Barracan

I've been following the news from Tripoli Libya since the overthrow of Gaddafi. I found a news site called The Tripoli Post, very dry and no pictures. Today, someone put up a link to the Libya Herald, which looks like every other news site out there (I swear there's a template somewhere) but it does have lots of pictures.

One of the articles was discussing the buying of new clothes for Eid, the end of Ramadan, and what that meant years ago and what it means now. There was some discussion of traditional dress but no mention of the barracan.

When I lived in Tripoli (1955-57), there were two types of dress for women: the indoor barracan and the outside barracan. The outdoor one was a large shapeless piece of wool that women could shroud themselves with and only have one eye showing. But here's a picture of my mother wearing an indoor barracan at a costume party (she borrowed it from our maid). The piece hanging down comes up over the head and face if the woman needs to, say, answer the door.

Wednesday 12/23

Wednesday 12/23 8am

The storm has arrived. Spattering rain during the night but just now it's begun to snow, lightly and not sticking so far, supposedly windy later but not now. I heard that a huge dust storm yesterday closed I-10 between Tucson and Phoenix (which is where Picacho Peak is, 35 mi. north of Tucson). Pictures were terrible; glad I'm not there right now.

I remember the dust storms in Libya (called "ghiblis") -- the sand out of the Sahara was so fine it was like talcum powder. We could see them coming, usually out of the southeast, huge clouds boiling up into the sky. We would pack stuff around all the doors and windows to keep it out but quite a lot would still filter in. Fortunately, all the floors were marble so it was easy to sweep it up, though it took days as it got everywhere. Folklore said the storms would last 1 day, 3 days, or 9 days. Those long lashes on camels are to keep the sand out of their eyes, as are the face-wrappings of the natives. We non-natives had no such protection.

The Libyan dress is called a barracan, traditionally of cotton or light linen. I was taught how to wrap it properly and still remember how (this for the woman's version; the men's is, naturally, the outdoor version only and they don't have to hide their faces). The material is a rectangle about 3 ft wide and 20 ft long. If you don't start it right, it's impossible to do. When done, you have a chest covering and a skirt with a tight wrap at the waist and a loose cape in back that you can draw over your head and around to cover the face. A short-sleeved waist-length blouse is worn under it to cover the rest of the torso. This is the basic dress but to go outside the house (where strange men can see you), there's a piece of undyed coarse linen that is draped over everything like a cloak, tucked under the elbows to hold it closed in front, down over the forehead and then folded in to make an open triangle over one eye, held by one hand. The elbows and a hand are now out of action, so there's only one hand and one eye in use. Think about doing your errands like that, with a child or two hanging on to the outside of the barracan. Humph.

Somewhere I have a picture of my mother wearing a barracan for a costume party held at the Shores of Tripoli Club (a Corps of Engineers place). She was in her late 30s when we were in Tripoli. I also have a picture of her hula-hooping in a cocktail dress at a party in Livorno Italy. Mom could be a lot of fun until she retired and got religion.