ABSTRACT
Massad argues that use of sexual humiliation as an interrogation technique in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib reflects the accumulation of centuries of Western assumptions about male Arab sexuality. There has been little research to date on the ethnosexual encounters among Victorian and Edwardian women travellers aside from those such as Swiss-born Isabelle Eberhardt and British-born Jane Digby who married Arab men in Algeria and Syria respectively. Yet awareness of passionate' women and their predilection for desert landscapes and Edwardian women travellers has not gone unnoticed in Western cultural production. According to Lindqvist in the spiritual life of Europe, the colonies had an important function as a safety vent, as an escape, a place to misbehave'. Karen's expression of regret would also seem to be a straightforward statement of nostalgia for a Sinai she thought was passing. The modern travelling subject is conceptualised as male and sovereign over a feminised and conquered landscape.
