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Updated: June 29, 2025
I entered and sat down; but hardly had I done so, when the lady came up to me, crowned with a diadem of pearls and jewels and having her eyebrows pencilled and her hands stained with henna. When she saw me, she smiled on me and embraced me and pressed me to her bosom; and she set her mouth to mine and sucked my tongue, and I did the like with her.
Not the least striking detail of his appearance however, was his beard, which had a pronounced tendency toward scarlet. His nails were likewise reddened with henna, reminding Matthews that the hands belonging to the nails were rumored to bear even more sinister stains. And the bottomless black eyes peering out from under the white turban lent surprising credibility to such rumors.
And cursing his destiny, he went out of the burning ground in the early morning: and as he went along, suddenly he saw Kasháyiní, who was waiting for him, sitting weeping by the wayside, under a great ashwattha tree: beautifully dressed, blazing with jewels, and adorned with saffron and antimony, betel, indigo, and spangles, flowers, minium, and henna, bangles on ancle and comb in her hair.
"It was a dainty white hand, with many jewelled rings upon the taper fingers, and the nails, as with all ladies of quality, dyed the deep orange red of henna. Although I knew well that the jealously watchful eyes of her lord were upon me, I made no hesitancy in encompassing the wrist with my own fingers.
In that part of the world old people's hair is not dyed red with henna, as it is in other parts of Arabia and Asia Minor and in Persia, so the effect of the indigo can be seen. From a distance we could see the preparations. There was a long line on the sandy plain of between two and three hundred Bedouin, naked save for a blue scarf round their waists, with dagger, powder-horn, &c., stuck in.
The light that fell from the wax candles imparted to her hair a Titian red tint as if she had bound her locks with henna during the night. She was visibly assured of her power and smiled with a strange and provoking air. Vaudrey felt really much disturbed, he was attracted and half-angered by this pretty girl with dilating nostrils who calmly swallowed her glass of sherbet.
The colouring matter of the hair, naturally a bluish-black, is removed by a mixture of quicklime and water, or in the desert by a lessive of ashes : this makes it a dull yellowish-white, which is converted into red permanently by henna, temporarily by ochreish earth kneaded with water.
It was a liberal education to watch a British N.C.O. working with the gang of natives under his command. Usually his entire vocabulary of Arabic consisted of about ten words, of which the following are a fair sample: Aiwa Yes. La No. Quais Good. Mush quais No good. Igri! Quickly! Imshi! Clear out! Ta-ala henna Come here.
Mixed with tar and sprinkled on the door-posts it prevents snakes and scorpions from entering the house: sprinkled on heaps of threshed corn it protects them from the evil eye: mixed with an egg, henna, and seeds of cress it is an invaluable medicine for sick cows: poured over a plate, on which a passage of the Koran has been written, it strengthens the memory of schoolboys who drink it; and if you mix it with cowdung and red earth and paint rings with the mixture round the trunks of your fig-trees at sunset on Midsummer Day, you may depend on it that the trees will bear an excellent crop and will not shed their fruit untimely on the ground.
"Oh, I don't know," objected a man, removing the toothpick from his mouth and his gaudily socked feet from the railing. "I think she's some cutey." A snicker of derision answered this sally. "With them unstylish low heels? I guess you ain't got below her henna bob," snapped the girl, arching her instep and poking out her near-silk clad foot with its high-heeled, dirty, white kid pump.
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