To mark the Siwa's national day, 5 November, Samir Sobhi partakes of a rapidly disappearing isolation On the road to Siwa, the desert is so undisturbed you cannot help wondering whether it could ever show green. But as you reach the oasis -- nearly 600km away from Cairo, a nine-hour drive -- it is the green of the palms that greets your eyes. Against the backdrop of a blue sky, it is framed by golden mountains -- and if you've been here before, you know the blue will be reflected with startling intensity in the lakes beyond. Built of mud mixed with sand and sea salt, Shali, Siwa's best known town, is reminiscent of Yemeni architecture. With over 2,400,000 palm trees at their disposal, Siwans used fronds and trunks -- the latter cut in two lengthwise -- to construct it. The oasis's 30,000 inhabitants belong to 12 tribes -- the better known include Awlad Moussa, Al-Shahayim, Orgami, and Al-Adadsa -- and speak a Berber tongue common all across North Africa (Shali means city in the local language). Among Egypt's most isolated communities, they are known for their incredible ability to track footsteps and a penchant for Egyptian Arabic humour. One such anecdote concerns a journalist who, in the 1960s, filed a report from Siwa stating that a sandstorm had uncovered the lost army of the ancient Persian King Cambyses. He was joking, but the editor took him at his word and news agencies started enquiring about the exact location of the find. The journalist didn't have the heart to admit that it was a joke. Instead he wrote back saying that another sandstorm had so drowned the recently unearthed army that there was no longer a trace of it anywhere. Then the Cairo editor had to disclaim the report. On a visit to Al-Jarah, a village of 300 people with a peculiar history, I met the mayor, Sheikh Hassan, who explained that the number of inhabitants never changes -- to each person born, one dies -- something to which President Hosni Mubarak responded with a quip: "In the Nile Valley, to each million born, one dies." Another anecdote relates how, when the educational official distributed computers and provisions for the school to be opened there, the gifts were distributed equally among the houses. Having said that, the number of young people flocking into the public library bears ample testimony to the Siwans' thirst for knowledge and their sense of the world. A recently enrolled Cairo University student told me he was studying history because, "we are related to the army of Cambyses and Alexander the Great is buried in our land, we even have a pond in which Cleopatra bathed in person;" indeed the last 300km of the road from Marsa Matruh to Siwa follow the path taken by the Macedonian on his way to the oasis in 330 BC; the road connecting the oasis directly to Cairo via Wadi Al-Natrun and Kerdasa is the route he took on his way to Memphis. Dignitary visits form a central part of local lore. Many remember Prince Charles's visit, for example. The cook who prepared the meals for the prince and his wife, Shakir, was pointed out to me. The average Siwan can spend a whole night regaling you with such stories, as well as secret local knowledge -- such as the medicinal properties of sand, which can cure rheumatism and arthritis. Treatment can only be administered in the hot summer months, and it begins in mid-afternoon, when the sun is at its hottest, with the patient, divested of his clothes, burying himself in the scalding sand for 15 minutes, after which he is taken, wrapped in a blanket, into a warm tent: he cannot quench his thirst for 15 more minutes, whereupon he can drink hot sweet helba, hibiscus, or indeed any herbal tea. In a relatively luxurious treatment chamber, a 15-minute nap is followed by a meal of soup, meat and chicken but no bread. Over four hours this is repeated three times; the last time, the body is covered in a solution of vinegar, lemon and hot olive oil -- no movement is allowed until the body has absorbed it completely. At last you are told, "you've become a baby once again." That is precisely what it feels like, truth be told, once you have come out of it. Culinary delights are to be had, too. On a desert hike, my companions slaughtered a goat and grilled it over a bonfire; the meat was then placed in tin containers and buried in hot sand. They said this made it taste better, and it did. Heavy meals are washed down with tea nowadays, though traditionally they were accompanied by a strong date wine, a local specialty that can still be sampled -- in secret. Siwa has five date factories -- not enough for all the dates it produces; the oasis, the locals claim, could use one extra oil factory as well: "We produce 1,500 tonnes of olives a year, and it's hard to process it all through the one factory we have." Siwans dream of a local airport (the nearest, in Marsa Matruh, is 400km to the north), better roads, particularly to the oases of the Western Desert and Fayoum. Both, they feel, would multiply the number of tourists, who will find plenty in the way of nature and archaeology. One of the popular sites is the Mountain of the Dead, where archaeologists excavated tombs dating back to the 26th Dynasty and Ptolemaic times. Another is the Temple of the Oracle, where Alexander the Great was proclaimed demigod. We have no evidence to date that Alexander the Great's wish to be buried in Siwa was actually carried out. A few years ago, a Greek archaeologist discovered what she claimed to be Alexander's tomb, but her findings have not been officially corroborated. The Siwans are pleased to see Cairo investors, such as Omar Khafaga and Munir Neamatallah, take an interest in their oasis. Some fear that the increased openness of this once-isolated oasis will change the shape of the land and the local culture. Ahmed Fakhri, who wrote one of the most definitive books about Siwa, says, "I visited Siwa for the first time in August 1938 and the place remained unchanged for some time. Even until my visit in May 1972, the oasis looked more or less the same. But the differences between Siwa and other parts of the country are narrowing..." The customs that are now disappearing include those of the zakkala, a male-only community whose members were not allowed to marry until they were 40 years of age. The zakkala was for a long time the main labour force in the fields surrounding the main town. One of the most evocative spots in Siwa is the spring known as Ain Al-Juba, not far from the Um Obeida Temple. According to local customs, all girls should wash here on the night before their wedding. This custom survives to this day, though the girls go to the more secluded spring of Ain Tamus instead. One of Siwa's most peculiar surviving sights is the White Mountain, of hard salt that looks like glass or marble. The locals fashion the blocks of salt into plates and other objects. The salt is so hard that it is virtually unbreakable, but some cut it into bricks and use it in the housing industry. "Why don't we export some of this to the Nile Valley, Sinai, and the Red sea," one remarks.
