SURPRISE ENEMY FIRE IN THE WESTERN DESERT
You don’t see many women in Siwa. During a visit to one of the most remote places in the world — an oasis in the Western Desert, Egypt, nearly 50km east of the Libyan border, we saw only two. The first was late at night. She wore a niqab that left just her eyes uncovered, and was the only passenger on a donkey cart driven by a young boy. The sighting, while rare, was not unusual. Siwa is an extremely conservative Muslim society even by the standards of Egypt. Women, whether married or not, never leave home unaccompanied and when they do, they cover themselves from head to toe.
Most of the people are Berber and, like many Egyptians, they are Sunnis. While warm and welcoming, they are an inclusive bunch and proud of their Maghreb heritage. “We are not Arab,” says one who cuts hair in Johannesburg. I call him my “Berber Barber”, but am never sure if he thinks it corny, patronising or just doesn’t appreciate the atrocious alliteration.
Even though he’s from Algeria, he became unusually animated to hear of our trip to Siwa during a detour on a visit to World War 2 battlefields. Not only did he know where Siwa was, he also knew about its salt lakes (marshes, really), the magnificent nearby mountain, the date and olive groves and the pool where Cleopatra was said to have bathed.
What he would have made of the second woman we saw, I was not sure. So I didn’t tell him. She could not have been a greater contrast to the first. She emerged from the waters of an oasis deep in the Great Sand Sea. All she wore was a bikini.
Siwa is about 300km south of Mersa Matruh, once a military base familiar to many South African soldiers from the war, these days a down-at-heel beach resort. Margate without the waffles.
Siwa is on the edge of the Great Sand Sea, a vast stretch of desert between western Egypt and eastern Libya. Most of it is covered by sand dunes. It’s what we popularly believe the Sahara to be. Deep in this world of huge dunes lie oases from a cartoonist’s imagination: swaying palm trees, reeds and shining water.
It was into such a pool that our second woman had dived to cool down after a drive from Cairo, 860km away. We arrived to see her climb out of the water. Rommel arriving over the nearest dune astride a panzer would have been less of a shock.
We had been brought to this oasis by Bedouin drivers, who knew how to navigate the vastness and, in their Toyota 4x4s, treated it the way taxi drivers do a motorway – with a reckless abandon. Our driver had barely stopped when we piled out to get a close-up view of the oasis nymph.
She was unperturbed by the attention as she accepted a towel from a travel companion, and happy to chat. Would she mind going back in? Just for the picture we had all missed. It would be like Sean Connery spotting Ursula Andress emerging from the sea in that white bikini, the famous scene from Dr No, the first Bond film.
“Ah! James Bond,” she replied. Back into the water she dived, splashed around a bit, then stepped out, sleek and glistening and pulling her dark, long hair behind her. A host of cameras clicked away.
Why were we here? she inquired in a lilting German accent. Oh, to see the battlefields, we replied. “Zer ver battles here?” she asked, incredulous. Seventy-five years ago, her lot and ours would have opened fire, but she was unaware of that confrontation. At least she knew about James Bond. And before any more chitchat, or even exchanging names and addresses, the Fräulein was into a Landrover with her pals and out of our lives forever.