Valley of iron men

Ambling round the main town in the oasis of Farafra, Jenny Jobbins encounters some reminders of the past
We arrived in Qasr Farafra on a note of gloom. The day before Salah Abdallah, the omdah (head man), had passed away at the grand age of 107. In 1938, when Sheikh Abdallah was already 45, the oasis expert Ahmed Fakhri visited his father, who was at that time the oldest omdah in Egypt. So as we strolled through the town with the mournful but melodic reading of the Qur'an echoing after us we reflected on the changes the oasis had seen in the late omdah's lifetime.
Architecture in the oasis follows a unique and traditional style of elongated domes and claustra (moulded "hole") work, whether the buildings were erected last week in concrete or a hundred years ago in mud-brick. We much admired the older buildings with their thick steps, the hajj (pilgrimage) paintings on the walls and the decorations round the doorways. The most fascinating physical feature of Qasr Farafra, though, is the fortress which tops the low hill in the town. It was probably built by the Romans and was rebuilt several times, but was damaged by heavy rainfall and met its final collapse in 1958. By that time the fortress contained 125 or more rooms -- one, more or less, for each family in the town, who would store necessities and retreat there if the oasis came under threat of attack secure that they had enough provisions to withstand a siege. It is rumoured that when the fortress collapsed some people lost their family silver, but the authorities have refused to allow them to dig for it. Now the broken, mainly roofless rooms are used as animal pens, while dates are spread to dry on those roofs that remain.
The breakfast waiter at our hotel had told us that what he liked most about working in Farafra was the friendliness of the locals, and as soon as we set foot in Qasr we understood what he meant, even though our first encounter was with a "non- local." A woman in a blue dress and knotted headscarf welcomed us through her gate for a brief glimpse of the house she and her husband, a hospital attendant who, like her, was from Mansura, were renting for their three-year posting in Farafra. A few doors further on we were accosted by a wrinkled old lady with face tattoos and wearing her Eid finery, a colourful dress and scarf and all her gold. In the next instant we were swept off the street by another elderly lady, similarly dressed, who ushered us into a small, sunny courtyard and then into the inner room where a very old man sat cross-legged on the floor. We sat on red cushions under two unglazed windows with a jam-jar of flowers and a pot plant on the sills, while our elderly hostess sent a young woman off to make tea. At this the old man rose painfully to his feet and made his escape. "My brother," she said, as if explaining his retreat.
Her name was Amna Abdel-Galil, and long ago she had married a man from Aswan and bore him six daughters and a son. Her family was still there, but in her old age she had returned to her brother's house. The young woman was her niece, Sabreen, who lived in Cairo but was here to spend the feast with her father. I supposed it was she who had added the little Cairene touches, like the flowers.
Sabreen returned with a tray of excellent tea and plates of ka'ak (date cakes), peanuts and sweets. She and her aunt did not eat or drink as they were fasting for a further six days after breaking the fast for one day at the end of Ramadan.
Amna told us her father had owned gardens in Farafra, and the family still made a living from agriculture. I tried asking her about the past but she got a little confused when I mentioned caravans, and started talking about an American neighbour who owns 35 camels. "I don't know why he doesn't sell some of them," she said.
Amna showed us a roofless house across the street which served as winter quarters for half a dozen sheep, three goats and a pair of shaggy-haired donkeys. "We cut their hair after the winter," she said. The animals bounded over the fallen masonry -- which incidentally served to keep their feet clean and dry -- towards us, but their attention was rather aimed at the barseem (green fodder) cart they could hear trundling along the street. We realised we were disrupting the day's chores and regretfully took our leave. Sabreen pressed us to return for iftar, but we explained that dinner had been arranged at our hotel. So she sent us on our way with directions to Badr's Museum
Badr Abdel-Moghny is a well-known native of the oasis, a self-taught artist who encapsulates the local life in sculpture, oil and watercolour. He has set his clay models into postures illustrating the crafts and pastimes of the people of Farafra, and has a collection of local exhibits. Badr, a mine of information, promised to meet us later at our hotel.
Then we went to see the famous gardens. The orchards of mangoes, apricots, olives, dates, oranges and mandarins are held back by mud brink walls, and narrow hot water canals run beside the grid of dust roads laid around them. Iron-rich water runs into the gardens from these channels through drains which, when not in use, are plugged with rags. Abdel-Moghny told us later that in the 1960s when the first deep hot springs were drilled to replace the old Roman springs (all ancient springs in Farafra are called "Roman"), which were shallower and merely warm, many of the olives died of shock from the hot water. Those that didn't die got over it, and now the roots of the orchard trees thrive on it. Almost all the trees were overgrown, bedraggled and untended, and among them were the tallest olive and orange trees I have ever seen. Were it not for a pile of freshly cut olive wood one might have thought the gardens had been untouched for centuries, and that any moment a mythical beast might bound out of the shadows.
When he joined us in the hotel for dinner that evening, Abdel-Moghy told us that farmers nowadays invested their labour in cash crops such as vegetables, fava beans (ful) and wheat, leaving the fruit trees to take care of themselves. The olive wood was used for building, which must be why there are no straight beams in Farafra. I forgot to ask if they used it to make ladders to climb to the tops of those very tall orange trees.
But when I asked him about past life in the oasis Abdel-Moghy, in spite of his youth, did remember the caravans which, until 20 or 25 years ago -- the road was paved in 1978 -- carried dates, olives and apricots to Bahariya oasis and Assiut. There they bartered them for tea, sugar, flour, fabric and other commodities which the Farafrans could not provide for themselves. Other caravan routes went to Dakhla, Khargha, Siwa and to Kufra oasis in Libya, but Farafra was rather more off the beaten track than most of these.
Abdel-Moghy said the longevity of the hereditary omdahs, was commonplace in the oasis -- there was still someone living today, Am Younis, who was 112, and 10 years ago a fellow named Abdel- Nour had died at 130. What made them live so long? Olive oil and dates, said Abdel-Moghy. I suspect, however, that the iron content of the local water lined and preserved their veins, just as it has kept the oasis alive for the thousands of years since the surrounding land became a desiccated desert.
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