ALGERIA

Evening Star, Issue 21620, 16 January 1934, Page 5

ALGERIA

COLOURFUL NUPTIALS - £ ! No words are sufficiently glowing to describe the ardent colouring,'' the charm and fascination of North Africa (writes Ivy Moore, in the Sydney ‘ Morning Herald ’). There are clusters of palms, tall minarets and domes, wild and prickly pear, graceful white villas, whose courtyards are set with marble pillars and cool fountains, old grey walls, overhung with curtains of wistaria, venusta, and purple Bougainvillea. From the hills comes the mournful cry of the jackals, the song of a myriad frogs, the murmuring of crickets, the gay lilt of a zither,' and the whisper of Arab love songs from the Kasbah, and, over all a sky of blazing stars. All round rises • the strong scent of musk, jessamine, syringa, and orange blossom. The blue range of the Atlas mountains stretches across the plain of the Metedja. And over this red earth, abloom with asphodel, broods the vital force of Africa, different from all else; with a lure, fierce and wild, barbaric and enslaving. An Arab wedding is a riot of colour and noise. It must be seen to be believed. According to the teaching of Islam, women have no souls, and are, therefore, of no account; this robs the ceremony of any touch of the spiritual or ideal to lift it above mere,_ sordid barter. The bride, .much gratified at being the centre of importance, and all her women friends and relations, look ghastly under 'a load of black, white, and red makenip, so plentifully applied as to form a mask, giving a curiously unreal effect to their faces. Every guest sports the entire collection of family', jewels, rings, necklaces, brooches, and great anklets, relics, of the slave days. The more jewellery the better. The effect is dazzling, bewildering. So is the deafening chorus of “ you-you-you-you,” kept up in high crescendo. Sherbert and cakes, coffee, and rahat loukom’ (Turkish delight) are handed round. The bride continually changes her dress until every_ costume in her trousseau has been displayed and admired. The bridegrooin celebrates in his own home, among his'friends, and waits for his bride to be brought to him. Often he has never seen her face before he lifts the veil. But, Kismet! There in his house she must stay, till she grows old, shut away’ within the walls of the courtyard, never to go out again, bound by the laws of Islam.