I am frequently asked what one can buy in these oriental cities which is worth while taking home. Damascus is a good shopping place for the tourist. Since it is somewhat off the main line of travel, one can pick up oriental things comparatively cheap. I have bought several rugs which have come here by caravan from Bokhara, two of which are at least one hundred years old. I will not give the prices except to say that they are much below those at which they could be bought in New York, and the merchant has agreed to pay the duties upon them and to deliver them to my house in Washington. Among the many other things sold are silk head shawls such as are used by the Bedouins, and table covers of red or black woollen cloth embroidered with silk. A great many Americans take home brassware from Damascus, and not a few purchase swords inlaid with silver and with the Damascus blades for which the city has been noted for ages. Some of these swords are imitations imported from Germany, while other “oriental” wares come from Manchester, being made especially for this trade. Indeed, one must keep his eye open if he would buy genuine curios in any part of the world. CHAPTER XXVII THE VEILED WOMEN OF DAMASCUS Ho! Ye bold, bright-eyed, fair-skinned girls of America! Forget the infinity of changing styles with which you are free to please us every year and take a look at your sisters of Damascus in far-away Syria. How would you like to exchange your life for theirs? How would you like to spend your days without showing your face to the light of the sun? How would you like to go about in a great bag of black silk tied in at the waist so that it covers your form from the head to the feet except for a short, thick veil of black through the meshes of which you can just feel your way along the street? How would you like to be penned up in the back of your house, or to have your front windows so latticed that you could see out only through holes as big around as a lead pencil? Aye, more, how would you like never to talk to any man but one of your own family, and worse, never even to be seen by any other man or boy? This is the condition of the girls of this fanatical city of Damascus. It is the fate of millions of other women of the Mohammedan world.