Reflecting on the picture I posted to mark International Workers' Day -
There are parts of the world where an open palm directed at someone is an insult.
I remember in Cyprus during the "Emergency" (war of liberation?), sometimes we'd be driving along, and passing some old lady, we'd get the open palm sign with fingers spread. Sometimes the fingers were bent into a clawing shape. The open hand would be pushed towards us, usually accompanied by a facial expression that left no doubt as to the manner in which we were regarded. I don't recall ever seeing the gesture made by anyone but old ladies. Maybe they felt safe from reprisal.
"The five curses" someone once explained, "that's the five curses." No enumeration or further explanation. For years I tried to figure out what those five curses were. Cyprus is a Mediterranean country so I assumed that one would be sterility, perhaps impotence. There couldn't be connection to the five senses unless we ruled out the sexual potency aspect.
It was many years later reading a book on gestures by Desmond Morris that I learned that the gesture did not convey a curse, but a sense of deep hatred.
In old Byzantium when the perpetrator of a heinous crime was captured he would be paraded in chains through the streets of the place in which his offence had been committed. The population would turn out to abuse him in various ways. One favourite method was to rub faeces, always lying to hand, in the villain's face.
That gesture directed at us, the enemy, was a symbolic faceful of shit. We live and learn.
Cheers, ladies!