When This Audience Was Over I Asked To Be Allowed To Visit The Sultana,
And, With Mrs. Ferney As Interpreter, Went To The Harem, Accompanied By
The Rajah Moussa.
It is a beautiful house, of one very large, lofty
room, part of which is divided into apartments by heavy silk curtains.
One end of it is occupied by a high dais covered with fine mats, below
which is another dais covered with Persian carpets.
On this the Sultana
received us, the Rajah Moussa, who is not her son, and ourselves
sitting on chairs. If I understood rightly that this prince is not her
son, I do not see how it is that he can go into the women's apartments.
Two guards sat on the floor just within the door, and numbers of women,
some of them in white veils, followers of the Sultana, sat in rows also
on the floor.
It must be confessed that the "light of the harem" is not beautiful.
She looks nearly middle-aged. She is short and fat, with a flat nose,
open wide nostrils, thick lips, and filed teeth, much blackened by
betel-nut chewing. Her expression is pleasant, and her manner is
prepossessing. She wore a rich, striped, red silk sarong, and a very
short, green silk kabaya with diamond clasps; but I saw very little of
her dress or herself, because she was almost enveloped in a pure white
veil of a fine woolen material spangled with gold stars, and she
concealed so much of her face with it, in consequence of the presence
of the Rajah Moussa, that I only rarely got a glimpse of the
magnificent diamond solitaires in her ears.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 267 of 437
Words from 73187 to 73467
of 120530
