A SHEIK'S BRIDE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 10

A SHEIK'S BRIDE.

BLONDE ENGLISH GIRL CEREMONY IN LONDON FLAT. WANTS TO WEAR THE VEIL. (Special.—By Air Mall.) LONDON", April 23. The marriage of an English girl to an Indian sheik, which took place secretly over r year ago at the London mosque, was this week made public, at a ceremony of the ancient East conducted in a London Hat. When Miss Dorothy Jarratt, daughter of an English Army officer. 23 years old, married Sheik Abdul, of Dacca, a young law student in London, only a few close friends knew of it. But this week the Begum—as Miss Jarratt is now called greeted her husband's Indian friends at her Highgatc flat and received their ceremonial blessing. l-'lowing Oriental robes seemed strangely out of place in this modern Hat. There were songs and prayers and chants. Yet the dominant figure in the. room was the blonde, blue-eyed English girl. Dressed in a shimmering green silk sari which she had stitched herself, she sat silently at the head of the table. Sir Abdul Qadir, a Councillor of the Secretary of State for India, asked the blessing of Mohammed upon the union. And then Abdul Asr Hafuz. Indian poet, broke into a chanting song he had composed in praise of the sheik and his Knglish bride. The poet, dressed in a brown coat, white troupers and black topee, chanted vigorously, while the noises of London's traffic drifted in. The sheik thanked h i.s guests in a tdioi'L speech. He told them how God had created positive and negative in man and woman. Sometimes they were of different races. "Hut," he said, "when these two conic together there :s no infatuation. It is love that will endure for all time." The tdieik explained how he met his bride at the Kingsway Hall, j London. "It was not long before we decided to marry," he said. "We kept it secret, because not everyone understood. and it was right that my wife should get .to know tlie ways of Islam before we told the world." He glanced proud! v at his bride and added: "Is she not beautiful'; 1 have given her a Moslem name, Shcrcne Begum—the sweetest woman in the world!" Asked about her marriage, after the ceremony, the Begum replied: '"There are special reasons why I should not speak of myself. What docs it matter now? I am a Moslem myself, and one day I hope to go to India with my husband when he lias taken his degree in law." She said that she wanted to go into the state of purdah; to wear the veil and withdraw from social life. "I think it is right to live that way as a wife," she explained. "Even now I don't go to dances or anything like that. In India it will be the same, only more strict."