I don’t believe a word about the tribes being restless. Arabs are always moving about, aren’t they? I have an excellent caravan leader whom even the authorities vouch for…
-The Sheik: A Novel, Edith Maude Hull, 1919, words spoken by Diana Mayo, a young English adventuress visiting North Africa, before being captured by the Arab chieftan Ahmed Ben Hassan
The idea of her planning a tour alone in the desert with only native camel drivers and Arabs!
-Lady Conway, a fellow tourist scandalized by Diana’s behavior, intertitle for the 1921 silent film of the same name, featuring Rudolph Valentino as Ahmed the Sheik
The Sheik, both book and film, gave bodice-ripping Orientalism a shot in the arm, playing up to the hilt the romance-cum-rape fantasies that had been lower key in previous outings of the same genre, and it wouldn’t be until thirty years later that The Sheltering Sky upped the ante with the real thing.
But let’s get to what interests me more, her trail boss Mustafa Ali, and that after her first day on the Sikka she changed out of riding clothes into a dress of “clinging jade green silk…the neck cut low revealing the gleaming white of her girlish bosom”, which led her companion to ask, “Are you going to rig yourself out like that every night for the benefit of the camel drivers?”, and she answered, “I do not propose to invite Mustafa Ali to meals.”
So much for swapping friendly camel stories around the aseeda bowl. Diana had much desert etiquette to learn when she was kidnapped by the Sheik, starting with, Eat one, Eat all, and Wash your right hand first. KhairAllah would have approved.