Any individual who was popularly supposed to possess an Evil Eye was carefully avoided. There was one old woman who was particularly feared on this account. She was quite old and rather mad, but she certainly had an exceptionally evil expression, and she showed her face more than most of them. Anybody who met her in the morning, starting out to his garden or on some expedition, would attribute any mishap that occurred during the day to her malevolent glance. The witches of Siwa live among some ruined houses in the highest part of the old town. Their leader is a little blind woman who is said to be 100 years old. She looks exactly like one of the shrivelled mummies that are found in some of the tombs near Siwa, but her scanty wisps of hair are dyed red which gives a most sinister effect. She creeps about leaning on a staff, like the regular witch in Grimm’s fairy tales, and although she is quite blind she manages to slip about the high battlements like a lizard, knowing by force of habit every stone in the place. When a client wishes to consult her he comes after nightfall to a certain place among the ruins high up in the town, where a number of dark passages converge, and then he calls her. She lives somewhere up above with two or three others. She mystifies her visitors by appearing suddenly, quite close to them, noiselessly and apparently from nowhere. I once sent a message saying that I should like to make her acquaintance. One night after dinner I walked over to the town, taking a man with me who knew the place well. We scrambled up and up, through pitch-dark passages to the highest part of the town and eventually arrived at a little low door about 4 feet high, in one of the narrowest and steepest tunnels. After knocking several times it was opened. I lit a match and saw the little old woman herself. She led me up several more dark flights of steps to the roof of the house, and there, sitting in the moonlight, I drank tea with her. The tea was served by her grandchild, a Sudanese boy. Unfortunately I could hardly understand a word she said, but the tea was excellent, and the view was very fine. It was a hot summer night, but the high roof was cool with even a faint breeze blowing across it. Looking down over the parapet one saw white-wrapped, sleeping figures on the roofs below, and in the distance there sounded the faint, mysterious melody of reed pipes and a tom-tom. These Libyan nights are very wonderful; the sky is a deep, dark blue, powdered with myriads of stars, and every few minutes a long-tailed meteor flashes downwards. Shooting stars are said to be hurled by the angels in heaven at the jinns on the earth below, but the Siwans fear them as they say that each star kills a palm tree. They prove this statement by arguing that when a tree dies in a natural way it withers from the bottom, but when it withers from the top, as many do, it is caused by a falling star.