Conclusion
Many people have at various times carefully considered the agricultural possibilities of Siwa from a commercial point of view. Undoubtedly the cultivation in the oasis could be greatly developed, as there is enough water to irrigate a much larger area of ground than that which is now being cultivated. At present the natives have only the most primitive ideas of agriculture; for instance, they neglect most of the fruit trees by doing no pruning, and through sheer laziness they have allowed various species to die out completely. They are handicapped, too, by having no proper tools or machinery. The dates of Siwa are exceptionally fine, famous all over Egypt, and besides these there is a quantity of other fruit whose quality could be much improved by proper care. Olive oil is a valuable product and commands a very high price on the coast and in Egypt. No wine is made from the grapes, and no one has experimented in drying fruit, which is a simple and lucrative industry.
But the difficulty that faces one in all commercial schemes is the means of transport. Camels can only be hired from the coast at rare intervals and during the season when the Arabs do not mind visiting the oasis, and their hire is so prohibitive as to make any heavy transport hardly worth while. The ex-Khedive went to Siwa for the purpose of seeing whether it would be worth running a light railway from the coast to the oasis, and since then the project has been seriously thought of more than once, but it has always been considered impracticable on account of the expense and the great difficulty of crossing such an expanse of waterless desert.
An alternative scheme of running a service of motor lorries is a more likely proposition, and when once started it might be highly remunerative. Some of the richest and most progressive Siwans were very anxious to buy a lorry and send their olive oil direct to Alexandria, but they failed to appreciate that one lorry alone would be useless, and the minimum number would have to be four.
Apart from the possibilities of trade Siwa is valuable as a field for excavators. So far very little digging has been done in Siwa and the adjoining oases, and undoubtedly there are great possibilities in this direction. Labour is cheap and one could hire enough men in the place to do any work of this kind. Nobody has attempted to locate and examine the subterranean passages which connect Aghourmi and the temple, and Siwa town with the Hill of the Dead. There is also the possibility of rediscovering the emerald mines which brought fame to the oasis many centuries ago, and which are now so completely forgotten that I doubt whether half a dozen people have ever heard of their existence. Under the present regime, though one does not know how long it will last, an Englishman can live at Siwa in perfect safety, and though the climate is certainly very hot in summer-time it is quite agreeable during more than half the year.
But Siwa will never become a much-visited place, which is perhaps all for the best, owing to the strip of desert which stretches between it and the coast. Otherwise it might have developed into another Biskra, which is the oasis in Algeria that Hitchens describes so wonderfully in The Garden of Allah. Quite lately I noticed in a travel book called Kufara, the Secret of the Sahara, by Mrs. Rosita Forbes, a mention of this very desert between Siwa and the coast which was described as a “tame desert.” This expression, used by a lady with such great knowledge of deserts in all parts of the world, surprised me—and I own that it annoyed me! Her only experience of this particular desert was acquired during the one day in which she motored up from Siwa to Matruh in the company of several officers of the F.D.A. who met her there. But people on the Western Desert can remember, only too well, a terrible fatality which occurred less than a year ago in which three Englishmen were involved, and which proved conclusively that no waterless desert is safe or “tame,” even in these days when cars can travel across it.
I was not actually in Siwa when Hassanein Bey arrived there, accompanied by Mrs. Forbes, after their memorable journey to Kufra, but I returned there soon afterwards, and it was very interesting to hear of her exploit from the various natives who came in to Siwa from the west.
In spite of a climate that was sometimes trying, in spite of a bad bout of fever, and in spite of an occasional feeling of loneliness, the memory of the time that I spent at Siwa will always be a very happy one. Siwa is so absolutely unspoilt, and so entirely Eastern. Even the ubiquitous Greek trader has not penetrated this desert fastness. It is a place that grows on one, and the few who have been there, and who appreciate its curious fascination, find it very hard to leave.
There is a saying in Egypt that whoever tastes the water of the Nile must some time return there, and I am very sure that he who drinks from the Siwa springs will always wish to go there again. Walking by moonlight under those huge, towering battlements of the strange old town, through streets and squares deserted save for an occasional white-robed figure, one could almost credit the queer stories of ghosts, jinns and afreets that are believed by the Siwans to haunt every spot in this mysterious little oasis which lies hidden among the great barren tracts of the pitiless Libyan Desert.