VEILED COQUETTES

Shannon News, 23 March 1926, Page 4

VEILED COQUETTES

■ -——--4 PIQUANT tJOSTOMES OF THE EAST ;

Every respectable woman is veiled in the East, of course. But there are veils and veils, declares Dorothy Duck in the "Daily Mail." You have but to stroll through the streets of Tunis to realise how differently the letter of a law may be interpreted. And, anyway, the Prophet merely mentioned that faces should be veiled. He said nothing about ankles. ... Here, coming: through the huge gateway that leads into the crowded souks, you will find a sober matron of the old school, wearing the sinister black face-veil of Tunis and heavily muffled in a clumsy f white haick. Beside her walks her daughter, a slim young thing in a garb of black satin that' at first sight looks like a mixture of a Venetian domino and the* uniform of the KuiKlux Klan. It consists of a black skirt swinging short .enough to reveal flesh silk stockings and high-heeled black patent shoes. Above this is a short lace-edged black domino thrown over the head, with lace eyeholes that give full value .to the brilliant eyes behind them. It is decidedly piquant, evdn if much more like one's idea of an Oriental chorus at the Gaiety than a modest woman of the harem.

This black satin affair is the latest mode of feminine Islam, but some of the older women prefer an elaborately embroidered haick and the merest wisp of white chiffon over the face which in nowise hides the features and they are not sufficiently emancipated thus to dally with Western customs, but at any race meeting in Algiers you. may. see some such beauty, per- v fumed, henna’d, exquisitely dressed in European clothes, but with a gorgeous haick covering them, and a susis in nowise intended to. In Tunisia picion of ninon to draw attention to a pretty face and expose of melting eyes; "sitting perhaps in a covered limousine and receiving Jier friends in it with the utmost sansgene. Theoretically, an Arab woman never sees any man except her husband and the men of her own family. In practice, the young and gay ones do not tscein to lead lives as secluded as this would suggest. Kinsfolk, as a Kaid once sadly confided to me, may be include cousins to the nth degree of cousinship, if these be young, masculine, and attractive! And even the old-fashioned women who only see their nearest male relatives are allowed, curiously, to receive the husbands of their European women friends. A well-bred young Arab woman is charming, exquisitely polite, exquisitely gracious, exquisitely pretty. It is difficult to believe at first that this veneer —so far exceeding our own in polish covers ignorance and superstition as complete as that of any Bedouin woman of the south;