women make it of two lengths of material two metres long, joined
together on the selvedge. The ends of one breadth are sewn up and
form the skirt, while the upper breadth is left to pass over the
head and fold over the upper part of the person like a shawl. The
richer, from the middle class upwards, sew the lower breadth into a
band forming a skirt, and the upper breadth is cut smaller to form
only a cape fastened on to the waist band at the back, coming up
over the head, falling by rights over the whole upper part of the
body, but frequently cut so as to scarcely reach the elbow. The
latter is worn by the poorer classes; and by many of the older women
of the better class it is made of black crape and is tied over the
face from just below the eyes and extends to below the waist; by the
upper classes and more wealthy it was made in fine white muslin but
sufficient to disguise the features. Now it is frequently made in
chiffon.
[Illustration: BARGAINS IN ORANGES]
[Illustration: BY THE BANKS OF THE NILE]
Again, perchance, he sees the "fellahah" carrying her water jar with
ease and grace along some rough uneven track; or, may be, in company
with others bearing with agility and strength loads of mud and brick to
the builders, measuring her steps and actions to the music of some
native chant; and he is impressed with the idea of her bright existence
and her powers of perfect enjoyment.
Again he sees her, whether in city or village alike, following the bier
which is carrying all that is left of one who may or may not have been
dear to her, and he hears the shrill death wail, and he notes either the
bitterness of hopeless sorrow, or the hollowness of a make-belief grief;
and he is struck with the demonstrativeness of the women and the
peculiarity of the scene, and will try to get a snap-shot of it on his
kodak, and then he passes on to things of other interest. Thus the
tourist gets to know something of the women, it is true, but all that
lies behind these outside scenes is closed to him, and rarely known.
To the British resident the Egyptian woman is usually less interesting
than to the tourist. The novelty of her peculiarities and
picturesqueness has worn off, and between her and her more fortunate
sisters of the West there is a great gulf fixed. Very rarely is an
attempt made to bridge this gulf; language and customs apparently form
an impassable barrier, and though many English ladies live in Egypt for
years, they never enter an Egyptian house, or speak to an Egyptian
woman.
It is therefore left to the Christian missionary to know--and to know
with an ever widening knowledge--what are the disabilities and what the
capabilities as well as possibilities of these daughters of Hagar.
A woman's life may truly be said to have its commencement in betrothal.
Before then she is a child, and the days of her childhood are usually
spent without any form of restraint whatever. Most of her time, even if
she be the daughter of quite well-to-do people, is often spent playing
in the streets, where she learns much that is evil and little that is
good. The one great reason which many parents give who wish to put their
children to school is, "to keep her out of the street, where she plays
in the dirt and learns bad language." But whether she goes to school or
not the life of a little girl except in school hours is a perfectly
free, untrained life in which she learns no morality, not even obedience
to her parents. If she does obey them it is from abject fear of
punishment, when disobedience would inevitably mean a severe beating.
Between the ages of ten to fifteen, usually about twelve and often
earlier, the little girl is betrothed and then confinement to the house
begins. In one hour her life is changed, no more playing about in the
street and acting upon the impulse of her own sweet will, no more for
her the child's delight of spending her millième or two at the
costermonger's cart and then sitting in the gutter to eat her purchase
with face and hands begrimed with dirt; no more for her the joy of
paddling in the mud by the street pump, and climbing and clambering
about wherever she can with difficulty get. No, she is betrothed now,
and her childhood and girlhood are over. Instead of freedom and
liberty, come confinement and restraint. She is not now allowed out of
doors except on rare occasions and then in company with older women, and
her movements are hampered by her being enveloped in "habarah" and
"veil."
Still she has for a time some little comfort in being the important
person of the community. She is the bride-elect and there is some
excitement in seeing the new "galibeeyahs"[C] and articles of furniture
which are to become her own special property. But then, after a few
short months, sometimes weeks, the fatal wedding day arrives, when the
child-bride is taken away from her mother and becomes the absolute
possession of a man she has often never seen, and knows nothing about.
Her woman's life is begun in earnest, and in very stern reality she
learns what it is to be in subjection, she learns by bitter experience
that she has no power now to do what she likes, and that she is
subservient to another.
[C] The ordinary dress, cut rather like a dressing gown and made in
cotton or silk. If the latter, it is usually elaborately trimmed
with flounces and lace.
Her husband may be kind to her, and in many cases is; but in any case
she is his slave and utterly dependent on the caprice of his nature. If
she herself is fortunate enough to have a man who treats her humanely
there are dozens of others living in her quarter who come to see her,
who are objects of cruelty and malevolence; and so her mind is fed with
histories of intrigue and divorce, of injustice and retaliation, and of
unwritten scandal and sin; until she too, alas! becomes contaminated,
and often brings down upon herself the just wrath and harshness of one
who might have been good to her. History repeats itself: in nine cases
out of ten, she can add her tale of woe to the rest.
She bears her children and nurses them, thankful if they chance to be
boys; she has no heart nor ability to teach or train them; or joy in
keeping them clean and pretty;--she loses two, three, or more in
infancy; those who are strong survive and until they are two or three
years old, take her place in the streets, where the open-air life and
exercise become their physical salvation.
When she is over twenty, she in her turn becomes an elder woman and is
to be seen, usually with a young baby in her arms, walking in the
streets as she goes the round of seeing her friends, wailing with the
mourners at the house of death, weekly visiting the graves of her own or
her husband's relatives, and joining in the wedding festivities of those
who are going to follow in her train.
What wonder that the Moslem man often cries despairingly: "Our women are
all brutish," and has not an atom of respect for her in his heart. In
the few cases where a Moslem man speaks well of his wife, and calls her
"a good woman," he almost invariably attributes her being so to his own
foresight, and diligent insistence in keeping her wholly under his
control, limiting those who come to the house, and not letting her go
out of the house even after she has become an elder woman. Between
thirty-five and forty she is an old woman with grandchildren, and her
life quietly goes down to the grave with all the light and joy long
since gone out of it, and with a dark and hopeless future before it. A
few illustrations from the writer's personal knowledge will not perhaps
be out of place here.
Fatimah had been a day pupil in a mission school for four years. She
could read and write well, and sew, and do fancy work. Her father was
dead, her brother, for some business expedient, arranged a marriage for
her, when she was thirteen, with an old man who had already sons and
daughters much older than herself.
He was a head man in his village and lived some distance from Fatimah's
home. "Do you think it will be a good thing for Fatimah?" said I to the
mother. "What are we to do?" was the reply; "they say he is kind; and
far better to marry her to him than to a young man who will only
ill-treat and beat her; we are very poor and cannot afford to get a
really respectable young man."
The marriage took place, within two months Fatimah had returned home but
was induced to go back again, this was repeated twice and on returning
home the third time, she made up her mind to get her husband to
permanently divorce her. Her mother of course abetted her, and a woman
(as payment for a piece of fancy work she had asked Fatimah to do for
her) promised to bring about the divorce by some plan of intrigue which
she would arrange.
Fatimah's life is blighted; the best that one can hope for is
re-marriage to a poor but respectable man, and to go through her life
with him; but the probabilities are she will be married and divorced
time after time, and each time sink lower in the social scale. She is
not yet fifteen years old.
Aneesah was a little girl of nine, frail and delicate-looking, and an
only child and much petted, but often she seemed possessed by the devil
so naughty was her conduct. At such times her mother would take her and
tie her up, then beat her unmercifully, until the neighbors, hearing the
child's screams, would come to the rescue and force the mother to
desist. The mother has herself shown me the marks of her own teeth in
the flesh of her child's arms, where she has bitten her in order to
drive the devil out of her. What is likely to be the future of that
child? One shudders to think of it.
Many a time in visiting among the very poor I have sat with the women in
an open court, which is like a small yard in the middle of several
houses, in which several families own one, two, or three rooms. In the
court there may be a dozen or more women, unwashed, uncombed, untidy to
a degree; some bread-making, some washing, others seated nursing their
babies:--babies who are as sick and unhealthy as they can possibly be,
their bodies ingrained with dirt, their heads encrusted with sores and
filth, their eyes inflamed and uncleansed, their garments smelling, and
one and all looking thoroughly ill and wretched. It is the rarest thing
to see a healthy-looking baby.
As I have sat amongst them and talked with them, I have tried to reason
with them and point out the advantages of cleanliness and industry; all
admit that I am right and that our habits are better than theirs, yet
none have the heart or the energy or the character to break away from
their customs and their innate laziness and to rise up and be women.
Yet one can hardly wonder at their condition, what chances have they
had? Married at ten or eleven, untrained and untaught, many of them not
knowing how to hold a needle, or make the simplest garment; still in
their teens with two or three children to burden them, whom they long to
see big enough to turn out into the streets and play as they did before
them. Their only interest in life, each other's family brawls and
scandals; their health undermined by close confinement and want of
exercise, is it a wonder that they sink into a state of callousness and
indifference about everything?
I have seen a bright-spirited, energetic, laughing, romping girl of
eleven, turned in one year into a miserable, lazy, dull, inert woman
with her beauty and health gone, and looking nearer thirty than
thirteen. One often does not wonder at such a condition of things,
rather does one wonder when the reverse prevails, and one is able to
realize their possibilities in spite of all their drawbacks. I know of
women, though they are but very few, equally poor and unfavored as those
I have described, who can be found sitting in their own little rooms,
their younger children with them, holding themselves aloof from the
usual gossip, their rooms swept, themselves clean and tidy, their
babies, though not ideal, comparing favorably with the others; their one
apparent trouble, the elder children whom they do not know how to train
and whom they cannot keep out of the streets; unless indeed there chance
to be a mission school in the near neighborhood.
The same state of things pervades all classes of society, though in the
middle and upper classes the Moslems are usually very cleanly both in
their persons and in their homes, but the majority of the women are in
the same low degraded moral state. Life in the harems is spent in
smoking and idle gossip, and things far worse; the wife and mother
there, no less than among the poorer classes, has no idea of
responsibility. She is frequently unable either to sew, read, or write,
and leaves her children to the care of dependents. Her life is merely an
animal life; she is but a necessary article for use in her husband's
household.
A wealthy merchant who has had several wives keeps one in a beautiful
house with every comfort, another wife of the same man is left to live
where she can with the pittance of something like three pence per day.
This is what the Moslem faith allows.
It has been well said "a nation cannot rise above the level of its
women," and this is painfully illustrated in Egypt and in all other
lands where the faith of Islam holds sway. Much is being done to improve
the social conditions of the people of Egypt, but the real sore remains
untouched so long as the teaching of the Koran with regard to the
position of women remains in vogue.
There are many Mohammedan gentlemen who would fain see a better state of
things, and who, like the late Mr. Justice Budrudin Tyabji, of Madras,
devote their efforts to the amelioration of the backward position of
their brethren in the faith, and desire especially the "mitigation and
ultimate removal of paralyzing social customs, such as the seclusion of
women." But their efforts are unavailing so long as they remain
adherents of the Moslem faith, for in obedience to the Koran they can
adopt no other course than the present one.
Let them substitute for the Koran the teaching of the Christian faith,
the faith which alone gives woman her rightful position, and they will
find that she can be a mighty influence for good in the social life of
the nation. Let her take the place ordained for her by the Great Creator
as the "helpmeet" to man, let her fulfil her mission in the world, laid
down in the teaching of the New Testament, to love and influence, to
cheer and strengthen, to pour out her life in the devotion of love and
self-sacrifice, whether as daughter and sister, or wife and mother; then
will the women of Egypt be clothed with "strength and honor" and then
will the daughters of Hagar put on the robe of chastity and the
"adornment of a meek and quiet spirit."
"Chastity--
"She that hath that is clothed in complete steel."
Her price will be "far above rubies," the heart of her husband will
"safely trust in her," her children shall "arise up, and call her
blessed."
V
BEHIND THE OPENING DOOR IN TUNIS
The lot of a Tunisian woman is probably a brighter one than that of many
of her Moslem sisters who have not the privilege of living under the
enlightened rule of a European government.
It is not possible for her, under existing circumstances, to have the
perfect liberty of European women, but should justice not be granted by
an Arab tribunal, she has always the right of appeal to the French
authorities, who take care to see that the laws are rightly
administered.
The English-speaking race, accustomed to greater freedom for its women
than any other on the face of the earth perhaps, would find it hard to
be shut up in an Arab house, taking no long country walks, joining in no
outdoor games, knowing nothing of the pleasures of shopping expeditions,
having no literary pursuits, and meeting no men outside the circle of
their relatives; and indeed it is a sadly narrow life. But we must
remember that our Moslem sisters have never known anything better, and
the majority are perfectly contented with things as they are. To
thoroughly appreciate and make a right use of liberty, one must be
trained, there must be education to meet its responsibilities, and
without this its effects would be disastrous. To an Arab lady who never
goes out otherwise than closely veiled, it would be a far greater trial
to walk through the streets with face exposed, than to the European to
cover herself.
Much has been said about the hardships of the woman's being locked in
during her husband's absence from the house. This is not infrequent and
does appear somewhat prison-like; but it is often done solely as a
protection. I knew one woman who preferred to be thus locked in, but
arranged with her husband that on the days of my visits the key should
not be turned on her. And the doors of Arab houses are always so
constructed that, even when locked, they can be opened from inside on an
emergency though they cannot be reclosed without the key.
When I came to this country some twelve years ago, the thing that most
struck me in visiting Arab houses was the cheerfulness and even gaiety
of the women. I had a preconceived picture in my mind of poor creatures
sitting within prison walls, pining to get out, and in utter misery.
Nothing of the kind! What did I find? Laughter, chatter, the distraction
of periodic visits to saints' tombs, or that centre of social
intercourse--the bath. Old women, the scandal-mongers of the
neighborhood, go round to retail their news. (And it will be allowed
that even in England there are many who take a deeper interest in the
doings of their neighbors than in more elevated topics of
conversation.)
Here Jewesses, spreading out their pretty, silken goods to tempt
purchasers, or neighbors who had "dropped in" by way of the roof for a
gossip, not over a dish of tea, but a cup of black coffee. There Arab
women, much like children, quickly shaking off little troubles and
meeting greater trials with the resignation of fatalism, which finds
comfort in the magic word, "Maktoob" (It is decreed), in a manner
incomprehensible to the Western mind.
Is it surprising that I almost accused my fellow-missionaries of
misrepresenting the home life of the people? But I only saw the surface
and had not yet probed the deep sore of Mohammedanism nor realized the
heavy burdens which its system entails.
Let me tell you of three of the heaviest of these burdens: _Polygamy_,
_Divorce_, and the _Ignorance_ which results from complete lack of
education and walks hand-in-hand with its twin-sister, _Superstition_.
_Polygamy_ shall be placed first, although it is not the greatest bane
of Tunisian home life. By Mohammedan law a man is allowed four wives,
but in Tunisia, though it is by no means rare for a man to have two, he
seldom takes more than that number at one time. Occasionally they live
in separate houses, sometimes in different towns, and may be quite
unknown to each other. A Moslem will frequently take a second wife in
the hope of having children, or it may be a son, the first wife being
childless.
In other houses one finds under the same roof two wives of one husband,
each having a large number of children. Each wife will have two or three
maid-servants who sit with their mistresses and mingle freely in the
conversation, and, if the family be wealthy, the elder daughters have
their own special attendants. Thus a household may contain a large
number of women who live together more or less harmoniously, and whose
numerous quarrels do not conduce to the tranquillity of the master of
the house. But what does he care as long as he _is_ master and reigns
supreme? There is probably not much affection between him and the wife
whom he never saw before the wedding-day, but he loves his children,
being specially fond of the little ones and showing all a father's pride
in his sons. His hours of recreation are spent at the café or the more
aristocratic rendezvous--the barber's shop--and the charms of sweet home
life he has never imagined.
Year by year, however, Western education is slowly but surely telling on
the Oriental mind. The young men, trained in French schools and imbibing
modern ideas, show a strong tendency to follow the manners and customs
of their teachers, and it is at least considered more "comme-il-faut" to
take only one wife and in some measure copy the European "ménage."
_Divorce_ is, however, the great _curse_ which blights domestic
happiness, and words fail me to describe the misery it brings.
The Moslem population of the city of Tunis is sixty thousand. Setting
aside men and children there remain, roughly speaking, about twenty-five
thousand women, and comparing my own experience with that of other lady
missionaries we are agreed in affirming that the majority of these women
in the middle and lower classes have been divorced at least once in
their lives, many of them two or three times, while some few have had a
number of husbands. In the upper class and wealthy families divorce is
not nearly so common, and for obvious reasons.
I have never known a man to have thirty or forty wives in succession as
one hears of in some Mohammedan lands. A man once told my brother-in-law
that he had been married eighteen times, and I heard of another who had
taken (the Arab expression) twelve wives, one after another; but this
last was related with bated breath as being an unusual and opprobrious
act.
When a woman is divorced she returns to her father's house and remains
dependent on him until he finds her another husband, her monetary value
being now greatly reduced. The quarrel which led to the separation is
sometimes adjusted and she returns to her husband, but _never_ if he has
pronounced the words, "Tulka be thaléthe" (Divorce by three, or
threefold). This, even though uttered in a moment of anger, may never
be recalled, and if he really care for his wife and wish to take her
back again, she must be married to another man and divorced by him
before she can return to her first husband. But the laws relating to
marriage, divorce, and the guardianship of the children, would require a
volume to themselves and cannot be entered upon here.
One is led to ask, what is the cause of this dark cloud of evil which
casts its terrible shadow over so many homes?
No doubt it chiefly arises from the low standard of Moslem morality and
is intensified by the whole basis of the marriage relationship.
Among the upper classes a girl does not often marry till about seventeen
years old, but a poorer man is glad to get his daughters off his hands
at a much earlier age, especially if he can obtain a good dowry in
payment. The girl goes through a form of acceptance, relying on the
representations of her relatives, which are often far from truthful. She
never sees her husband until the wedding day and then, no matter how
old, ugly, or repulsive the man may be, it is too late to refuse; no
wonder that mutual disappointment often ensues, deepening into strong
dislike, which produces constant friction, culminating in a violent
quarrel; as in the case of a young girl whom I knew, married to an old
man, and divorced a few years later through a quarrel over a pound of
meat.
[Illustration: DOROTHY AND FATIMAH]
The history of the two little girls in the accompanying photograph,
shows clearly the contrast between the life of an English and that of an
Arab child. It was taken about eight years ago at the birthday party of
my little niece, who had been allowed, as a treat, to invite a number of
Arab girls to tea, and was photographed with one who was about the same
age as herself. The one, Dorothy, is now thirteen years old and still a
happy, light-hearted schoolgirl, carefully sheltered from all knowledge
of evil. The other, Fatima, to-day, sits in her father's house,
divorced, desolate, and soured in temper by her hard fate. And, indeed,
her story makes one's heart ache.
Some few months ago she was married to a young man, who, though not yet
twenty, had already divorced his first wife. Still, Fatima's parents
considered that no drawback, since he was in prosperous circumstances
and willing to pay six hundred francs for the charming little bride. The
marriage festivities lasted a week, friends showered blessings upon the
bride and the bridegroom, who were mutually pleased with each other, and
all seemed to augur well for the future.
But, as in the old fairy story, no one had reckoned on the machinations
of the bad fairy who soon presented herself in the form of the girl's
grandmother. The old lady strongly objected to the match on the ground
that a slur was cast on the family by Fatima's being married before her
elder sister, Hanani, who was not so good-looking and had
consequently been passed over by the professional matchmakers. She vowed
to separate the young couple by "working the works of Satan" over them,
which in plain English means, exercising sorcery. But I will tell the
story as I heard it from the mother.