She then tired of
Europe, and conceived the idea of visiting the East, and of imitating
Lady Hester Stanhope and other European ladies, who became more Eastern
than the Easterns. She arrived at Beyrout, and went to Damascus, where
she arranged to go to Baghdad, across the desert. For this journey a
Bedawin escort was necessary; and as the Mezrab tribe occupied the
ground, the duty of commanding the escort devolved upon Shaykh Mijwal,
a younger brother of the chief of this tribe. On the journey the young
Shaykh fell in love with this beautiful woman, and she fell in love with
him. The romantic picture of becoming a queen of the desert suited her
wild and roving fancy. She married him, in spite of all opposition,
according to the Mohammedan law. At the time I came to Damascus she was
living half the year in a house just within the city gates; the other
half of the year she passed in the desert in the tents of the Bedawin
tribe, living absolutely as a Bedawin woman. When I first saw her she
was a most beautiful woman, though sixty-one years of age. She wore one
blue garment, and her beautiful hair was in two long plaits down to the
ground. When she was in the desert, she used to milk the camels, serve
her husband, prepare his food, wash his hands, face, and feet, and stood
and waited on him while he ate, like any Arab woman, and gloried in so
doing. But at Damascus she led a semi-European life. She blackened her
eyes with kohl, and lived in a curiously untidy manner.
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