We drove up to the Siwa oasis on a Wednesday morning. The drive is about 450 miles and it took about eight and a half hours. We were bumped and hurled around on the desert roads that led us to the Mediterranean, and again on the two lane highway sprinkled with military checkpoints. The amount of speed bumps brought headaches and backaches. Strangely, a nabbed us and we were handed a $20 fine. At first I thought it was a shakedown because we were traveling in a car with diplomatic plates. It turns out my friend could commit a felony with impunity but would still have to fork over the 150 Egyptian Pounds for speeding down a desert road.
The police officers warned us of a second speed trap down the road. I suppose it still could have been a shakedown. Either hat gesture rid them of wrongdoing, or they were the cleverest officers I have encountered. They let us go, and I stayed mum.
We stopped for lunch in Marsa Matruh on the Mediterranean coast at what surely must have been the nicest McDonalds in the world. We drank up the view of the turquoise waters over hamburgers and fries we only permitted to ourselves as desert travelers.
After Marsa Matruh, there are no gas stations until Siwa. We topped off the Toyota at a remarkable $1.30 a gallon – dirt cheap. Hurdling no less than two dozen speed bumps at the city perimeter, we started down the pocked desert road to Siwa. It made for a bumpy ride. Combined with the bleak countryside, I could only content myself by closing my book and my eyes. I wanted to read but was too distracted by blaring “driving music” (that can mean different things depending on taste) and the road tousling the page everywhere but in front of me.
There were no less than three checkpoints between Marsa Matruh and Siwa. The closer one gets to Siwa, the closer ones gets to the Libyan border. Tubruq, a coastal city in Libya, is apparently human trafficking port. We did not have any humans stuffed away in our bags in the boot, and nor did diplomatic convention prevent the conscripted soldiers from rummaging around. On a few occasions, the soldiers pulled out a bottle or two of alcohol before waving us on. During the return drive, one soldier pulled out a partially-filled plastic bottle. Its reddish contents were slightly more expensive rum than warranted bringing the whole bottle. Oddly enough gasoline has a coral hue that resembled the alcohol in our water bottle, and so the soldier was concerned that we had criminal intent.
I was in charge of translation this time and explained to the soldier that it was alcohol. He wanted the receipt to which obviously there was none. I explained that we had not bought it in Siwa but had brought it from Cairo. He went off to show his superior and assured us it wasn’t a problem – as if 100mL of gasoline would be a problem anyhow.
If the roads to Siwa were bumpy, the roads weren’t all that much better in Siwa. That became a minor inconvenience for one of the most astounding landscapes I have yet to see.
Siwa, a city of 20,000, is situated between two sizable lakes. It is surrounded by pristine, gorgeous, and inhospitable dunes of desert. The downtown area is about two or three blocks of shops dominated mostly by the thriving olive and date storefronts.
We arrived, dropped off our bags, and went to the roof to take in the view – admittedly it was not much except for the anachronistic architecture: mud huts that could not possibly stand the test of time, or the rainy season. Half of the buildings were mud huts, some still used, while more recent buildings resembled the ocherous brick and mortar found throughout Egypt. Unexpectedly trucks rumbled and horns blared in the streets well past sunset. That was probably the biggest letdown of Siwa. I was expecting ethereal silence, a town retrenched in a lifestyle from another century. What I found was a hubbub of enormous semis traversing the streets transporting building materials and the latest siphoned water from deep well.
We stayed in a hostel nestled in a hill crumbling with (what I assume to be) ancient domiciles. A stones throw away was a Sufi mosque. I first noticed something different when the muezzin began chanting a verse repeatedly before the call to prayer. It was melodic and reminded me very much of Jewish prayer. In unison the mosques began the adhan, and in unison they ended. After the isha, Siwa becomes the sleepy desert city I had imagined.
The water was delicious. At first I dismissed this as an overreaction after a long day’s trip. I took another gulp mentioned the obvious: of course the water here is better, it just came out the ground. Instead of the chemical purification processing, the bottlers use an oxidation process that makes for an amazingly refined beverage. The dinner too was refined and overindulging. I ate too much, but after McDonald’s I felt my body deserved nourishment, and I hate to waste food.
We crashed early, in part due to food-induced stupor. The next morning we walked across the town center to the tourism office and bank. We made a stop at the Siwa House where we found an introduction video available only in Arabic and German – typical Egyptian nonconformity. The displays next door were slightly more elucidating on the oasis’ traditions and history. Different garb and improvised tools were on display but lacked narrative and adequate descriptions. We set off for a tall hill known as the Mountain of the Dead. A ring of tombs of the ancient city’s inhabitants encircled the base. These are not kept like the tombs in Luxor. I circled the base mostly looking outward. Hamlets of buildings connected by narrow dirt roads pocked the burgeoning growths of palm trees. Far past the copses and verdure the salt lakes carve out large swaths of the desert, and beyond the rolling dunes the sheer faces tall plateaus stand placid in the beaming sun.
We descended and went to meet a contact who would take us into the desert the following day. Our hotelier offered us similar services for an obviously inflated price. Fathy brushed aside the hotelier’s price, and we learned that the military now required a $20 fee for “permission” to enter the dunes. They were discussing tomorrow’s activities and outlining the schedule for the following day.
Throughout the conversation I had begun noticing Siwan phenomena, most noticeably the dress and treatment of women. Siwa is so far away from mainstream Egypt that it hardly resembles any of its milieux or fashion. The men wear flowing white kaftan, understandable in the summer heat. The younger women, presumably unmarried, dressed in striking color. The married women, however, are resigned to a uniform but far less agreeable to the elements. Most women that I saw were carted around in the bed of a pickup truck, tuk-tuk, or donkey-pulled carriage. They were draped in a coal shawl over a black abaya. Whereas even a Cairene woman would leave her face uncovered, these women covered their entire face with a plain black veil, through which I’m not sure how much of their surroundings they saw. Traditions vary so wildly and solidify through calloused time. I got the impression that little influence from the outside world finds traction in Siwa.
We rallied our strength and navigated to Fatnas Island. A thin strip of pavement bisected the swampy shoreline and connected the mainland to a dense wood. We piled out and the lakeshore view emerged serenely and as picturesque as a scrim. We chose to walk out onto the dock, a promontory of about 15 meters. Zero sound, except for tedious faux clicks and pops of digital cameras. I forced myself to pocket my phone and rely upon my senses to record what tops a long list of gorgeous sunsets. The serenity of the moment distinguished this sunset from all others. In catch-22 fashion, I reminded myself that if such sunsets were so easily accessible – as in not located in another world 9 hours away – their value would be naught.
The morning of our highly-anticipated trek into the dunes, we visited the Temple of the Oracle and Cleopatra’s Bath. The Temple of the Oracle evoked memories of past trips to Luxor. Decaying walls once replete with detailed hieroglyphics and ornate carvings. This temple however overlooked the oasis’ salt lake. Alexander traveled there to receive a prophecy about his rulership of Egypt and other lands. Nobody knows what he heard, but I doubt that whatever it was stopped his conquests.
Cleopatra’s bath is situated literally in the middle of a road. It could be mistaken for an ornate roundabout, but instead this is one of many freshwater springs in the area. We surveyed the pool. Streams of bubbles rose to the surface. Those indicated it was indeed fresh. Chunks of olive algae floated about. A few cafes opportunely formed a crescent around the spring. The water was warm yet refreshing. We had our fill and took our positions on the open-air second floor of one of the cafes. It was under new Dutch management. In between swatting persistent and legion flies and itching previous failures, I tried a date shake. It was rich and perhaps suited for cooler temperatures, but it was tasty and definitely unique.
The dunes are majestic. Simultaneously the rolling pristine beauty is also harsh and forbidden, and nature will not relent. The only thing that might save you is an oasis, and they are a dreamscape. I can only imagine the trepidation followed by imminent disbelief and shocking euphoria when a nomad stumbled upon this oasis. It must have been beyond belief to find an uninhabited oasis such as this.
Our Toyota did have four-wheel drive. Unbeknownst to us and to our guide, the 4WD faulted and we abruptly stopped at the top of the first dune. Sinking in sand is akin to snow, except that there is infinitely more sand. When the wheels spin at a downward angle, the car sinks, and so we sunk. Our guide tried a few maneuvers that reminded me of Minnesota winters, snow emergencies, and tardiness my first hour class.
After a few failed spinning attempts and the pungent scent of burning clutch, we disembarked and crawled around shoveling out with our hands as much sand as possible. It was folly. We hadn’t been stuck ten minutes before I turned around to see two puppies running at us from God-knows-where. Our guide, perhaps slightly delirious from self-loathing and dehydration, started cackling at the sight of these two. I was still shoveling out sand, and one pup parked itself ostensibly in the shadow of my rear. I suspect it really just wanted to sniff out the news. A call was made and 15 minutes after the plunge a second 4x4 arrived with big burly men headed on the same excursion. We pushed the Toyota out in 5 seconds.
Deep in the dunes it is easy to lose all sense of direction. I do mean direction in the sense of geography, but I also mean it in the sense that if we are unfamiliar with our surroundings, have no visual clues to point us to safety, and entirely exposed, one’s basic perceptions also change. If it weren’t for the fact that Vodafone had so effectively blanketed the area with 3G coverage – and I totally would have preferred none of us having cameras or cellphones – the effects of desolation would have been far more pronounced.
And I doubt that it is just the desert that does this, but staring into nature unadulterated is a reassurance. It’s a calm reification that problems and issues are a perception. Lifelong struggles and contrivances are trivial: I’d assume that there is zero trace of my name that I etched in sand, and after the earth circles the sun a few thousand more times, memories and legacies will fade away.
We paused intermittently to take in different vistas and to dip into a cold and hot spring. The cold spring was more like a lake. The hot spring was sulfuric, smelled of eggs, but relaxed me further. We darted across the dunes to catch the sunset. By this point I had completely lost my sense of direction. Our guide knew and seemed to choose his favorite dunes to climb, slopes to descend, and barren plains to speed through as the sun vanished.
I sat up on the top of a dune with our guide, Fathy. I remarked to him that it was easily understandable how the Prophet Mohamed could so easily have wandered off into the Hejaz and experienced his revelations. Sensory deprivation is spending days or weeks at a time in the desert, deprived of sound, adequate food and water, and sight – the sun is too bright in the day and it is pitch black at night.
I was only exposed to a sliver of the desert’s serenity and it led my mind to some astonishing places. Turning off the phone and camera and capturing with the senses is almost lost. I had to make a conscious effort. My pictures are probably not as great or as many as those taken by my friends, but I cannot possibly forget this trip. The sunsets, the scenery, and such forbidding terrain demanded my respect for the insignificance of now but the untraceable past.
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