I have to confess when I read the book I just assumed the Fremen were North African -- Kabyles, specifically. Look, you give me desert people with blue eyes, I just assume they're Kabyles, ok?
Understandable!
As a child, I read for the first time the description of a character in Patricia McKillip's The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976)—
"The Morgol of Herun welcomed them into her courtyard. She was a tall woman with blue-black hair drawn back from her face, falling without a ripple against her loose robe of leaf-green cloth. Her house was a vast oval of black stone. Water from the river flowing beneath it fanned over stone fountains in her yard, formed tiny streams and pools where fish slipped liked red and green and gold flames beneath the tracery of shadows from the trees."
—and assumed instantly that she was East Asian. I later became unsure if she was meant to be, but she had koi!
no subject
Understandable!
As a child, I read for the first time the description of a character in Patricia McKillip's The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976)—
"The Morgol of Herun welcomed them into her courtyard. She was a tall woman with blue-black hair drawn back from her face, falling without a ripple against her loose robe of leaf-green cloth. Her house was a vast oval of black stone. Water from the river flowing beneath it fanned over stone fountains in her yard, formed tiny streams and pools where fish slipped liked red and green and gold flames beneath the tracery of shadows from the trees."
—and assumed instantly that she was East Asian. I later became unsure if she was meant to be, but she had koi!