Siwa Meya Meya

I am composing this post at a coffee shop in Siwa, awaiting my Turkish coffee with chocolate and "shweya" (a little) sugar. Not an authentic Egyptian drink perhaps, but it sounds good (update: it is!). Siwa is the perfect antitode to Cairo, where I experienced the first sustained feeling of hating a place on this trip.


You know the experience of hearing a new word and then suddenly it's everywhere? That is how Siwa has been for me. After I sent out my request for suggestions, my friend Mesbah strongly recommended I come here while in Egypt. And then Siwa was on everyone's lips as a place not to be missed. And they were all right! Thank you so much for the tip, Mesbah, and the dates are just as fabulous as you said.

Siwa, a natural oasis, is built on top of an aquifer in the Libyan Desert of Egypt. There are a few natural oases in the western deserts of Egypt, and they are all formed due to depressions in the earth that allow access to the spring water underground. Siwa has played quite a place in history too. Alexander the Great consulted the Oracle of Amoun Ra here, who generously informed him he was the rightful ruler of Egypt. Cleopatra and Herodotus bathed in one of the springs here, not at the same time, which now goes by the name of Cleopatra's bath. And some Persian cat whose name I can't recall had had enough of the Oracle, who was a threat to his power in Egypt and had predicted a tragic end to him, so he decided to track her down and put an end to her. But that was many centuries before they built a relatively smooth highway leading here, so he and 50,000 soldiers got lost in the sand and no trace has ever been found of them.

As the Oracle's power waned, it seems Siwa did fall off the map a bit. The indigenous people lived in relative isolation for hundreds of years, taking in enough strangers over the years to convert to Islam. Siwas still have a distinct language and culture, though certainly Siwa has expanded in the last 10 years or so, with more Egyptians from outside of Siwa setting up shop and foreigners taking very long bus rides to get here.

About that bus ride, I bought my ticket on Friday, departing Cairo at 6:45pm and arriving in Siwa 10 hours later Saturday morning, and managed to fend off the ticket counter guy's Facebook friend request with a lie: "No, I don't have a facebook page." I wasn't sure how easy it would be to find a hotel room at 6am in a town where donkeys may possibly outnumber combustion engines. But that's the only time the direct bus from Cairo runs, so there wasn't really an alternative time. The travel gods must have forgiven or understood my lie to the ticket seller because they made sure that my seat mate on the bus was Taha, a Bedouin from Upper Egypt who had gone to UC Berkeley, lives in Germany, has family who owns shops and land in Siwa, and was going to make sure I got settled in my hotel before the donkeys and chickens woke up. Those are not his words, but that's how it worked out.

Once I awoke from my post-bus nap, I had some lunch and visited Taha's shop. He showed me around the palm groves surrounding Siwa and gave me a quick drive-by of the few major sites, so that once I motivate to rent a bike and check them out, I won't get lost. I met his father and uncle, who have been just as welcoming. Hussein, Taha's father, lived in San Francisco for over 30 years, and his uncle, Ali, is a Sufi who has been giving me meditation tips. He also diagnosed a back problem. I didn't think I had one, but lugging around 35 pounds for a month and spending the night on a bus might have created one. Basically, I have been adopted. So when Taha mentioned that he was going to clean the shop today, I offered my dusting and polishing skills. It was a small way of thanking them for the hospitality they've shown me.

For such a small place in the middle of nowhere, there really is a fair amount to see here in Siwa. The town itself is built around the Shali, which is the old medina, built on high ground. The traditional building material here is kerchef, which is salt mixed with fermented mud. And that's what the Shali is built of, but three days of rain in the 1920s made much of it inhabitable. Basically, it dissolved. So the skyline is dominated by this tan fortress that reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West; it seems like it's melting. You can climb up to the top and get some great views though. I already mentioned Cleopatra's Bath and the Temple of the Oracle, both of which are in the palm groves, which hold thousands of plants: date palms, olive trees, lemon trees, guava, mango, henna, mint, and loads of other fruit and veg. The gardens are typically lowered beds built around a pool connected to a spring, with irrigation canals built in the sand that allow the farmers to irrigate the desired areas. Pretty darn handy in this climate. There is a huge salt lake not far out of town, which on a windless day, like today, is eerily still and perfectly reflects the islands and palm trees sprouting out of it. There is some haze on the horizon, which I think is from the sand, which makes the sunsets disappointing. But I don't hold it against Siwa. Who could? It's such a relaxing place to be - have a coffee now, have a tea later, read a little, take a walk, have some fresh-squeezed oj, greet the local kids, avoid the donkey dung in the street, read a book, and generally just take it as it comes. And did I mention my room, which is nothing special by any stretch of the imagination, but has a powerful ceiling fan and my own porch, is $9 a night?

I'm picking up small bits of Arabic too, and "meya" literally means 100, I'm not sure. But colloquially, "meya meya" means very good or 100%, and that's how I feel about Siwa.