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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Tribe number eleven
By Amira El-Noshokaty
It took a four-wheel drive, hurtling along a desert track that extends for more than 120 kms northeast from the last outpost of "civilisation" -- in this case, the town of Siwa -- to finally bring us to Al-Garah. Lost in the vast wastes of the Western Desert, some 340 kms from Marsa Matrouh, the smallest oasis in the Siwa depression has few visitors. Tourists are unheard of; aid workers, government officials, travelling salesmen are thin on the ground, too. Yet their almost total isolation does not appear to weigh too heavily on the people of Al-Garah. Their conversation is punctuated with laughter, and their demeanour bears witness to their pride -- the pride of the "eleventh tribe".
As we approached across the desert, our first sight of the village -- known locally as Om Al-Sagir (Mother of the Young) -- was of modest white houses scattered at the foot of a gold-tinted slope. Above loomed what appeared to be the ruins of an ancient fortress.
The old city of Al-Garah, like that of Siwa (Shali), dates from the early 13th century. Like Shali too, it has suffered the ravages of time -- and of rainfall -- being built out of a mixture of mud, stones and salt.
As we drew near, what seemed like the whole population of the oasis emerged to greet us, led by Sheikh Hassan, the headman of the tribe. We were shown to the madiafe (guest house), a large rectangular building that was essentially the same as all the other houses round about. With true bedouin hospitality, we were offered food and refreshment. Seated round a low, square table in one corner of the room, we listened as our hosts told us the story of their lives, and the history of this place.
Almost entirely cut off from the outside world, the oasis of Al-Garah is home to some 340 people, who live from their plantations of olive and date palm. Water plays an ambivelent role in the lives of the inhabitants. To this day, the area is subject to sudden downpours, which can cause enormous damage. Some years ago, Sheikh Hassan told us, one especially heavy storm destroyed many houses, which were only rebuilt with the help of the government, on the direct orders of the president.
Yet although this is a desert where it rains, the ground is jealous of the water it harbours. There are no natural springs fit to drink from anywhere in the oasis. What water there is salty and suitable only for agriculture.
"A well was discovered at Ain Kifarah in the late seventies," Sheikh Hassan explained. "It is only 60 kms away." However, instead of laying pipes to bring the precious water to Al-Garah, the government provided the people with a water truck instead, which makes the journey to the oasis once a month. Five years ago, an attempt was made to improve on this somewhat precarious situation by digging a well in Al-Garah itself. But the desert did not relent. "It cost millions," said Hassan, "but the water was still salty".
These problems over water -- fit for the plants on which men depend for their livelihoods, but not for the men themselves -- are typical of the precarious state of dependency in which Al-Garah finds itself today. Increasingly dependent on the outside world, communication remains an uncertain, even perillous business. Even staying in contact with the rest of the Siwa depression, let alone the world outside, can be a major challenge. The desert that surround the village is criss-crossed by a maze of tracks, which can all too easily appear identical, even to the trained eye. We were told the story of a married couple who set off to make the journey from Siwa to Al-Garah, and went missing. After a month of fruitless searching, a nomad came upon their bodies lying in the sand some 40 kms from their destination. "They were lost in the desert and nobody knew. And they were not the first to die," said Sheikh Hassan Khalifa, the nephew of the chief of the tribe.
The inhabitants of Al-Garah have little access to modern means of transportation: besides the water truck, there are two other trucks, one private, and one a gift of the government, but which "still needs to be fixed". And then there is the ambulance. Proudly parked a few yards from the guest house outside the village medical unit, this brand new machine is in the charge of Rashed, the driver. The vehicle and all its equipment were provided by the government, said Rashed, and now it was ready for use "in any emergency".
At the edges of the Western Desert live those who "see the world in a grain of sand" photos: Mohamed Mosaad
As I climbed aboard, my pilot boasted how he had taught himself to drive. Yet even in such expert hands, there is no such thing in the desert as immediate access to modern medical care: "The nearest hospital is three hours away, in Marsa Matrouh," Rashed explained, "and in a critical case, [where the patient cannot be bumped about], it could take four hours to get there." Still, he always has his ambulance standing ready, with a spare tank of petrol: the nearest filling station is also in Marsa Matrouh. There are two medical units in the oasis, dispensing basic first aid and advice, and the doctor who is in post in Siwa comes through to Al-Garah twice a month.
Al-Garah did, for a while, steal a march on the telecommunications revolution earlier this century. In 1909 the line that was laid linking Siwa to Marsa Matrouh passed through the oasis. There it survived the whole of one world war and the best part of the second, only to be cut by British troops in 1945. "My father was in charge of all the connections within a range of 100 kms, from Al-Garah through to the Qatarah depression," Sheikh Hassan recalled. Once that line was gone, the village had to wait until the 1970s to be reconnected.
"At the time of the 1973 war with Israel," Hassan told us, "I asked Field Marshal Ahmed Badawy for a telephone line. The request was viewed favourably, and in 1977, Al-Garah was granted a military unit -- 4 cars and 30 soldiers together with a wireless unit. Without that, we would have been completely isolated." Today, the wireless telephone still works, but the unit that came with it has been reduced from 30 men to two .
Before night fell, we made a short tour of the village, then returned to the dimly lit resthouse where we would spend the night. From the wooden ceiling hung a pale and lonely lamp. Electricity too is scarce in Al-Garah. "It works from sunset to midnight only," I was told. Yet to the people that I met, the miracle seemed to be that it worked at all, and that they had lived long enough to witness the age of electricity -- an age that in Al-Garah is still only nine-years-old.
As the sunbeams crept in through the three little windows of the madiafa next morning, we woke to share breakfast with our hosts. The barashieh or fresh white bread was as soft as the finest French pancakes, served with a sauce made from dates, olives and olive oil, that tasted like molasses, and accompanied by white cheese and green tea.
After breakfast, we toured the oasis. Facing the mosque stands the primary school that opened over five years ago -- a tidy off-yellow building with four rooms, three of which are used for teaching. With the permission of the school's principle, we went in to greet the children, who sat quietly on clean brown benches facing the green board. Space too is at a premium, and so two grades are taught in each classroom simultaneously, save for the fifth grade, which has a room to itself.
Not far from the school is a building which houses the oasis' lone "development project". The idea was to encourage the women of Al-Garah to make carpets. But carpet-weaving is time-consuming, and the materials required are expensive. When we visited, we found the building shut up. The women, we were told, were at home making baskets, which can be produced far more quickly and more cheaply. "The material needed for the weaving of carpets is far too expensive," Sheikh Hassan said, "and wool is scarce in Al-Garah." Nor can there be much of a local market for such handicrafts -- though as we walked around the village, we were greeted by young girls who offered us hand-made ornaments and colourful shawls.
Travellers around the world today devote their vacations to seeking out remote places, in the often desperate attempt to leave civilisation behind and recapture "things as they once were". In Al-Garah, we had stumbled upon just such a place; yet even here, modern life, and its attendant complexities, loomed large on the horizon. What struck me most was not the remoteness of the place, or the strangeness of its way of life, but the sheer physical beauty of the oasis, and its inhabitants' straightforward, Egyptian pride.
Before we left, we returned to spend more time away from the bright morning sunshine, lost in conversation behind the white walls of the madiafa. We learned that another preparatory school was about to be built. Aid is sent to the oasis by the government once a year in the form of food supplies. The people also talked about the two wars they had witnessed, and the two worlds in between.
Then, Sheikh Hassan proudly handed us the plain black note book which serves as Al-Garah's guest book, and invited us to sign our names. As we did so, we heard the conversation of the village circling round us, returning continually to the same refrain of pride and gratitude: Masr Om Al-Donia -- Egypt is the mother of the world.
