ACTIVITY 58: Quickly read the article below by Philip Shehadi (Reuters). Choose the most appropriate title from the menu and then, check the correct answer. Don't worry if there are some words you don't know: you should be able to get the general idea without needing to use your dictionary.

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'With family it's OK to let the turban down,' said Sakilil Dawdy, 34, a driver with the Algerian state hydrocarbons firm Sonatrach. 'But on the street, in front of strangers or as a guest, you must wear it. It's a question of honour.'

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The Touareg turban, or shesh, has come to symbolise the identity of a proud warrior tribe of nomads which has preserved its language and customs under Turkish, French and Arab rule.

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About 700,000 Touareg live in the Saharan and Sahel regions of Algeria, Libya, Niger and Mali, although fewer than half maintain the nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoral life of their forefathers.

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The turban is increasingly discarded by the young, who pick up Arab or Western ways at school and through television, beamed to Djanet by satellite from Algiers 2,000 kilometres to the north-west.

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But few men over 30 fail to cover their face when they leave home for the fields, the office or a simple village errand. Even the young cover up on special occasions and say that beneath their jeans and Western-style haircuts they remain true to Touareg roots.

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'There are old men whose women have never seen their mouths in 30 years of marriage,' said Hamou Dahou, director of the Tim Betir travel agency.

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The Touareg veil has fascinated visitors ever since the Arab traveller and observer Ibn Khaldoun toured North Africa in the 14th century and found most Berber desert tribesmen wrapped up tightly in a ball of cloth.

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The turban humidifies the mouth and nose in the dry-desert air and protects them like a filter when wind whips up clouds of choking sand. But the custom is so closely linked to honour that one French ethnologist spoke of a 'taboo of the mouth'.

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'Showing your mouth was considered a sign of greed,' said Sheikh Amoud, 78, son of a Touareg resistance hero of the same name who fought the French in the Algerian Sahara and later the Italians in Libya's Fezzan province.

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'In the old days, the first time a boy put on the turban there was a big ceremony because it meant he had become a man,' said Hadj Suleiman, 60, a member of Djanet's town council.

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'A special indigo turban was brought from Niger and there was dancing and music. The boy was given a dagger and taught the principles of our tradition -courage, honesty, fidelity, never to cry and never to strike his wife. Now the young put on the turban when they feel like it.'