A hectic passage between Egypt and Palestine—full of smuggling and trouble—Sinai has long been a home to Bedouin tribes. In recent weeks, their home has been a scene of violence, as Egyptian authorities attempted to combat “terrorists“ who allegedly killed 16 Egyptian border guards. Military tanks were deployed and Bedouins—who live in a timeless nomadic world that has little to do with modern Egypt—offered to help the military in bringing security to the seemingly lawless desert.
A hectic passage between Egypt and Palestine—full of smuggling and trouble—Sinai has long been a home to Bedouin tribes. In recent weeks, their home has been a scene of violence, as Egyptian authorities attempted to combat “terrorists“ who allegedly killed 16 Egyptian border guards. Military tanks were deployed and Bedouins—who live in a timeless nomadic world that has little to do with modern Egypt—offered to help the military in bringing security to the seemingly lawless desert.
This is just one of many departures from traditional Bedouin behaviour as the tribe struggles to maintain its roots in the midst of a fast changing world.
Classical Bedouin poet, Hassouna Fathis, talks about the transformations that have swept the Bedouin tribe and the values in Sinai.
Can we still talk about the old Sinai desert personality?
Sinai indigenous people are Bedouin, and a Bedouin is supple like the sea, strong like the desert, solid like mountains and fast like the wind. He is the sculpture of a harsh nature that teaches him the sapience of the pure life, which makes his needs so simple and forms his culture in accordance with the surrounding diverse terrain, the remoteness between human communities and the residences varying with the seasons. Nature is still a critical element in the formation of a Sinai person in spite of the increased urbanization and complicating politics.
The question of identity becomes more urgent under political unrest and given that Sinai inhabitants are the most attached to national identity, how has nomadism impacted this issue?
Nomadism implies all the values of sublimation. Here, we should distinguish between nomadism and tribalism, between race and lineage. A value like knighthood stems from the desert and makes the Bedouins sociable and hospitable. Travelling is also connected to freedom. The conventional law, for example, doesn’t have imprisonment or confinement provisions; rather, and despite the rarity of financial resources, it replaces imprisonment with tangible property and doesn’t take away the freedom of a Bedouin because it is his life. We therefore find it difficult to understand the central state when it decides to deprive our people of their freedom through imprisonment.
The hereditary Bedouin poetry now seems far from the urbanised and changing life of Sinai citizens. For example, some women actually poetize, while the society denies the role of women?
Indeed, the role of Bedouin women has been reduced to housekeeping while they still have their contribution to the Bedouin poetry. The four-versed poems they compose are sung by men in traditional weddings. However, these poems aren’t attributed to them but to the hereditary poetry in general.
But there is no singing in the current weddings of Sinai, and the famous traditional weddings have been often replaced with Islamic ones where there is no signing or poetry?
Indeed, marriage ceremonies have changed; the tribal singer, poet and his retinue used to attend and the crowd – both men and women – used to sing memorized hereditary songs. All that has been replaced with the Islamic wedding where loudspeakers play religious songs, with strict segregation between women and men. Women however still sing alone in the open and pass some of the poems of old times to their children, while this is not the case in the northern urban areas around Arish.
A nostalgia for the era preceding the Islamic tradition’s control of social relations in Sinai seeps out from your words. Is it only because of the shift in the political atmosphere?
The change preceded the Islamic phenomenon. The society itself had missed joy and happiness so long ago that external people, like DJs, are now called to bring joy to weddings. The youths these days are ashamed of flirting, which was a constant component in Bedouin poetry. The change began when Bedouins drove cars instead of riding camels, the coercion-based Wahabi tribalism triumphed over the free value-based nomadism, and the creativity of a free individual was replaced with connection to lineage and race. Ever since that moment, our life has become ready for imported values.
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