Siwa Oasis
Travelling, especially by yourself, is all about the people you meet along the way. I was lucky this week to meet some really great guys who helped keep the sleaze away for a few days.
Karl was a super cool older Austrian fellow who made a wacky usage of 20 basic Arabic sentences and got me to see and do things I might never have on my own. Karl also travelled alone, and is one of those people everyone instantly feels comfortable with, chit chatting everybody about anything in one or many of his five languages. I met him on the way to Siwa, an amazing oasis located in the Sahara desert just off the Libyan border. Thanks to Karl, I also met and spent my time in Siwa with four (young and incredibly attractive) fun-loving Jesuit brothers (one Egyptian, two Syrians and one Lebanese). That’s right, Jesuit brothers!! I most certainly was in safe hands!
Being so escorted by five guys, I got to swim in Cleopatra’s pool even though the tourist office director specifically advised me against it. “All the village people go by it on their way to town, it’s not proper for a lady to swim there” he had told Karl and I the same morning. But when I mentioned this to the Jesuits, Magdi wouldn’t hear it: “Come on! You’re with us (five guys)! That’s ridiculous! There won’t be any problem, let’s go!”.
I figured he had a good point, and the water looked so tempting, a clear pool of sweet water continually refreshed by a natural underground spring. So I dove right in, considering myself modest enough in an oversize t-shirt over my bathing suit. But the water was so soft and cool, a fantastic feeling on a hot day, that I just had to take the T-shirt off. The pool had walls high enough that I didn’t feel there was much for any passer-by to see anyway.
WRONG!
When I climbed out of the pool after a half hour of splashing with Karl and the Jesuits, there was literally a donkey-cart traffic jam on the road that
passed by the pool!!! There are very few motorised cars in Siwa, so everyone has got his donkey cart to travel about the oasis. Nobody is ever really in much of a hurry, so checking out this big white adjnabiya in a red bathing suit giving a free show seemed like a good excuse for villagers to give their donkeys a rest in the shade of the Cleopatra pool’s palm trees.
Needless to say, the guys thought this commotion was pretty funny, while I refused to believe I was the cause of this sudden agglomeration of donkey carts. But I had to face the facts when circulation resumed its normal course as soon as I got dressed. So hey! I will have stopped traffic at least once in my life!!!
That afternoon the six of us biked all over the oasis with two Siwa boys one of the Jesuits had met during a previous trip to the oasis. One of the boys, Ismael, accompanied Karl and I to the town’s pharaonic necropolis. Karl’s had a little pseudo-Arabic chat with the site keeper and got us into the tombs even though visiting hours were over. We got to check out hieroglyphs and paintings that were thousands of years old, and I was bad enough to brush my hand all over them in disbelief.
The tomb was pitch black, we only had a small flashlight to explore everything it contained. When we thought we’d seen all there was to see, I turned over and almost had a heart attack: right there, in my face, was a real life mummy! And another one… and another… Six in all! No protection whatsoever! (At the Egyptian museum in Cairo mummies are kept in temperature controlled glass boxes in a dimly lit room).
Amused, the keeper grabbed a small mummified head and handed it over to me: he wanted me to touch the “kid’s” hair. A 3000 year old kid’s hair! This was unreal! Karl was horrified that anyone would touch such precious artifacts. I didn’t care, this was too cool. I grabbed the head and turned it all around like a basketball, while half listening to Karl’s explanations of the meaning of all these hieroglyphs and mummification rituals. I was so excited by all this that I forgot to take a picture. Friends will just have to take my word for it when I tell them the story.
This most fantastic day ended with dinner under the stars in the desert with the whole gang and a few Siwa boys. We rode one hour in a donkey cart to get way out in the desert, singing and joking all along. The poor donkey seemed pretty disgusted about having to pull nine people in soft sand at 10 o’clock at night. It often would stop and refuse to go again. Magdi, the Egyptian brother, would not have anyone whip the donkey, so to “motivate” it, he would jump out of the cart and start running madly next to the donkey, clapping his hands and cheering it on until it would start cantering again!!! We almost all rolled out of the cart in roaring laughter.
I was amazed at how bright the full moon can be, there was no need for flashlights in the desert that night. The boys built a fire and we ate and sang… quickly. Half an hour and we were back in the donkey cart. Karl and I looked at each other in disbelief and without even need for words just burst out laughing reading each other’s mind. Never try to understand!
The next day we went on one of those white desert jeep treks. A bit overrated as far as I am concerned. Sure, the desert is an amazing sight, we drove through huge sand dunes and swam in cold and hot springs that appeared like a mirage out in the middle of a sea of sand. But I usually care more about the people than the land when I travel. Looks like I haven’t changed.
On the third day, it was already time to say goodbye. I felt like I was leaving my family behind. I even managed to get a crush on one of the 19 year-old Siwa boys at their goodbye party the night before!!! He asked me if I would come back to Siwa. I told him I would if he’d marry me. He giggled and simply answered an embarrassed “inshallah”.
So I’m back on my own, just me and my G-strings (yes, that bruise finally healed up, al hamdulillah!). Karl inspired me to use my rusty Arabic and it has been doing wonders for me. Opening all doors and slashing prices in half… or in ten. I will miss him and the brothers, but I have to trust there will be other friends, always more wonderful people along the way…
