The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design
By Malu Halasa and Rana Salam
Chronicle Books $24.95, 175 pages

During a recent visit to the ancient Souq al-Hamadiyyeh in Damascus, I stood beside a fully veiled woman bargaining hard with a salesman over a feather-trimmed bra and thong ensemble with peepholes at the crotch and nipples. Other women – some shrouded tourists from Iran and the Gulf – were being shown underwear that in most European capitals would have been sold in a sex shop. As they discussed colour and design, their children played or waited patiently with a relative; that veiled women were being shown explicitly sexual attire by strange men seemed unworthy of comment.