…toppling turbans and giddy goings-on…
-The Wilder Shores of Love, Lesley Blanch
Lesley Blanch was writing about the sometimes romantic, moretimes chaotic, and always misunderstood encounters of four Western women and their Middle Eastern paramours. Isabelle Eberhardt met Arab men dressed as a man herself and Isabel Burton met Arab men mostly through the stories of her husband Richard. Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, missing at sea and said to have been kidnapped by Barbary pirates and sent to the Ottoman harem for the Sultan, in fact probably went down with her ship. Lady Jane Digby was four times a bride and uncountably a mistress, marrying and divorcing men from countries progressively closer to the Arab East until finally settling down with a Syrian tribal shaikh, the true love of her life.
But as for the toppling of turbans and other fun goings-on in the desert, I recommend joining KhairAllah on the Darb al-’Arba’īn as a hapless Khawaja and seeing how long you can loaf about the campfire before he says, Khalās, Enough!, Ishā Ya Nāyyim, Awake O Sleeping One!, Irkab, Mount Up!