THE RELATIVE IN MY HOUSE
“Perhaps the reason why women played such a small part in the war
in the Land of the Arabian Nights,” explained Colonel Lawrence,
“was because their men-folk wear the skirts and are prejudiced
against petticoats.” Then adding philosophically: “Perhaps that is
one of the reasons why I am so fond of Arabia. So far as I know,
it is the only country left where men rule!” But Colonel Lawrence
denies the assertion made by another authority on Arabia that man
is the absolute master and woman a mere slave. Although “she is
the object of his sensual pleasures, a toy with which he plays
whenever and however he pleases”; although “knowledge is his,
ignorance is hers”; although “the firmament and the light are his,
darkness and the dungeon are hers”; and although “his is to command,
hers is blindly to obey,” she still wields a vast indirect
influence. But one sees and hears very little of her. Arabia is
one country, indeed, where the equal suffrage propaganda of Mrs.
Catt and Mrs. Pankhurst has made little headway.
Although the king of the Hedjaz figures in the cable news, his
queen, Gellaleta el Melika, is never mentioned. Emir Feisal attended
the Versailles Peace Conference as the head of the Arabian
delegation, but his wife, who shortly afterward became the first
queen of a new dynasty in Bagdad, did not accompany him.
Hussein Ibn Ali’s capital is one city where European and American
diplomatists and their wives are not welcome. Just imagine how dull
life in London and New York would become if the customs of Mecca
were suddenly adopted. There would be no charming stenographers,
no coquettish midinettes, no dancing in hotels and restaurants, no
charity bazaars, and no feminine politicians.
Where we rise when a woman enters the room, an Arab never does. In
fact, he will not even eat with a woman, but, of course, she is
expected to serve him. When an Arab prince goes out “to smell the
air” on his camel, his wife does not accompany him. In fact, the
women of the towns rarely leave the harem oftener than once a week.
In Jeddah, for instance, on Thursday afternoon they stroll outside
the city wall to the tomb of Mother Eve. But, in spite of their
secluded lives, many a veiled beauty of Arabia has played a subtle
part in politics and has by no means been satisfied with conquests
of love. Many, indeed, have been the successors to the queen of
Sheba who, by their wisdom as well as their charm, have made their
lords and masters kiss the dust beneath their feet.
The Koran permits a man to have four wives at a time, but a Moslem
usually marries only one unless he is rich enough to provide a
separate house for others. Of course, this only refers to the
townsmen. Hard as it may be to believe, it is, nevertheless, true
that the average Mussulman actually finds it difficult to get along
peacefully with four wives all under the same roof! The Koran also
conveniently permits him to have as many concubines and slave-girls
as his right hand can hold. Mohammed himself is said to have had
eleven wives and several concubines; and, although it may be
difficult for a stream to rise higher than its source, it is,
nevertheless, a fact that among the more intelligent city dwellers
of to-day polygamy, concubinage, and slavery are dying out. King
Hussein, King Feisal, Emir Ali, and the Sultan Abdullah of
Transjordania, and most of the prominent present-day leaders in
Arabia, have but one wife each.
An Arab woman can be divorced for not having a son; she not only
can be, but frequently is. An Arab seldom speaks of a woman as his
wife. He calls her “the relative in my house,” or “the mother of
my son Ali.” Girl babies are usually not very welcome. But when a
child is born, no matter what the sex, the first precaution taken
is to protect the babe from the influence of the evil eye. This is
done by hanging a charm about its neck. Mothers also have a
prejudice against curly hair and do everything possible to
straighten out any stubborn kinks in a baby’s locks.
In some parts of the desert there is an unwritten law that if a
girl is attacked by a man between sunrise and noon the man shall
be flogged severely; if between noon and sunset, he is merely
fined; and if during the night, when all are supposed to be in
their tents under the protection of their families, the man is not
subject to punishment.
A man usually marries between the ages of twenty and twenty-four,
and a woman any time after she is twelve. Professional matchmakers
in Arabia do not perform their services gratuitously and unsolicited
as they do in Europe and America. When a Moslem wants to take unto
himself a helpmate he hires the services of a matronly lady who is
an arranger of marriages by profession. He pays a certain sum for
his bride; how much is always a matter of spirited argument. He
never sees his fiancée until after the orange-blossoms and old
shoes—and then it’s too late. The bride’s mother doesn’t call in
the neighbors and a professional dressmaker to study the trousseau
patterns in “Vogue” or “The Ladies’ Home Journal.” She merely
borrows a cashmere shawl for her daughter.
One of the few careers open to a woman of the Near East to-day is
that of acting as a professional mourner. Often the mourners wail
for days; and the wail, which sounds like the cry of a lost soul,
usually ends in a piercing shriek which makes your blood run cold.
The customs of immediate burial often result in complications.
There is a bazaar story told in Jeddah to the effect that a Scot,
who was stationed there early in the war, passed away as a result
of some mysterious malady. He was carried a short distance outside
the city and buried in the sand near the shore, wrapped in nothing
but a Union Jack. A few hours before the funeral a boat left Jeddah
Harbor, and it carried an official memorandum to the Government in
London telling of the death of the officer. After the ceremony the
mourners were returning to the city when suddenly they heard shouts
and, turning, were panic-stricken to see the corpse running toward
them, swathed in the Union Jack. It seems that the Scot had merely
been in a trance, and, a few moments after he was buried in the
loose sand, land-crabs attacked him and brought him back to life.
But, not satisfied at letting the yarn go at this, they tell how
the Scot was afterward arrested in London for impersonating himself
when he called at his bank to cash a check.
Between the nomad woman of the tents and the townswoman there is
even more difference than between a wiry desert patriarch and his
corpulent city cousin. Townswomen are fat and white, while the
Bedouin women are thin and tanned. Many Bedouin sheiks have four
wives at a time. Some of the richest chieftains have as many as
fifty wives during a lifetime, but never more than four at once.
One reason why they so frequently indulge themselves the luxury of
three or four is because it means easier housework. The Bedouin
women all live in the same tent, too; and, strangely enough,
jealousy is uncommon. They do not regard a husband as exclusive
property as we do.
Bedouin women are much more ignorant and prejudiced than their
men-folk, and they spend no small part of their time urging the
men to fight. It is they who keep the century-old blood-feuds
alive.
The desert nomads have no way of marking time; no Sundays, no
Mondays, no 1924’s and no 1925’s. They are born: “It is the will
of Allah.” Then they grow up and after a while they die: “It is
the will of Allah.” That is all there is to it: “It is the will of
Allah.” So it isn’t bad form to ask a Bedouin woman her age, for
she doesn’t know whether she is sweet sixteen or a Mrs. Methuselah.
They are all frightfully talkative, and whenever we were seated on
the men’s side of the thin partition which divides the goat’s-hair
home of a Bedouin sheik, talking about Western customs, such as
women walking along city streets unveiled, or attending the theater
in company with their gentlemen friends, or playing golf, his wives
would pop their heads up over the partition and remark: “How
disgusting! How vulgar! How beastly!”
Despite the example set by the Arabs themselves, Colonel Lawrence
scrupulously avoided free talk about women. It is as difficult a
subject as religion.
On one occasion, when seated in Sheik Auda Abu Tayi’s tent, Lawrence
was in an unusually talkative frame of mind and was giving his host
a racy description of cabaret life in London. Every few minutes
Auda would slap his knee and roar: “By Jove! I wish I were there!”
Then his wives would break in and upbraid him bitterly.
The Bedouin women usually retain their beauty until their thirties,
but after that! They are all short and thin. They take all their
pleasures in their tents. The Bedouin women of the desert are not
veiled, but they tattoo their faces and paint their lips blue. On
all occasions they wear a garment of dark blue cotton and keep
their hair covered. Mohammed objected to women exposing their hair
in public.
All Arabs are fond of buying pearls or trinkets of hammered gold
for their women. Some of their wives wear gold ornaments worth
£1000 or more. According to the unwritten law of Arabia, all
ornaments are the personal property of a woman, and if divorced
she keeps them. If an Arab wants to divorce his wife, he simply
says three times before witnesses: “I divorce thee! I divorce thee!
I divorce thee!” Consequently, all the women are foresighted enough
to insist on having their possessions in portable form.
The training of the Bedouin women is entirely in the tents. They
spend much of their time milking their camels and goats and making
butter. To do the latter they get the milk in curds, which they
squeeze in their hands and put on the tent-roofs until all the
moisture drops out. When it dries it becomes as hard as a rock. In
fact, their butter is so hard that it will even turn the edge of
a knife! Lawrence would pulverize it between stones and mix it with
water until it resembled malted milk.
Many Bedouins regard women as the source of all evil and say that
hell is full of them. The verses of a few desert poets breathe
hatred for women rather than love. Here is a verse from one of Sir
Richard Burton’s translations:
They said, marry.
I said I am free;
Why take unto my bosom
A sackful of snakes?
May Allah never bless womankind!
It is a simple matter for a Bedouin woman to clean house or move.
The tribe leaves one bit of the desert as soon as the pasturage in
the vicinity is exhausted. The more aristocratic Bedouins have
neither sheep nor goats—only camels and horses. They limit
themselves to the least possible amount of possessions and refuse
to be tied down to any one spot. They have the fewest wants and
are the freest of all the peoples of the earth.
Sheik Nuri Shalaan once asked to be told something about European
customs. “Well, if you come to my house in England,” said Lawrence,
“my women will serve you with tea.” Whereupon Nuri clapped his
hands for one of his wives, ordered her to make tea, and invited
Lawrence into the women’s quarters to drink it, an act entirely
contrary to the unwritten law of the desert.
The Bedouins are exceedingly courteous, and no matter how apalling
your Arabic they will never presume to correct you. When you call
at a Bedouin tent you make all of your polite speeches right away,
and then when you leave you may get up and brush off without saying
a word of farewell. I have seen Bedouins call on Lawrence in his
tent when he was reading. He would greet them, and then they would
crouch down on their heels and he would resume his book. After a
while they would get up and silently walk out. But Lawrence himself
would never leave so long as a guest was there.
Al Ghazzali, the great theologian of Islam of the eleventh century,
said, “Marriage is a kind of slavery, for the wife becomes the
slave of her husband, and it is her duty, absolutely, to obey him
in everything he requires of her except in what is contrary to the
laws of Islam.” Wife-beating is allowed by the Koran. All female
slaves taken in war may become the private property of the man who
wins them. There is an old tradition that a lie is excusable in
three circumstances: in war, to reconcile friends, and to women.
To the average Arab, heaven is an oasis with date-palms, sparkling
fountains, and racing camels, where every male angel may have as
many concubines as he desires. So is it any wonder that the Arab
and the Turk are splendid fighters when we realize that if they
die in battle against the unbeliever they will go direct to such
a paradise?
In that land of romance and mystery, of palm-trees, camels, and
veiled women, custom, founded on the teachings of the Prophet,
relegates the gentler sex to an inferior position not only in this
world but in the hereafter as well. But, despite this, there are
many Arabs who make love just as ardently as their enslaved brethren
in other lands, and nearly all Arabian poets draw their inspiration
from the loveliness of woman.
My heart is firmer than the roots of mountains,
My fame pervasive as the smell of musk.
My pleasure is in hunting the wild lion,
The beast of prey I visit in his den.
Yet all the while a gentle fawn has snared me,
A heifer from the pastures of Khazam.