When Helfer was taken to visit the ladies in the palace of the
Imam of Muskat, at Buscheir, he found that their faces were
covered with black masks, though the rest of the body might be
clothed in a transparent sort of crape; to look at a naked face
was very painful to the ladies themselves; even a mother never
lifts the mask from the face of her daughter after the age of
twelve; that is reserved for her lord and husband. "I observed
that the ladies looked at me with a certain confusion, and after
they had glanced into my face, lowered their eyes, ashamed. On
making inquiries, I found that my uncovered face was indecent, as
a naked person would be to us. They begged me to assume a mask,
and when a waiting-woman had bound a splendidly decorated one
round my head, they all exclaimed: 'Tahip! tahip!'--beautiful,
beautiful." (J.W. Helfer, _Reisen in Vorderasian und Indien_,
vol. ii, p. 12.)

In Algeria--in the provinces of Constantine, in Biskra, even
Aures,--"among the women especially, not one is restrained by any
modesty in unfastening her girdle to any comer" (when a search
was being made for tattoo-marks on the lower extremities). "In
spite of the great licentiousness of the manners," the same
writer continues, "the Arab and the Kabyle possess great personal
modesty, and with difficulty are persuaded to exhibit the body
nude; is it the result of real modesty, or of their inveterate
habits of active pederasty? Whatever the cause, they always hide
the sexual organs with their hands or their handkerchiefs, and
are disagreeably affected even by the slightest touch of the
doctor." (Batut, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, January
15, 1893.)