Chapter XII: Siwah (3)

“_15th March._—This morning our party broke up, Beseys and Minshawi making a line for their home in the Fayoum, our two khabirs also leaving us to visit friends in the Rif, and we down the Natron Valley, passing four convents on our way to Sheykh Ahmed and Fum el Bahr. We camped in the plain between Natron and the Rif. Twenty-eight miles.

“_16th March._—This morning we saw a strange sight. The moon was setting, and we saw three moons, and the sun was rising, and we saw two suns. At noon we reached the Nile Valley and rested awhile, feasting our eyes on the greenness and the water near Sheykh Ahmed. Then on, and camped at Fum el Bahr. Thirty miles.

“_17th March._—Reached Sheykh Obeyd on St. Patrick’s day, at 11.15, a weary crew, having travelled 413 miles in fourteen and a half days, the fortieth day from our leaving it. _El Hamdul Illah_!

“_24th March._—Sheykh Obeyd. I returned from my Siwah journey on the 17th at a quarter past eleven, meeting Anne accidentally on her way through the palm grove from the station. I could hardly speak for tears of joy. I had been away the forty days, during which she was to expect no news of me, and this was the forty-first, and during the whole of that time I had not spoken a word of any language but Arabic, till I had come even to think in Arabic, and I was weak and worn out, and famished in mind and body. Our last run from Siwah, 413 miles, had been accomplished in fourteen days and a half.

“Since then I have been resting, except that on the 20th I went into Cairo and lunched with Gorst, and at his suggestion drew up a memorandum in writing for him of the circumstances of my journey. There have been two political events during my absence, the war in Crete and Rodd’s mission to Abyssinia. I hardly know what to say yet on either case. Personally I have come back from my journey with my mind cleared on one point important to my life. It is as to religion. My experience of the Senussia at Siwah has convinced me that there is _no_ hope anywhere to be found in Islam. I had made myself a romance about these reformers, but I see that it has no substantial basis, and I shall never go farther now than I am in the Mohammedan direction. The less religion in the world, perhaps, after all, the better.”