[265]. Before explained as used with camphor to fill the dead man’s mouth.
[266]. As has been seen, slapping on the neck is equivalent to our “boxing ears,” but much less barbarous and likely to injure the child. The most insulting blow is that with shoe, sandal or slipper because it brings foot in contact with head. Of this I have spoken before.
[267]. Arab. “Hibál” (= ropes) alluding to the A’akál-fillet which binds the Kúfiyah-kerchief on the Badawi’s head (Pilgrimage, i. 346).
[268]. Arab. “Khiyál”; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= “black eyes,” from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-scène was like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp-lit inside and showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescennine than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the Consuls-General periodically complain of its abuse; while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, was even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz’s little ways of driving on an obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy’s back, face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right, when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows, now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid’s words.
Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!
[269]. Mohammed (Mishkát al-Masábih ii. 360-62) says, “Change the whiteness of your hair but not with anything black.” Abu Bakr, who was two years and some months older than the Prophet, used tincture of Henna and Katam. Old Turkish officers justify black dyes because these make them look younger and fiercer. Henna stains white hair orange red; and the Persians apply after it a paste of indigo leaves; the result is successively leek-green, emerald-green, bottle-green and lastly lamp-black. There is a stage in life (the youth of old age) when man uses dyes: presently he finds that the whole face wants dye; that the contrast between juvenile coloured hair and ancient skin is ridiculous and that it is time to wear white.
[270]. This prejudice extends all over the East: the Sanskrit saying is “Kvachit káná bhaveta sádhus”—now and then a monocular is honest. The left eye is the worst and the popular idea is, I have said, that the damage will come by the injured member.
[271]. The Arabs say like us, “Short and thick is never quick” and “Long and thin has little in.”
[272]. Arab. “Ba’azu layáli,” some night when his mistress failed him.
[273]. The fountain in Paradise before noticed.