"SHEIK" GLAMOUR DISPELLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 299, 15 December 1923, Page 30

"SHEIK" GLAMOUR DISPELLED.

SINISTER ENCHANTERS. WHO UEAB -WHITE WOMEN ASTRAY.

(By a Cairo Correspondent.)

The dramatic Madame Fahmey trial end the tragic death of Princess Abbas Halim, formerly Miss Harrington, found dead in her bedroom in Alexandria through accidental shooting, have brougli-t into prominence the life of white women with wealthy Egyptian Beys. lords and Sheiks. Those who are behind the scenes in life in Cairo and Alexandria, whisper amazing stories of the extraordinary cult for the "desert romance" and the "passion of the Egyptian lover," stimulated by a number of novels on the subject. This article sheds a new light on the lure of the Brown Man, and shows howmany white women have rued their association with those who at first seemed romantic and chivalrous.

Cairo—the city of equalor and glittering wealth—spreads herself indolently along five miles of the east bank of the lordly Nile. Fαve hundred and fifty feet above the city rise the mysterious Mokattam Hills. Beyond lies the illimitable desert. »

The port of Bulak; the gardens and Palace of Shubra; the broad blue bosom of the river studded with emerald isles; the white houses ana the yellow eanded squares; together ■with the mosques and minarets which lift their tracery and curves against the eternal azure of the sky —this is the city of beauty and romance. At least this is how it strikes the impressionable visitors who come saturated ■with the spirit of "The Garden of Allah," and "Bella Donna," as well as with the new-style "Sheik" type of ■fiction redolent with sand and the free life of the Beduodn and the nomad. Lures That Lead Captive. The trial of Madame Fahmey and the recent tragic death of "Princess" Abbas Halim (nnce "Jackie" Hamilton of the London footlights), have created much excitement in Cairo and Alexandria and among the British in Egypt. Old residents realise that the lure of the "Bey," the "Sheik," and the "Prince," has reached a pitch and. almost daily poignant tragedies are occuring, usually hushed up because the wounded heart does not flaunt itself and because—more sinister —the brown man is subtle in covering his tracks.

Cairo, seen from the citadel, looks despite its mosque and redfezzed hurrying crowds very modern and "safe." But "East is East," the rest is a platitude, and white women who think that romance can be culled quite easily from inscrutable Egyptians, Arabs, and nomadic cosmopolitans of the Old Nile towns, find sometimes they have made a dangerous error.

How real is the menace of the aesociation of white ladiee with Egyptians of varying grades may be judged from the fact that a few days ago a special branch of the Secret Service was formed to undertake the -watching of certain brown men who make a practice of associating with white women. A colonel, recently in London, is in charge, and he is naturally an officer perfectly au fait with the ways of the wily Egyptian. He can tell some strange tales. It is a hard fact but it must be admitted that the greater part of the women who suffer through the waye of these Egyptians have only themselves to blame. They literally "go mad" over men whose ways are not in accord ■with Western ideas, even though they may have a thin veneer of civilisation-. Brown Adonis and the Fading Flower. It must be understood that life in Cairo is divided into sections as completely as (say) Whitechapel differs from Kensington and Green from Soho. There is the foigh-claee Jiuropean existence whdeh finds it» h,gh-water mark in Shepherd's Hotel and flirts and flutters on the Kasr en >.il bridge leading towards the Gezira en Nil, a lovely island in mids t renin.

This section of life dines in the fine restaurants, and dances in the wonderful ballrooms of the modern hotels, trta? f + i - always plent y of "o** trips to the fnnge of the desert and of course the everlasting moonlight H.T i™, the elect rically.propelted dabeyahs-luxurious floating houseboats inviting interludes of love and languid meditation.

This ,c the chic life, M d swimming down this stream of recent years have ' come figures who before the Var wouIS I have found it very difficult to the weir of the haut mode. But just as London society has had its port-war phage, B0 in Cairo. The new-rich in the land of the Pharaohs are the "Beys," the "lords " the enfendi," and the "princes" whose fathers many of them were poor but industrious Egyptians who made « £Tf y in P™*™* speculations after Kitchener's military genius freed I the country from the terror of the! Mahdi. The post-war cotton and land l boom put millions of piastres into the pockets of some of these men, and it is their sons—educated in England, glossed with the varnish of modern manner—but with the nature unchanged. Their dark faces, jewellery, lavish ways, retinue of servants, florid love-| making, and Eastern charm—with the hint of the mysterious and the silken touch of the feline, ravishes the heart of' women saturated with unwholesome: ' desert" literature. They play with the hearts of white women as they negligently roll their cigarettes, and as a smoked fragile tube of native tobacco dissolves into nothingness so these brown epicures of passion toss away their "loves" when they tire pf them! I can give one instance. A white young lady met a so-called "Prince" at a dance given in a famous hotel. He danced divinely; murmured sweet nothings in his magnetic voice; there were rides in the motor in the moonlight, and lazy drifting down the dark blue Nile at night. Then words of 'love," j implicitly believed on one side and just amusement on the other. There was a shameful sequel, and the girl committed suicide. She left a letter: "I am now nothing; just a fading flower." The Dean's "Wife Who Erred. Theso "Beys" and "princes" riot in luxury for a short time, and then like butterflies touched by the early frost they wilt away. But in the sensuous hours of the warm sunshine of prosperity they reign like monarchs of a day. Their stucco houses that squat on the edge of the Nile are called palaces by fellaheins who live in mud-daubed cots, and therein they maintain a. cur-

ious mixture of Eastern barbarism and Western convenience; the Nubian eunuch using the telephone to order the motor car while "wives" yawn in the harem. Into such Eurroundings come white women who think at first that they are indeed the "star of the morning" and the "white pearl of the West"—until the falsetto of the waddling eunuch startles them into realities and a knowledge that "sheik love" and "Egyptian paseion" are pretty on paper but impossible in reality.

Here is a cameo of Cairo life in these topsy-turvy days when some . white women seem to run amok in the labyrinthine ways of exotic "love."

A rural Dean's wife—he is a bookish recluse in England—came to Cairo for her health. She was steeped in the "romance" of Egypt; Robert Kitchens' books were among her luggage. She was introduced to some tinsel "prince," and though she was elderly and despite the desiccated rural Dean at home, she fell into the abyss of love —a St. Martin's summer of passionate admiration. He— well he was rathor pressed for money despite his glittering title, and though the lady was fading she had money. They disappeared into the desert, while the rural Dean conned his books at home, was so pleased to gather from the scrappy post-cards that the dry air of Egypt was doing his spouse good. At length she reappeared; disillusioned, broken, and robbed of all. To this day the good husband does not know the truth; if it were told, would he believe it!

It is easy to understand how evil is the effect of this craze for "brown lovers" by white women upon the native population. It is no uncommon thing to see a slim young "Bey" driving in his motor down the Abdin Square, through the Ezbekia Gardens, down by the lordly Ismalia Palace, accompanied by white women. The finger of scorn is pointed by the natives, for they say: "White women are cheap to-day," and that is why there is a constant increase in the number of assaults upon white women. The standard has been lowered. It is now no longer a. matter of horrified comment that Miss , or some fetching widow has "married" a wealthy old or young Egyptian according to the Christian and Mohammedan'faith. The' question of divorce is simple. • It is high time that the "sheik love" glamour wae dispelled. For truth to tell the acid test of time coon dissolves the "romance" and there emerges the sinister traits of the Eastern man—cunning, brutal, and entirely lacking in even a conception of chivalry.