INDUSTRIOUS ARABS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 18

INDUSTRIOUS ARABS

CHARMS AGAINST EVIL

While Mine of the most proudlymodern girls in our civilisation are discarding clothing to the utmost limits permitted by the law, the sewing machine has converted the women-of the desert tribes of Northern Africa to the wearing of garments which are not without some slight acquaintance with French fashions, states the Australian "Worker." It appears that a special English type of sewing machine was introduced to the Arabs several years ago after the conclusion of the war, and today there are many of them in the camps and villages'of tents, and their hum is heard on all sides. Industrious Arabs who have saved enough money for their purchase buy them, and then ; acquire silks and cotton materials from the French who control adjacent territory. They make up the materials :• into garments and sell them to the desert tribes.: Natives from scores of miles distant come in to buy them, and the sewing men have work for their sewing machines, all the time. Men only work the machines as they sit dressed in the typical Arab white hooded cloaks in their open doorways. The Arab desert women like best red clothing, but, strangely, dislike blue garments. The sewing machines are still superstitiously regarded by Arab women and children, consequently their curiosity is never responsible for the breaking of needles or damage to the works, accidents not uncommon when unauthorised little hands get busy with experiments in our domesticity. The Arab sewing men keep up the illusion of "a devil in the sowing machine" by hanging round about it traditional charms against evil.