Fat Is The Great Desideratum Of An Arab; His Head, As I Have
Described, Should Be A Mass Of Grease;
He rubs his body with oil
or other ointment; his clothes, i.e. his one garment or tope, is
covered
With grease, and internally he swallows as much as he can
procure.
The great Sheik Abou Sinn, who is upwards of eighty, as upright
as a dart, a perfect Hercules, and whose children and
grandchildren are like the sand of the sea-shore, has always
consumed daily throughout his life two rottolis (pounds) of
melted butter. A short time before I left the country he married
a new young wife about fourteen years of age. This may be a hint
to octogenarians.
The fat most esteemed for dressing the hair is that of the sheep.
This undergoes a curious preparation, which renders it similar in
appearance to cold cream; upon the raw fat being taken from the
animal it is chewed in the mouth by an Arab for about two hours,
being frequently taken out for examination during that time,
until it has assumed the desired consistency. To prepare
sufficient to enable a man to appear in full dress, several
persons must be employed in masticating fat at the same time.
This species of pomade, when properly made, is perfectly white,
and exceedingly light and frothy. It may be imagined that when
exposed to a burning sun, the beauty of the head-dress quickly
disappears, but the oil then runs down the neck and back, which
is considered quite correct, especially when the tope becomes
thoroughly greased; the man is then perfectly anointed. We had
seen an amusing exanmple of this when on the march from Berber to
Gozerajup. The Turk, Hadji Achmet, had pressed into our service,
as a guide for a few miles, a dandy who had just been arranged as
a cauliflower, with at least half a pound of white fat upon his
head. As we were travelling upwards of four miles an hour in an
intense heat, during which he was obliged to run, the fat ran
quicker than he did, and at the end of a couple of hours both the
dandy and his pomade were exhausted; the poor fellow had to
return to his friends with the total loss of personal appearance
and half a pound of butter.
Not only are the Arabs particular in their pomade, but great
attention is bestowed upon perfumery, especially by the women.
Various perfumes are brought from Cairo by the travelling native
merchants; among which those most in demand are oil of roses, oil
of sandalwood, an essence from the blossom of a species of
mimosa, essence of musk, and the oil of cloves. The women have a
peculiar method of scenting their bodies and clothes by an
operation that is considered to be one of the necessaries of
life, and which is repeated at regular intervals. In the floor of
the tent, or hut, as it may chance to be, a small hole is
excavated sufficiently large to contain a common-sized champagne
bottle: a fire of charcoal, or of simply glowing enmbers, is made
within the hole, into which the woman about to be scented throws
a handful of various drugs; she then takes off the cloth or tope
which forms her dress, and crouches naked over the fumes, while
she arranges her robe to fall as a mantle from her neck to the
ground like a tent. When this arrangement is concluded she is
perfectly happy, as none of the precious fumes can escape, all
being retained beneath the robe, precisely as if she wore a
crinoline with an incense-burner beneath it, which would be a far
more simple way of performing the operation. She now begins to
perspire freely in the hot-air bath, and the pores of the skin
being thus opened and moist, the volatile oil from the smoke of
the burning perfumes is immediately absorbed.
By the time that the fire has expired, the scenting process is
completed, and both her person and robe are redolent of incense,
with which they are so thoroughly impregnated that I have
frequently smelt a party of women strongly at full a hundred
yards' distance, when the wind has been blowing from their
direction. Of course this kind of perfumery is only adapted for
those who live in tents and in the open air, but it is considered
by the ladies to have a peculiar attraction for the other sex, as
valerian is said to ensnare the genus felis. As the men are said
to be allured by this particular combination of sweet smells, and
to fall victims to the delicacy of their nasal organs, it will be
necessary to give the receipt for the fatal mixture, to be made
up in proportions according to taste :--Ginger, cloves, cinnamon,
frankincense, sandal-wood, myrrh, a species of sea-weed that is
brought from the Red Sea, and lastly, what I mistook for shells,
but which I subsequently discovered to be the horny disc that
closes the aperture when a shell-fish withdraws itself within its
shell; these are also brought from the Red Sea, in which they
abound throughout the shores of Nubia and Abyssinia. In addition
to the charm of sweet perfumes, the women who can afford the
luxury, suspend from their necks a few pieces of the dried glands
of the musk cat, which is a native of the country; such an
addition completes the toilet, when the coiffure has been
carefully arranged.
Hair-dressing in all parts of the world, both civilized and
savage, is a branch of science; savage negro tribes are
distinguished by the various arrangements of their woolly heads.
Arabs are marked by similar peculiarities, that have never
changed for thousands of years, and may be yet seen depicted upon
the walls of Egyptian temples in the precise forms as worn at
present, while in modern times the perfection of art has been in
the wig of a Lord Chancellor.
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