Dance of the Unveiled

In the mosques and market places of Damascus, those who remembered the good old days when a man's wives were ''The Tethered Ones" shook their heads, quoted the Koran, muttered in their beards. Whence came these foreign notions in the heads of Islam's young women? Through their charitable "Drop of Milk Society" they had boldly arranged a gala ball at a French officers' club, boldly announced that they would discard their veils and dance.

Mischief-makers and fanatics cried that it was not so in the past, before the French came to rule, when Islam's mothers and daughters lived dutifully within their walled courtyards. Everywhere in the ancient capital jealous men gathered and listened. Then angry groups marched down the Street Called Straight, surged by the ass and spice markets, the tombs of Saladin and Fatima, the places where Ananias lived and St. Paul dropped down the wall in a basket. They bore rifles, revolvers, axes, sticks & stones.

Police beat back the rioters at the door of the French officers' club. But the cursing mob broke into a nearby movie theater jampacked with Moslem women, panicked them with stones and bullets, wounded several, killed a policeman and a boy before dispersing.

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