Between the nomad woman of the tents and the townswoman there is even more difference than between a wiry desert patriarch and his corpulent city cousin. Townswomen are fat and white, while the Bedouin women are thin and tanned. Many Bedouin sheiks have four wives at a time. Some of the richest chieftains have as many as fifty wives during a lifetime, but never more than four at once. One reason why they so frequently indulge themselves the luxury of three or four is because it means easier housework. The Bedouin women all live in the same tent, too; and, strangely enough, jealousy is uncommon. They do not regard a husband as exclusive property as we do.
Bedouin women are much more ignorant and prejudiced than their men-folk, and they spend no small part of their time urging the men to fight. It is they who keep the century-old blood-feuds alive.
The desert nomads have no way of marking time; no Sundays, no Mondays, no 1924’s and no 1925’s. They are born: “It is the will of Allah.” Then they grow up and after a while they die: “It is the will of Allah.” That is all there is to it: “It is the will of Allah.” So it isn’t bad form to ask a Bedouin woman her age, for she doesn’t know whether she is sweet sixteen or a Mrs. Methuselah.
They are all frightfully talkative, and whenever we were seated on the men’s side of the thin partition which divides the goat’s-hair home of a Bedouin sheik, talking about Western customs, such as women walking along city streets unveiled, or attending the theater in company with their gentlemen friends, or playing golf, his wives would pop their heads up over the partition and remark: “How disgusting! How vulgar! How beastly!”
Despite the example set by the Arabs themselves, Colonel Lawrence scrupulously avoided free talk about women. It is as difficult a subject as religion.
On one occasion, when seated in Sheik Auda Abu Tayi’s tent, Lawrence was in an unusually talkative frame of mind and was giving his host a racy description of cabaret life in London. Every few minutes Auda would slap his knee and roar: “By Jove! I wish I were there!” Then his wives would break in and upbraid him bitterly.
The Bedouin women usually retain their beauty until their thirties, but after that! They are all short and thin. They take all their pleasures in their tents. The Bedouin women of the desert are not veiled, but they tattoo their faces and paint their lips blue. On all occasions they wear a garment of dark blue cotton and keep their hair covered. Mohammed objected to women exposing their hair in public.