drunk three glasses the low tables in front of the sheikhs are carried away, and the audience becomes absolutely silent. Then the chief sheikh of the Medinia mosque, a handsome, bearded man wearing the green turban, whose looks belie his notoriously bad character, begins intoning verses from the Koran in a sonorous, impressive voice, sitting on the carpet with his hands spread on his knees. When he stops one of the other sheikhs begins, until most of them have had a turn. After this three men step into the space in the centre of the seated audience. One of them is quite a boy with a very beautiful voice, the other two are older men. They walk slowly round and round the square, abreast, singing together a tune which resembles the solemn grandeur of a Gregorian chant, and after each verse the whole audience, several hundred powerful male voices, intone the refrain. It is an intensely impressive performance and one feels thrilled at being the only white man present at such a spectacle. The bright moonlight shines down on the massed ranks of motionless natives whose faces look black, much darker than they actually are, in comparison with their white robes and white skull caps or turbans. For a background there are the high houses, and on the roofs, peering down at the square, a number of heavily veiled women, and “over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars.”

After some time everybody rises and all the full-grown men close up and form a circle, tightly wedged together. The old sheikh steps into the centre and begins repeating more prayers, quietly at first then with restrained violence. The audience join in, chanting the Mohammedan creed. Gradually the singing grows louder, the voice of the sheikh is drowned, and the ring of white-robed men begin swaying to and fro, backwards and forwards, their voices become hoarse and raucous; every man jerks to and fro in a frenzy of religious excitement, and the prayer becomes a violent repetition of the word “Allah—’la, ’la, ’la.” Then the sheikh who leads the prayer gradually slows down, and the congregation repeat more quietly the Mohammedan creed, “La ilahi illa—llah, wa Mohammed rasul Allah”—there is no deity but God, and Mohammed the prophet of God. The contrast between the performers at the beginning of the zikr, when they are calm and grave, and at its close, when they are hot, dishevelled and exhausted, is very remarkable.

Meanwhile the crowd in the Sidi Suliman square increases. From the various mosques come long processions of white-robed figures, singing and carrying banners; the light of their torches and lanterns flashes in and out as they slowly thread their way through the steep, winding streets of the town, and their voices become faint, then loud, as they pass through and out of the arches and tunnels. They assemble in the square, forming large circles and dancing zikrs. In one corner one sees a ring of old men singing and clashing cymbals; in another group there are a dozen men banging drums, while a half-naked young negro in their midst twirls rapidly round and round, then suddenly falls to the ground and rolls over and over till he reaches the tomb itself, where he is lifted up by his admiring and applauding friends and carried away unconscious. Behind the tomb there are fires where the drums can be warmed, in order to tighten their parchment. Numbers of women squat on the outskirts of the crowd, huddled in their dark robes, hardly visible, except when the moon gleams on their silver ornaments and pale white faces. Some of them are burning incense in little earthenware braziers, and occasionally one of them creeps up to the white tomb and kisses the wall, if she can reach it before being driven off by the ghaffirs—watchmen.

The dancers in the centre of the circles move faster, keeping time to the drums and hand-clappings of the audience, and soon everybody is swaying to and fro. Away in the gardens outside the town there are flickering lights and a sound of singing. The great zikr before the Medinia mosque ceases and all the people come streaming out from the dark, shadowy lanes towards the tomb of Sidi Suliman, which shines white in the moonlight with orange lights blazing from its open door and little windows. The sheikhs walk slowly about from group to group, each followed by a little knot of men—servants carrying carpets and cushions, and some watchmen in tall brown tarbouches, holding staves. The police stand about in the crowd, and when one walks up to watch a dance they hurry forward and push people aside, saying, “Make way, make way!” The sound of distant singing in the gardens grows louder and nearer, and suddenly mobs of men and boys, mad with drink, half naked, come leaping and shrieking into the square, scattering fire from their blazing torches.

Then drums are beaten madly, cymbals crash, and the shrill screech of reed pipes rends the air. The crowd forms into a great circle round the mass of frenzied dancers who career round, drinking as they dance, shouting and yelling. In the centre there are a dozen men lashing away at cymbals and tom-toms. One of the dancers is an enormous blind giant, almost naked, who flourishes a jug of lubki, and some of the boys have wreaths round their heads and bunches of flowers stuck behind their ears.

As the night goes on the pandemonium becomes wilder; the exotic timbre of the music grows more frenzied; many of the dancers throw off their robes, and great pitchers full of potent lubki are distributed among the people. The fires in the square, heaped up with rushes, blaze more brightly when the honey-coloured moon sinks behind the high walls of the town, and frantically writhing figures are seen whirling round by the light of the shooting flames and torches. The whole scene becomes even more _macabre_. Gradually boys and men among the audience, fascinated by the mad mob of dancers, plunge in among them, linking arms and revolving round the musicians in the centre, crouching, jumping, hopping, and running, each one executing strange steps and postures as he goes along. Sometimes the music is voluptuous and alluring, then the dance becomes frankly indecent; at other times it is wild and furious, and the performers seem to be overcome with savage transports of rage; but the whole time the music has a very definite rhythm which urges them on. The light of many torches gleams on glistening black flesh and shining teeth and eyes; the air is thick with heavy fumes of incense, and the bitter smell of liquor. On the outskirts of the crowd one sees figures stretched like corpses on the ground, overcome with the orgy of drink and dancing. When the faint light of dawn shows in the sky, and the fires are dying down they begin to tire of the Bacchanalian revels, and one by one the dancers fall exhausted to the ground, lying where they fell, or crawl away, staggering through the silent streets, to sleep off the effects in readiness for the following day. Looking down on to this riotous African carnival from the highest roofs of the town one can imagine oneself, like Dante, watching damned souls writhing in hell.

The Siwans are extremely fond of music and singing. Their instruments are crude and simple, but they manage to obtain a surprising amount of music from them. Drums, or tom-toms, are of various kinds, either cylindrical gourds or basins with a skin stretched across one end, or large round tambourines with parchment covers. By striking first the side of the drum and then the resounding parchment, two different sounds are obtained, one hard, the other soft, and this again can be varied by using either the palm of the hand or the clenched fist. Flutes are usually made from the barrels of long Arab guns, or occasionally from reeds, and string instruments, like primitive guitars, are manufactured from a bowl covered with skin, a wooden frame, and string made from wire or gut which can be tightened or slackened. The combination of these simple instruments with human voices is singularly effective.

There is a similarity in all African music; in fact, all Eastern music is somewhat alike. The melody is monotonous and barbaric: sometimes a song sung in a tremulous, high-pitched voice which rises above the throbbing tom-toms, or a tune played on a shrill flute with an accompaniment of drums and twanging string instruments. The scale ranges from bass to treble, sometimes short, sad notes, and sometimes long drawn-out wails, varied by sudden, unexpected pauses. It is difficult to describe, but the general effect is somewhat sinister, at the same time very fascinating. To a stranger it may sound like an inharmonious wail, but in time one gets to appreciate the subtle undercurrent of half-notes which makes the melody. It is suggestive of fierce passions, vague longings, and vast desert spaces.

The characteristic song of the Western Arabs, a dreamy refrain with a reiterated note, which they sing to themselves as they ride alone across the desert, is very similar to the Swiss yeodling; but Siwan music is quite different. The Siwans have songs and tunes of a distinct individual style. With them certain notes have definite meanings; there is a language of sound. When some of their best singers, usually boys, are performing, the listeners can interpret the meaning of the song without needing to hear the words. They sing everywhere, and at all times, especially when at work in the gardens. Several men and boys working in different parts of a big palm grove sing to each other, taking up the refrain and answering each other back, and these unaccompanied quartets and trios sound very attractive, especially when one hears them in the evening, now loud and clear, now faintly in the distance. Good voices are much esteemed, and the best singing boys are hired to perform at entertainments. The songs that have words are in the Siwan language, but when literally translated they are exceedingly indecent.

Dancing, too, is very different to the fashion of the Arabs or the Sudanese. In many parts of the Sudan one sees men and women dancing together, and among the Arabs there are dancing girls who perform in front of a mixed audience. On the Western Desert it is not considered shameful for respectable women to dance, although most of the best dancers are very decidedly not respectable. But in Siwa only the men dance in public, and it is very difficult to see women performing, but on one occasion I did see an entertainment of this kind.

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.