All Arabs are fond of buying pearls or trinkets of hammered gold for their women. Some of their wives wear gold ornaments worth £1000 or more. According to the unwritten law of Arabia, all ornaments are the personal property of a woman, and if divorced she keeps them. If an Arab wants to divorce his wife, he simply says three times before witnesses: “I divorce thee! I divorce thee! I divorce thee!” Consequently, all the women are foresighted enough to insist on having their possessions in portable form.
The training of the Bedouin women is entirely in the tents. They spend much of their time milking their camels and goats and making butter. To do the latter they get the milk in curds, which they squeeze in their hands and put on the tent-roofs until all the moisture drops out. When it dries it becomes as hard as a rock. In fact, their butter is so hard that it will even turn the edge of a knife! Lawrence would pulverize it between stones and mix it with water until it resembled malted milk.
Many Bedouins regard women as the source of all evil and say that hell is full of them. The verses of a few desert poets breathe hatred for women rather than love. Here is a verse from one of Sir Richard Burton’s translations:
They said, marry. I said I am free; Why take unto my bosom A sackful of snakes? May Allah never bless womankind!
It is a simple matter for a Bedouin woman to clean house or move. The tribe leaves one bit of the desert as soon as the pasturage in the vicinity is exhausted. The more aristocratic Bedouins have neither sheep nor goats—only camels and horses. They limit themselves to the least possible amount of possessions and refuse to be tied down to any one spot. They have the fewest wants and are the freest of all the peoples of the earth.
Sheik Nuri Shalaan once asked to be told something about European customs. “Well, if you come to my house in England,” said Lawrence, “my women will serve you with tea.” Whereupon Nuri clapped his hands for one of his wives, ordered her to make tea, and invited Lawrence into the women’s quarters to drink it, an act entirely contrary to the unwritten law of the desert.
The Bedouins are exceedingly courteous, and no matter how apalling your Arabic they will never presume to correct you. When you call at a Bedouin tent you make all of your polite speeches right away, and then when you leave you may get up and brush off without saying a word of farewell. I have seen Bedouins call on Lawrence in his tent when he was reading. He would greet them, and then they would crouch down on their heels and he would resume his book. After a while they would get up and silently walk out. But Lawrence himself would never leave so long as a guest was there.