Explore "Veiled Women" by Marmaduke Pickthall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The party at the bath with all its ritual was one of the ordeals which Muhammad Pasha had wished to spare the English girl. As a man he hated all the pranks that women play alone, and deemed them of necessity immodest. But the feeling roused in the harem was too intense for him; and as Barakah, he was told, herself desired the entertainment, he could adduce no cogent reason for refusal. The place in the haremlik being ill adapted to a large assembly, he hired the finest of the public baths for the occasion. The dependants of the household clamouring for a procession through the streets, he gave them one, putting in place of Barakah a humbler bride whose nuptials would be celebrated at his cost.
About the first hour after noon, the bride of Yûsuf left the house, sped by the ululations of the whole harem. In a carriage with the Pasha's nieces and Gulbeyzah, she was driven through the streets to the Hammam. There, at the entrance, stood two eunuchs, and in the antechamber many women-servants of the Pasha's house. The ladies on arrival were conducted to a second anteroom and there divested of all clothing. Each put on a pair of clogs and had her hair tied up in an embroidered kerchief. While they were disrobing, other veiled ones entered who laughed heartily at Barakah's confusion. The procession of the humbler bride had arrived some minutes since, they were informed.