Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-08
An English7Uoman Re7eab the Routine of
Life in the Forbidden Rooms of Moslem
Househ0Ms-A Connection Bet70een
Romance and A0oirdupoiS-Pt1miti0 and
Highly Sophisticated Oriental Vices.
BY ROSITA FORBES.

OUCH is the life of the most primitive Arab
women. Yet they are content. The last
thing they would want to do would be to leave
their harem.
The romance of a MoSlem womans life is in
her children. Talk to her of love and she prob
ably will not connect it with a man at ALL
She will apply it to her sons, her family, and
her co-wives. If fortune-telIer visits the
harem-a crone, incredibly bent and withered
who traces the future in the Sand-she speaks
Of motherhood, not of wifehood. Where the
palmist of the Occident predicts husband,
the desert seer prophesies many sons.
This one thread is found throughout the
East. 1t links the brainless, pussycat women
of Yemen to their highly educated, polyglot
co-religionists of Egypt, Turkey and Syria.
Otherwise there is no more similarity between
Bedouin harems and those of the Mediter-
ranean merchants and pashas than there is
between the hut of Hopi Indian and fiat in
Park Lane.
The majority of educated women in the East
are as disconnected as those of the extreme
West, but for a different reason They are
still struggling for the independence we have
won, but do not know how to USE
In Egypt the movement has meant higher
heels and thinner wells, but it has not preached
the wall between the sexes. Occasionally q
paSha'S daughter sees her fiance before mar
riage A mutual friend arranges that they
shall visit the same shop at the same moment
or the man is waiting at an arranged corner
and the girl leans from her carriage with veil
blown aside. But this does not always happen
In Syria, the women have had to fight for
the independence of their countrysas well as
their own, so they have acquired sense of
proportion, lacking much in the West as
in the East
have two great friends in Damascus Zarifa
and Mack ell Abed. When first knew zarifa
her father had arranged her marriage with an
elderly paSha.,
How can you bear it?" I asked.
What a lot of Importance you attach to
men," Knocked Zarifa.
But he already has wife!" protested.
The beauty condescended to be serious for a
moment
I'VE share our husbands" she said but we
never share our children" She pointed an
accusing finger at me- you waste your mother
hood You give your children to strangers, to
nurses, governeSses and schoolmasters; we keep
ours for ourselves"
One day she invited me to a harem party.
BY the way. the harem is not a mysteriousiy
curtained-off place. overburdened with cush-
ions and reeking with scent or incense The
word Is taken from haram which means for
hidden to Strangers-except one or two rooms
near the front door, called the "selamlik," or
mems quarters where the host receives his
like any Western house, only there is nothing
soft about It, Cushions in the East always
seem to be stuffed with young potatoes.
THE PARTY to which I was invited took
place in Louis XIV room stiff with gilt
and pink brocade. The girls wore European
evening dresses and pearls. We ate a great
many sweet cakes and drank iced water There
were music and singing. One woman played a
guitar. Her sister sang Turkish songs to an
audh Others performed what they call a
story dance" much like Russian ballet and
very well done
The party finished with a rather learned
discussion on psychology, and my hostess
quoted authorities in French, English and
italian. It was not at all unlike a meeting
at an educational club. In fact America
where the club habit is most highly developed,
seems to me to resemble pretty close the harem
life of the East.
remember heated discussion in Damascus
with Mack. This daughter of FL Abed Pasha
was, at a. the feminist leader of Syria She
had founded orphanages girls schools, and
a woman'S newspaper, yet she wore the double
black veil that completely hides the face and
is SO thick you can hardly see through it. At
that time Damascus had an old-fashioned
pasha who disapproved of change BY this
order, the police were armed with enormous
scissors, with which they slashed the clothes
OF any woman who was immodest enough to
show the least bit of wrist or ankle beneath
her all-enveloping black habbara or cloak
tits monstrous!" commented.
NazeK looked at me, amused Surely 1t is a
trif1e, not worth bothering about; but then,
In the West, you do make an awful fuss about