Society doesn’t like intruders and if they come to stay despite all they risk to be treated like lepers if not worse. It seldom matters if they arrive as aggressive conquerors, as powerful representatives of the government (be it accepted or not) or as peaceful immigrants looking for refuge or for a decent livelihood. There’s no way round it. They are outsiders and it’s almost inevitable that they’ll have a hard time to overcome the mistrust, maybe even hatred keeping them at bay. When the new commisioner in my Egyptian bookish déjà-vu Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher takes charge of his post in the Siwa Oasis in North-Western Egypt about 50 km from the Libyan border in the 1890s, he knows all too well that he isn’t welcome and that he shouldn’t have given in to his Irish wife’s unreasonable wish to accompany him for the sake of archaeological research.
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