Midnight at the Oasis

Siwa, Egypt March 2008

It was midnight at the oasis. I heard the gentle clip clop of the donkey carts and the quiet roll of the tires on the dusty street, and I heard no other beasts so the camels must have gone to bed. A few locals and a few friends were lounging in the Arab style—barefooted, reclining on firm cushions which were positioned on thick mats of Bedouin carpets. A decorative tent of colorfully pieced cotton triangles stretched around and over us. The table before me was very low so I shifted my feet to my side, later stretching, just getting my ankles under the table, careful not to jostle the tea setting.

The Siwan tea was strong and minty and sweet. The teapot came with three small glasses the size of a shot glass, a slightly larger glass, a squat metal sugar bowl and a spoon. The man half filled the larger glass with sugar, poured some tea into the sugar, swirled it around and returned the sugar tea to the pot. Again he poured tea into the sugar glass, swirled it, and poured it back into the pot. He repeated this until the sugar glass was empty. He swirled the teapot, poured the mixture into the tiny glasses and passed them around. The tent was set in a cluster of palm trees, deep in the cool night. I would have dreamed, but the conversation kept drawing me back. Two talkative young men kept us entertained and laughing with their personal style of English.” Yes, Yes, the tea. too much. yes. the sweet. oh. too much.”

The small tea glass held about two ounces—enough, as it turned out, to keep me awake until 2 in the morning. My head was spinning but the buzzing of the mosquitoes was the only sound I heard. So unlike Cairo one can hardly believe they are in the same country. And in fact, the Siwa Oasis, part of an archipelago of oases, is indeed a long, long way from Cairo, almost to Libya.

I arrived in Siwa on the bus with the other teachers and found my room in the curious and peaceful hotel, the Siwa Safari Paradise. Dinner was served as we arrived. I am like a child, and isn’t life like a movie? I noticed a waiter with dark, lowering brows, black eyes, several scars on his face and a lean, lean body. I told my table mate, “That man has a dagger stuck in the back of his pants. His camel is probably tied up out back.” Dan just looked at me. I was serious, but, Dan thought, “How could she be serious?” and he wrinkled his lips into a smile but kept his eyes alert for other perception oddities.

After dinner, I set out to look around the square. The feel of the American West, but what should have been horses were donkeys in this little desert town. The pace, slow. The saloons, juice bars. And the cowboys were Berbers. They rode bicycles and motorcycles and donkey carts. They parked their carts in orderly lines at the curb, tossing out greens to keep the donkeys occupied. They hauled wives and children, mint and forage in their wooden wagons. I investigated the carpet shops and the date and olive oil shops. The vendors are very low key here—no grabbing, no persistent offerings.

I paused in front of a fruit stand gazing up at the truly bizarre remains of the old town of Shali. It is, and was, a walled city, built inside and out of ‘karshiif,’ a mixture of salt, mud and stones. The houses were cool in the daytime and warm at night. Unfortunately, in the rare event of a heavy rain, ‘karshiif’ is subject to dissolving, and this ancient city, originally established in 1203, washed away, or I should say, dissolved away, under a torrent of rain in 1920. It had dissolved at other times in its history but was rebuilt and reoccupied. In 1920, perhaps because other building materials were available, most of the residents left.

Suddenly, it seemed, I was high upon a lookout, formerly a housetop, or more probably the house floor, looking down onto and into Shali. While I was standing, gaping, in front of the fruit market, a waiter from the hotel restaurant passed by. He saw me and asked if I wanted to go up to watch the sunset. As we climbed, I noticed that he did not, after all, have a dagger in his waistband. He was escorting another guest, and we quickly climbed the pile of what had once been walls, and floors and ceilings and through short passages that had once been doors and windows. The sunset was in fact hidden by a hilltop sited directly between us and the sun, but the ruined city was remarkable. Though most of the residents left, many remain, and when overlooking the small city within a city, you see lighted windows, and you see goats and ducks in roofless stables.

I suppose I was being introspective and philosophical about life and rain when suddenly, a group of ten or twelve young people arrived. Berber or Egyptian, I don’t know. Wild and crazy, definitely. Cell phones and laughing and plans and photographs. I was co-opted into one photo with a young girl much like an animal at the zoo appears in the background: wild foreign woman still wearing her winter fat; short, shaggy fur concentrated on the head; tiny eyes.

I left the hilltop, happy and alive. I was so glad to find myself in the middle of the unexpected—at least the benign unexpected. The waiter walked us to the hotel but as we passed the New Star Restaurant, someone suggested tea, and there I was...Midnight at the oasis.

I don’t know about you, but I find the Arab/desert/Bedouin/Omar Sharif type image extremely appealing. The image has been tarnished a bit over the last three years, living as I have been, with just a toe in the culture, and the rest of me in the cities where the natural life of the Bedouin has been tethered. Meeting the tamed Bedouin, such as Ali the Rat, long distance taxi driver and thief, forced me inspect the reality behind the image, the fantasy. How can this tubby, rude and gruff man fit the dream? Aren’t all Bedouin lean and handsome? And the waiter? Not Bedouin—an ordinary Egyptian escaping the dreary life of a fellahin-laborer-from a small Nile Delta city.

So it was with an eye to taking my place, my true place on this earth, in the great sands of the desert that I planned my trip to the desert. The great emptiness. The place of dry thoughts and minimalism. And, I was doing it on a rented bicycle which had one working brake and a bent axle, so with every rotation my foot slid off the pedal. I returned it to the shop to exchange for a better bicycle. Ha! I already had the best.


My guide was taking me to a spring about five kilometers from town. We had seven oranges (do take oranges on a bicycle ride to the desert), a kilo of bananas (do not take bananas on a bicycle ride into the desert), four and a half litres of water (do take more than four and a half litres of water) and one bag of potato chips. (Yes, Chipsys). I did not plan well. I had no hat and no sun block. Fortunately, as I was flying out the hotel room, I grabbed an extra scarf. One scarf was on my head, and after a mile or so, I draped the second scarf over my bare arms, grasping the ends with my bicycle handles, and saving myself from really serious sunburn.

The spring was not where the guide remembered it to be. We never did find that spring. We twice saw workmen and asked for directions. Pointless, because everyone in Egypt will give you directions to any place even when they have absolutely no idea of where or what you are talking about. After another half hour of peddling, we found another spring. The spring fed pool at the hotel was so cold that after swimming in it my fingers were numbed, and that is what I was imagined was waiting for me at the end of this road. I needed that cold pool. I was quite, quite warm. I learned that there are also hot springs in the desert, and it was a hot spring that was waiting for me. I sat on the edge and drenched my clothes. Sitting in the strong wind, I cooled my overheated body and avoided dying on my first day as a Bedouin on a bike. There was, just one step outside the ring of this oasis, the desert—the Great Sand Sea—and according to my “Traveler’s Guide to the Geology of Egypt,” this desert “falls into the zone of hyper-aridity with less than 5 mm of rainfall each year.” It’s a dry place.

We lazed in the hot spring, ate the oranges and the chips, drank the water. The guide swore he knew where we were and promised the ride back to town would be quicker. And it was. In a short half hour, we were skirting the edge of Siwa, past the house of President Mubarak, or any president if he would only just come, along wide, dusty streets where a tourist still attracts attention, especially a female tourist on a bike. Back to the familiar, the safe, the hotel room, with its cold shower, my own little oasis. I placed my dream of living the Bedouin life back onto its shelf in my mind. I do plan to take it out again, but I do not plan to leave it out long.