I Did Not See One
Handsome Man In The Holy City, Although Some Of The Women Appeared To
Me Beautiful.
The male profile is high and bony, the forehead recedes,
and the head rises unpleasantly towards the region of firmness.
In most
families male children, when forty days old, are taken to the Ka’abah,
prayed over, and carried home, where the barber draws with a razor
three parallel gashes
[p.234] down the fleshy portion of each cheek, from the exterior angles
of the eyes almost to the corners of the mouth. These Mashali, as they
are called,[FN#10] may be of modern date: the citizens declare that the
custom was unknown to their ancestors. I am tempted to assign to it a
high antiquity, and cannot but attribute a pagan origin to a custom
still prevailing, despite all the interdictions of the Olema. In point
of figure the Meccan is somewhat coarse and lymphatic. The ludicrous
leanness of the outward man, as described by Ali Bey, survives only in
the remnants of themselves belonging to a bygone century. The young men
are rather stout and athletic, but in middle age—when man “swills and
swells”—they are apt to degenerate into corpulence.
The Meccan is a covetous spendthrift. His wealth, lightly won, is
lightly prized. Pay, pension, stipends, presents, and the Ikram, here,
as at Al-Madinah, supply the citizen with the means of idleness. With
him everything is on the most expensive scale, his marriage, his
religious ceremonies, and his household expenses.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 298 of 630
Words from 80406 to 80661
of 175520
