Almost every Lebanese woman, or girl, I meet here in the KSA is wearing one of these amulet bracelets. The chains are usually very delicate and are made of gold or silver.
The Evil Eye is popular in many cultures and can be traced back to Classical Antiquity. It's typically worn by my Lebanese friends for protection from evil rather than to cast evil.
In the Middle East, they will usually wear a blue/turquoise bead around a necklace to be protected from the evil eye. It is said that people with green or blue eyes are more prone to the evil eye effect.
A simple and instant way of protection in European Christian countries is to make the sign of the cross with your hand and point two fingers, the index finger and the little finger, towards the supposed source of influence or supposed victim as described in the first chapter of Bram Stokers novel Dracula published in 1897:
When we started, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time swelled to a considerable size, all made the sign of the cross and pointed two fingers towards me. With some difficulty, I got a fellow passenger to tell me what they meant. He would not answer at first, but on learning that I was English, he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye.
Ghina will be going back to Lebanon for a visit this month and she's going to bring me back a few. One takes all the protection that one can get...
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