Forget Singapore, Hong Kong and Port Said. If you're looking for a trading post head northwest, advises Jenny Jobbins Click to view caption Institutions which fulfil a social need can last for a surprisingly long time. It remains to be seen whether shopping newcomers like Singapore, Freeport (Maine), Hong Kong and our own Port Said have staying power, but one of the most entertaining places to shop within a reasonable distance of Cairo lies in an area which has been a busy commercial centre since the Greeks first started building trading colonies in North Africa 2,700 years ago. Al-Hammam squats beside the railway line running to Mersa Matrouh parallel to the Mediterranean coast. A sweet-water canal also flows as far as here, carrying water from the Mahmoudia Canal. Between the town and the sea is one of the remaining patches of what was once the vast Lake Maryut, now very salt, but still a magnet for migrating pelicans and flamingoes. There are back roads and secondary roads, but the easiest way to reach Al-Hammam is to take the Alexandria- Mersa Matrouh Desert Road and turn left for the town at the 61-kilometre mark -- 41 kilometres from the junction with the Cairo-Alexandria Road, 15 kilometres after Taposiris Magna and nine kilometres past the Burg Al-Arab Hilton. The Greeks called the town Halmyrae. It bordered Lake Mareotis (Maryut) and was sufficiently close to Alexandria to build up a thriving market for the produce of its farms and pasture. In the second century the Romans dug a huge cistern 13 metres square and six deep, one of a chain they installed at two-day intervals along the north coast to water their marching armies. When Roman governance reached breaking point during the mid-fifth century, these cisterns ceased to be properly maintained and some quickly filled with sand. The conquering Arabs deliberately rendered many of the rest useless by filling them to scupper any plans the Roman-Byzantines might have to take that route back into Egypt. After that only one or two were serviceable and able to sustain a community, and one of these was Al- Hammam -- hence its modern name. The cistern continued to provide water to caravans travelling along the Darb Al-Hagg, the main road from Algeria which carried on to Mecca by way of Abu Mina, Wadi Natroun, Cairo, Suez, Aqaba and Medina. Of course the needs of the pilgrims was not limited to water, and the lively Al-Hammam souq provided them with food, clothes, blankets and carpets to make their journey more comfortable. With the advent of air travel the town and its souq might well have crumbled into limestone dust, like the dozens of towns and villages scattered around the lake and along the coast in the ancient and Graeco- Roman eras. The townspeople who are keeping the historical continuity alive today are largely Bedouin. Al-Hammam might have developed into a smaller administrative and trading centre only for the Bedouin had it not been for another factor. A large market has sprung up, seasonal, like the pilgrimage, but just as constant, and fulfilling what in some ways is a similar necessity -- the needs of the traveller, or in this case the local tourist, the owners and furnishers of the thousands of new holiday units on the north coast. Ten years ago Al-Hammam thrived on a Saturday street souq selling Indian spices, Siwa dates and locally-made rugs and kelims. If one didn't find the carpet one wanted in the street, one could go from house to house to make a choice or even put in an order. Kelims were dyed with natural dyes; one man once told me he would hop on his bike and pedal all over the area looking for the right dye so his wife could get on with her carpet. Later these dyes were replaced by synthetics, which were cheaper and didn't fade so easily but lost something of the authentic look. Al-Hammam, though, is moving with the times. There are fewer carpets, and the permanent street stalls are banished to the end of town near the railway tracks. A row of brand-new shops makes the town centre look more like New York's upper Broadway than a typical North African street souq. We arrived one evening shortly before sunset and drove up to the railway line, turned left and carried on to the edge of town until we arrived at some serious-looking walls which proclaimed that they enclosed a future agricultural project. We turned and retraced our steps, past the small station and the standing covered donkey carts, past the street vendors, and back in the direction of the sea. When we reached the first shops we parked -- no problem, as the street is wide and there is little traffic -- and wandered down the street, admiring the neat piles of groceries and other goods piled on the pavements. Some natural, goat-hair rugs displayed outside a shop called the Arabic Centre attracted our attention: inside the shop were plastic barrels of grains, "bulk-barn" style, and sacks of herbs and spices arrayed as in the spice merchants' shops in the Khan Al-Khalili, but in colourfully-striped sacks and more sanitised surroundings. Shelves were stacked with shampoos and hair oils, some of them mixed by the shop. There were dates from Siwa, perfumes from Cairo, joss sticks from India, cous cous and tomato paste from Libya, and carved wooden camels from Sudan. The store's Sudanese manager, Abdel- Aziz Abdullah, told us that many of the goods were shipped from Wadi Haifa across Lake Nasser to Aswan and brought up by train, while the Libyan traffic came straight along the coast and other items arrived at the port in Alexandria. The medications were neatly wrapped and labelled: nuts from the Sudanese calop tree to be sucked by diabetics; infusions for hepatitis, hypertension, and stomach pains and ailments. I was tempted by a small and very finely-woven basket from Addis Ababa for LE50, much more delicate than the baskets from the regions north of Ethiopia. I finally walked out with a litre of Libyan olive oil for LE9 and a packet of slimming tea -- Abdullah assured me that if I took an infusion twice a day coupled with a lighter-than-usual evening meal I would lose a kilo in 10 days. The oil, the tea and a pumice stone totalled LE15. Next door was Tulip, a branch of Alexandria's fancy linen store. Here a double sheet set of export-quality cotton sheets and pillowcases in fashionable designs cost LE145, fluffy bathrobes were LE55 and superior patchwork quilts in traditional North American patterns, double size, were LE515. In the US, for where such quilts are destined, they would fetch two or three times the price. Funky bath towels were LE40. Off to Variety, Borg Al-Arab's Pottery Barn, where rows of Italian-made glass tumblers sparkled in the late afternoon sun and vivid plastic picnic colours fought for first prize in eye- appeal. The tumblers were painted with strawberries, sunflowers, oranges and bluebells -- and if you couldn't recognise the pictures, words spelled out what they were. These would certainly add a fizz to summer drinks. Shop after shop stocked appliances, household goods, pots and pans, cleaning tools and materials. Just so those furnishing their holiday apartments didn't miss out on anything, there were refrigerators, air-conditioning units, wooden furniture, mattresses and stack upon stack of plastic chairs. Galaleeb made of Indian fabrics in watermelon, taupe and aqua hung among the beach balls and shipship. Dominating everything was the shampoo. There was soap and toothpaste too, but there was more shampoo than I had ever seen in my life -- shelf upon shelf in shop after shop. And then there were the equivalent of the "dollar" stores -- "Everything for a pound!" the signs proclaimed. The goods were very cheap and the purchasers seemed cheerful enough -- who can complain at a fork or a spoon or a screwdriver or a pack of sewing needles for LE1? "Would you like some fish?" someone called out from a takeaway restaurant. The request was polite, the negative response accepted with a smile. We were not hassled at any point; we felt comfortable and nowhere were we put under any pressure to buy. Cars drew up. They were fancy Mercedes and Japanese cars, spilling passengers who knew what they wanted and had packed the spending power. The shoppers may have been buying for their holiday chalets or their apartments in Cairo. It takes about three hours to drive here from Cairo, but you could spend that long driving round Downtown looking for a parking space. It looks as though Al-Hammam revived is set for the course. Next day for lunch my hostess ordered blackened fish, shrimp and calamari from the Al- Hammam takeaway. The fish was excellent, the shrimps smothered in a tangy lemon sauce. The baladi bread was thick and full of flavour. Enough reason to take an infusion of slimming tea. Practical information: Al-Hammam road: turn left on the Alexandria- Mersa Matrouh Road at 61km. Accommodation: Hilton Burg Al-Arab Resort: Sea-water swimming pool. 52km. Tel: (03) 990 730/40/50. Riviera Village: Quiet beach, supermarket. Chalets sleeping six to eight from LE150 per night. 59km. Tel: (03) 410 4534. Balah Village: Restaurants, pool. Chalets from LE200. 62kms. Tel: (046) 4121247/8/9/50. Aida Beach Hotel: Watersports, pool, Villas from $60. 77km. (03) 410 2818/9/20.
