make-up, are, most of them, truly hideous. Their skins are like
parchment, and baggy; their heads as bald as billiard-balls. What little
hair they have is dyed an orange red with henna. They look like witches
in Macbeth, or at least as if they had been called up from out of the
lower regions. They sit chatting with little bundles of sweets and
narghilehs before them. An average Englishwoman would look like an
_houri_ amongst them; and their customs were beastly, to use the mildest
term. The Hammam was entered by a large hall, lit by a skylight, with a
huge marble tank in the centre and four little fountains, and all around
raised divans covered with cushions. Here one wraps oneself in silk and
woollen sheets, and after that proceeds to pass through the six marble
rooms. The first is the cold room, the next warmer, the third warmer
still, until you come to the _sudarium_, the hottest room of all. First
they lather you, then they wash you with a _lif_ and soap, then they
douche you with tubs of hot water, then they shampoo you with fresh
layers of soap, and then douche again. They give you iced sherbet,
and tie towels dipped in cold water round your head, which prevent
you fainting and make you perspire. They scrub your feet with pumice-
stone, and move you back through all the rooms gradually, douche you
with water, and shampoo you with towels. You now return to the large
hall where you first undressed, wrap in woollen shawls, and recline
on a divan. The place is all strewn with flowers, incense is burned
around, and a cup of hot coffee is handed and a narghileh placed in
your mouth. A woman advances and kneads you as though you were bread,
until you fall asleep under the process, as though mesmerized. When
you wake up, you find music and dancing, the girls chasing one another,
eating sweetmeats, and enjoying all sorts of fun. Moslem women go
through a good deal more of the performance than I have described.
For instance, they have their hair hennaed and their eyebrows plucked.
You can also have your hands and feet hennaed, and, if you like it, be