Page:Syria, the land of Lebanon (1914).djvu/152

SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON little observed among the poor, hard-working peasants and the desert Bedouins; and in the cities the universal characteristics of the female sex have not been entirely obliterated by the law of Islam. An unusually thin gauze almost always reveals a remarkably beautiful face, and I have seen veils coquettishly dropped—of course by accident—even in the bazaars of fanatical Damascus. Yet among the upper classes the thought of social intercourse between the sexes is so repellent that no good Moslem ever willingly alludes to his wife. If he is absolutely forced to speak of her, he apologizes by saying Ajallak!—"May God lift you up!"—that is, from the degradation of having to hear such a thing mentioned. He uses the identical expression when he refers to anything else unfit to be spoken of in conversation between gentlemen. "Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God hath gifted the one above the other," said the Prophet. There is no place for female suffrage in the world of Islam!

If we think of Damascus as the port of the desert, then its wharves lie along the Meidan. This narrow handle of the spoon-shaped city, which stretches far southward en both sides of the Derb el-Haj or "Pilgrim Road" to Mecca, is a comparatively modern quarter; but it is most akin to the wilderness, and its one long avenue is thronged with Children [ 114 ]