But once in love the Arab woman is quite a different being, and her devotion is without end. I have known a woman who had riches, houses, position, adulation by men of note, everything a lovely woman could desire, give up everything she had for a man she loved and live with him in a state of complete poverty, with just enough but no more. Before that man came into her life all were fair play to her, and her moral scruples did not exist. After she had met that man all the millions in the world would not take her from his side.
Women all the world through are capricious, and swayed by their whims, and it is by these traits that the skilful ones cause men to make fools of themselves. The art is dying out in England, and is on the wane in France, but in Algeria it is at its height, and sorry is the lot of the unwary one who inadvertently falls in love with an Arab girl who does not return his love.
Though the same characteristics apply to the women of the reserved quarter, it is not quite the same thing.
First of all, a few words about this part of the Arab town. It is, of course, a creation of the French, as it is against all the laws of the Koran for a man to live with any woman who is not married to him legally or who is not a recognized concubine. In fact, it is to avoid this that polygamy was instituted. However, with the French conquest French civilization had to come too, and the Quartier was created, primarily for the troops.
It is usually walled in, and entered by a single door which is guarded by a sentry. Inside there is quite a little city—shops, cafés, miniature squares, where the dancing takes place in the summer. The women have their little apartments, where they receive their friends to drink tea and give little dinner-parties. It is an atmosphere of frank gaiety quite impossible to realize without seeing it. Some of them have their babies with them, others live with their mothers. The majority of the inmates are of the tribe of the Ouled Naïl, but there are, of course, many girls from the local tribes too, the great difference being that those who come from the Ouled Naïl are not in any way lowering their prestige by living this life. They have come with the full consent of their parents, and one day they may leave and honorably marry. It depends a great deal on the dowry. In the old days the girls always tried to collect gold pieces, which they strung into necklaces, and one saw a woman all dressed up and her neck weighed down with hundred-franc and twenty-franc pieces. Now that gold is no longer current in France the women convert all the notes they have into bits of gold, which they have beaten into bracelets and ear-rings and tiaras. Some of them manage to buy hoarded collections of gold pieces to make into necklaces, while others have inherited them from their mothers.
However, the main point is to have the dowry in gold actually on the person, so that there is no danger of its depreciating in value, and when the girls leave the quarter to go to some private party in order to dance, they are accompanied by a constable and by a soldier with a rifle. The result of this system of buying gold has, of course, made the girls very rich. Paper currency has depreciated, so that a hundred-franc piece sells for a high price, and the money, though not fructifying in actual interest, is a capital ever increasing in value.
Of course these jewels are not common only to the girls of the Quarter; all Arab women strive to have as much jewelry as possible, but naturally they have other expenses to consider, whereas a girl of the Quarter invests all she has in jewels, and keeps only a small proportion of her earnings to buy her frocks.
An Arab Type
