HAREM LADIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19793, 17 March 1927, Page 11

HAREM LADIES

“THE ETERNAL DOLL” A CHRISTMAS TREE IN CAIRO. (By FA.) To mention Groppir to anyone who knows Cairo is to call up cheerful memories of an excellent restaurant and teashop much patronised by the English. It has also a dancing-room partly open to the gardens, and there in the season thes-dansants are regularly held. But on the afternoons of Fridays — the Moslem Sabbath —the room is reserved for a harem dance, which is a form of festivity we had always promised ourselves to see. But the weeks went on, and we should probably have left Cairo with our curiosity unsatisfied had not my eye caught the announcement that on Christmas Eve the dance would have the added attraction of a Christmas-tree. That veiled Moslem women should bring their children to the celebration of a Christian custom which has its roots far back in Northern paganism was a paradox not to be missed. Christmas Eve found us asking directions of a tall servant blazing in gold and scarlet, who, looking us up and down rather doubtfully, asked if we were ladies for the harem, and waved us up a passage, carefully protected on either side by tall movable screens, till we reached the ballroom. The ballroom was gay with lights and streamers. At one end a tall Christmas tree sparkled with frost in a land where frost is unknown, and, in an attempt to make the illusion complete, a large bunch of mistletoe had been hung from a chandelier, where it winked with ivory eyes at the scene below, shameless and mischievous, mocking every tradition of those in whose honour it had been hung there. Monotony of Type. Our first surprise was to hear and see a male band in full view of the dancers, and menservants serving tea. In the promenade round the dancing floor tables were set, mostly occupied by family groups of Egyptian ladies. The older women, mostly very stout, sat drinking chocolate and smoking whilst the young ones danced together, laughing and chattering in French. Their dresses varied from the black robes and veils of the grandmothers to Parisian frocks, but all had their hair covered with a small black scarf. The girls were soft, plump, pretty playthings, heavily painted, their fine eyes darkened, eyebrows pencilled, . and lips scarlet. They were extreme examples of a physical type which, whether in Europe or Asia, is the eternal doll, the toy of all mankind —the type Mahomet had in view when he approved polygamy for the protection of women. The despoiling of the Christmas-lrcc caused great excitement, the mothers laughing, scrambling, and playing as much as the children, and then the Charleston began again, with the added amusement of balloons from the Christmas-tree painted with the emblems of Islam. A Sudanese nurse, dressed in English uniform, sat munch ing cake behind the family, a type one sees on every tomb among the slaves of Pharaoh. A lady of most haunting beauty had brought a, young girl, and sat watching the dancers, a long black veil framing features thoughtful, sensitive, and extremely sad. Hers was the only face in the whole room that I prompted questions. The rest were either sated or empty. But I should have liked to know what the mistletoe I thought about it.