“Life is rich with memorable encounters and further enriched by friendly conversations and emotional exchanges, often occurring around a dining table. Ever since my childhood, I looked forward to these encounters over a lunch, a dinner, or mezza and drinks, only to find endless joy at each one of these daily intermissions.” This website like the book: “is about conserving and sharing the content of precious experiences, in the hope that it would inspire and entertain”, its visitors.
Extract from Entracte Siwa
“It is a place that escapes the workings of time. Here, the flora, fauna, and people of the oasis have coexisted for some ten thousand years in isolation.”
The Siwa Oasis is a fertile depression 300 km southwest of the Mediterranean and 170 km east of the Libyan border. The fortress of Shali was built during the Mamluk period, around 1200 AD, on a hill to ward off Bedouin attackers. Siwa, as one of the last surviving oases on the planet, is an environmentally fragile ecosystem characterized by a unique cultural and architectural heritage.
Nowhere else in Egypt can one find buildings made of rock salt and clay, or a population whose first language is Berber. Over the years, as Egypt became more secure and Bedouin attacks were contained, Shali was steadily abandoned in favor of more spacious areas, prompting the fortress’s steady deterioration.
“All manifestations of life in Siwa depend on water; it is the raison d’être of the oasis.”
Siwa’s verdant orchards and gardens are the gift of a natural geological phenomenon that allows water entrapped beneath the earth to bubble upwards, reaching the surface and providing essential ingredients for continued life.
“Siwa’s exposure to the outside world throughout history has been limited to trading with local Bedouin tribes... As a result, over time, the Oasis developed its own unique Siwan language; local customs and traditions; decorative and folk arts; and architecture.”
“Homes away from home”
Two feet of the tripod stood in the Siwa village at walking distance from each other: one in the old fortress of Shali, where the ‘Albabenshal Heritage Lodge’ was born; the second in the midst of a palm grove where the “Kenooz Village Lodge” resides; while the third leg sailed away towards the suburban oasis of Khameesa, at the foot of the flat-topped holy mound of Adrère Amellal, where the Nature Lodge named after the mound came to life.
All three lodges shared the same genome, be it in the organic planning context in which they evolved, the earth architectural style that was adopted, or their reliance on the Siwan community to both manage and operate each of the “homes away from home.” Collectively, they derived maximum benefit from Soliman’s propensity to leverage the value of what existed on each of the sites, be it material, plant life, or just a simple memory of what the Oasis was like.
“The culinary experience is given due attention by carefully curating it as a whole, so that it is befitting of the environment in which it was born.”
In the heart of Siwa, our culinary spaces offer simple, rooted experiences shaped by place and tradition. Salama Café sits at the base of the Shali Fortress, where guests gather for warm meals as the sky shifts into dusk. Just nearby, The Siwa Bakery prepares dried bread crisps and sandwiches, using fresh organic vegetables from our local farm. At Shali Lodge, lunch is served beneath magical palm trees rising up in the middle of nowhere.
