into the bride's room and sprinkle over it a powder possessing the power
of casting an evil spell over those she wished to injure, and, to make
her work more efficacious, she further wrapped a knife with evil charms
and hid it amongst the bridegroom's clothes. Shortly after she met the
young man, and clutching him by the arm, her sharp eyes gleaming from
between the folds of her veil, she hissed: "Know, O man, that I have
bewitched thee and ere long thou shalt be separated from thy bride!" On
entering the house that evening, he complained that he felt as though in
a furnace. It was a cold night and the family were shivering, but he
kept casting off one garment after another, exclaiming that the awful
heat was unendurable and that he was surely bewitched.
This went on evening after evening for a whole week until he declared
that he could stand it no longer, and could only rid himself of his
sufferings by a divorce. Before the kadi he explained that he had
nothing against the girl nor their family, who had always treated him
with great kindness, but he was under the influence of sorcery and must
be divorced. And this statement was accepted as perfectly reasonable.
What astonished me the most was, that the bride's parents exonerated him
from all blame. As the mother said, "I loved him as my own son, but he
could not help it." The old woman had worked the works of Satan over
him, and how could he escape?
This incident shows not only the slender nature of the marriage ties but
also the immense power which _superstition_ exercises over the mind. It
seems to be part of a Moslem woman's very nature, and largely influences
all her life from the cradle to the grave.
Beware, when visiting an Arab woman, of too greatly admiring her tiny
baby, however engaging it may be! Such admiration would surely attract
"the evil eye," and then woe to the little one! The safest course of an
ignorant Roumi (Christian) is merely to glance at her little child and
say, "Mabrouk" (May it be blest).
Is there illness in the house, a message is first sent to the "degaz"
(soothsayer), who writes a magic paper, encloses it in a leather case,
and sends it to the sick one with directions to fasten it on the head,
arm, etc., according to the part affected.
Another favorite remedy is to pour a little water into a basin on which
passages from the Koran are written, and then either drink or bathe with
it as the disease may appear to require.
These powerful remedies failing to restore health, the invalid is next
taken to the tomb of some celebrated "saint." There, offerings are made
and prayers recited. A favorite resort in Tunis is the Zawia of Sidi
Abdallah, situated just outside the city wall. Here a black cock is
sacrificed and a little of its blood sprinkled on the neck, elbow, and
knee of the sufferer on whose behalf it is offered.
[Illustration: AN ARAB WOMAN ENTERING A SAINT'S TOMB (TUNIS)]
Before our house stands a Zawia (saint's tomb), built in honor of a
female saint, and at this tomb one day stood an Arab woman, knocking
gently at the door and crying in piteous tones, "O lady! Heal me, for I
am very ill! I have giddiness in my head! I am very weak! Do heal me!"
The poor creature calling in her ignorance on a dead saint not only
moves the heart to pity but also creates in the mind a wonder as to who
these saints may be, and what has led to their being thus honored.
Let me give you a sketch of a noted dervish, or saint, who has just
passed away. I first saw Sidi Ali Ben Jaber some years ago seated in
front of a café in the Halfouine--the quarter where the late Bey had
built him a house. By his side were native musicians making a discordant
noise while at intervals the holy man was bellowing like a mad bull.
Securing a corner of a doorstep, I managed to peep over the surrounding
crowd and my curiosity was rewarded by the sight of a decrepit, filthy
old man, his bald pate encircled by scant grizzled hair and unadorned by
the usual fez cap. His sole covering was a dirty cotton shirt, open at
the neck and descending no lower than the knees. But what a shirt! As a
mark of saintliness, it had not left his body for years, but had
gradually increased in thickness, for when sufficiently caked with
accumulations of filth and snuff, a clean piece of calico had been sewn
over it. This had been covered by successive layers as required, until
it is just possible that the initiated might have been able to determine
the age of the wearer by the concentric rings of his garment!
Sidi Ali was not always, however, thus seated in state. He would, from
time to time, parade the Halfouine, stopping occasionally to demand a
gift, which was seldom refused. Stories are told of swift judgments
overtaking bold Moslems who slighted the wish of the holy man, and
equally thrilling accounts of deliverance from peril to the Faithful who
granted his desire.
Sidi Ali Ben Jaber once met another Arab, Sidi Ben Faraji, dragged him
into a neighboring shop and insisted on his buying a large and expensive
block of marble with which to embellish the "saint's" house, for that
happened to be the holy man's craze for the time. On his way home Sidi
Ben Faraji had to pass under a bridge, which fell, severely crushing his
left arm, and now was apparent the virtue of his gift to the holy man;
for had he refused to buy the marble as requested, the bridge would
assuredly have fallen, not on his arm only, but on his whole body, and
he would have become a shapeless mass. Our "Halfouine saint" was
sometimes in a violent state of mind. Then, as he approached, the
butchers would quickly hide their meat, the confectioners' display of
cakes became suddenly scanty, while other shops appeared equally bare.
The "saint" might enter a shop, turn the contents into the street, and
work general havoc; the owner not daring to say him nay, but cherishing
the hope of recompense in Heaven to atone for present loss. In cases of
illness, Sidi Ali would be taken to the house of the sick one, and his
presence was said invariably to bring blessing and relief.
He is also said to have foretold the introduction of electric trams, but
this appears to have been only thought of when they had already made
their appearance in the city.
For months the poor old man had been growing feebler, and in the month
of January last he passed away. His death caused general mourning and
lamentation, many women weeping bitterly. The corpse was escorted to the
mosque and thence to the cemetery by various sects displaying colored
silk banners, emblazoned with Koran verses. Crowds pressed round the
bier fighting for a chance of seizing it for a moment and thus securing
"merit" in heaven, and it was only a strong force of police which
prevented the whole being upset. Fumes of incense filled the air,
dervishes swayed in their wild chants till one and the other fell
exhausted, and when the tomb was finally reached the bier was broken
into fragments and distributed amongst eager claimants from amongst the
thirty thousand Moslems assembled.
Such, dear readers, is a Moslem saint, and their name is legion. It is
by the intercession of such as these that the superstitious hope to
obtain earthly and heavenly benefits, and it is at the shrines of such
as these that the poor Moslem women come, in the dark days of trouble,
to pour out their hearts and seek for help and blessing.
Some time ago one of my schoolgirls asked me to go and see her sister,
who had been brought from a neighboring village seriously ill. On
reaching the house I found a young woman of about eighteen stretched on
a mattress on the floor, and sitting by her side, her husband, who was
at least fifty years of age. The poor creature was in great suffering
and evidently too ill for any simple remedy, so I called in the help of
a French lady doctor, who kindly came and prescribed for her.
On going to the house next day, great was my surprise to find that the
medicine ordered had not been given, and the surprise gave place to
indignation when I discovered that the family firmly believed that the
whole trouble was caused by an evil spirit which had taken possession of
the young wife, and that the black sheep, tied up in the courtyard, had
been placed there in the hope that the demon would prefer to inhabit the
body of the animal and might thus be induced to leave its present
abode. Poor young thing! She died not long after, but her friends to
this day believe that they did all in their power to help her, and her
death could not have been averted since it was surely _decreed_.
The veil that shrouds the Moslem home life in Tunis has been raised and
my readers have had a peep at its sadder side, but it is only a peep!
The farther one penetrates the more intolerable its noisome atmosphere
becomes. Deceit and lying are so prevalent that a mother questions the
simplest statements of her own son, and I have seen a mistress insist on
a servant swearing on the Koran before she would accept his word.
Demoralizing conversation is freely indulged in before the children,
till their minds become depraved to such an extent that in our school we
could not allow the girls to tell each other stories or even ask riddles
because of their indecent character; and bad language, even from the
little ones, was a thing with which we constantly had to contend.
And now we, to whom God has given so much light and so many privileges,
are brought face to face with the problem, What can be done to help our
Mohammedan sisters to lift the burdens which mar the happiness of so
many lives?
In the first place it seems to me a necessity that the _man's_ eyes
should be opened to see the true condition of affairs from a Western, or
better still a _Christian_, standpoint, and should realize the larger
amount of domestic happiness he, himself, is losing. And this may be
done by education and the free intercourse with Christian families,
which will give him an insight into the joys of their home circles.
As was before hinted, European education is already cultivating the
intelligence of the upper classes and slowly extending its leavening
influence among the masses. There is an increasing desire, not only that
the boys should receive a good French education, but that the girls
should share its benefits too. Tennyson's words in the mouth of King
Arthur have a new significance:--
"The old order changeth, giving place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways."
But this change cannot be accomplished in a day, nor without a struggle
between the old and new systems. This may be illustrated by an amusing
scene I once witnessed.
I was one day sitting in the house of a wealthy Arab whose mind had been
enlarged by travelling in many lands. His eldest daughter was one of the
very few Arab girls I have met who could read and write Arabic
beautifully. I was accustomed to give her French lessons, and she was at
that moment in the opposite room across the courtyard, taking a lesson
from a Jewish music master on a new piano lately sent by her fiancé.
Suddenly two servant girls rushed into the room exclaiming: "Sidi
Mohammed is coming! Here is Sidi Mohammed!" The grandfather, the head
of the family, was at the door, and great would be his wrath should he
see his granddaughter learning music, and above all from a _man_.
Fortunately the old gentleman, being somewhat infirm, could not quickly
descend from his carriage although assisted by his two men-servants, so
that by the time he made his appearance the music master was simply
hidden away in a tiny inner room and the whole family assembled in the
courtyard; ready with profuse salutations, welcomes, and kissing of
hands, to conduct him to one of the principal apartments, _not_ that in
which the Jew was imprisoned. I have often wondered how long the visit
lasted, and whether the musician was as fortunate as myself in being
soon able to beat a retreat.
Yes! the people are ripe for education--but is there not a serious
danger in giving them education and education _only_? Is it not to be
feared that with minds enlightened to see the errors of Mohammedanism,
they will cast off its bonds only to become entangled in the meshes of
atheism and become a nation of "libre-penseurs," so that having escaped
the rocks of Scylla they find themselves engulfed in the whirlpool of
Charybdis?
My second illustration represents a poor Arab woman entering a saint's
tomb, over the portal of which is written: "He (God) opens the doors.
Open to us (O Lord) the best door!" And with my Christian readers I
would plead that they would do all in their power both by prayer and by
effort, that while the doors of education and progress are being thrown
wide to these Moslems, the best door--the door of the Gospel--may be
opened also, so that they too may know the glorious liberty wherewith
Christ hath made _us_ free.
VI
"NOT DEAD, ONLY DRY"
"It is useless to plant anything: the earth is dead."
"No, it is not dead, it is only dry."
"But I tell you, it is dead. In summer the earth is always dead: see
here." And the Arab who spoke stooped and picked up a rock-like clod,
that he had hewn with his pickaxe from the trench at his feet. It looked
dead enough certainly; the Algerian soil in August is much the same in
texture as a well-trodden highway. But it is only waiting.
"It is the very same earth that it is in winter," I replied; "all it
wants is water, and water you must give it."
With an Oriental's laconic patience, though all unconvinced, the man
went on with the digging of his trench, and the planting therein of
acacia clippings to make a new thorn hedge where it had been broken
down.
And with a new hope in God my own words came back to me as I turned
away. "It is not dead: it is only dry."
For of all the soils in the world our Moslem soil in Algiers seems the
most barren, while friend and foe repeat the same words: "It is useless
to plant anything: the earth is dead."
But in the face of both--in the face of the hosts of darkness who take
up the words and fling them at us with a stinging taunt--we affirm in
faith:
"No, it is not dead. It is only dry."
* * * * *
Dry: that we know sorrowfully well; it cannot be otherwise. It is dry
soil because Islam has come nearer doing "despite to the Spirit of
grace" than any other religion; it is, as has been truly said, the one
anti-Christian faith, the one of openly avowed enmity to the Cross of
Christ, the one that deliberately tramples under foot the Son of God.
It is dry also because in the religion itself there is something
searing, blighting, as with a subtle breath of hell. This is true of the
lands where it has laid hold, and true of the hearts,--it is dry.
Dry soil, NOT dead soil. If you were out here in Algiers and could see
and know the people, you would say so too. The next best thing is to
bring you some of their faces to look at that you may judge whether the
possibilities have gone out of them yet or not: women faces and girl
faces, for it is of these that I write. Will you spend five minutes of
your hours to-day in looking--just looking--at them, till they have sunk
down into your heart? ARE they the faces of a dead people? Do you see no
material for Christ if they had a chance of the Water of Life? These are
real living women, living to-day, unmet by Him.
[Illustration: TYPES IN TUNIS AND ALGIERS]
To begin with, the first glance will show their intelligence. Get an
average ignorant Englishwoman of the peasant class to repeat a Bible
story that she has never heard before. She will dully remember one or
two salient facts. Go up to a mountain village here and get a group of
women and talk to them, and choose one of them to repeat to the others
what you have said. You will feel after a sentence or two that your
Arabic was only English put into Arabic words; hers is sparkling with
racy idiom. More than that, she is making the story _live_ before her
hearers: a touch of local color here--a quaint addition there. It is all
aglow. And this a woman who has sat year after year in her one garment
of red woollen drapery, cooking meals and nursing children, with nothing
to stimulate any thoughts beyond the day's need.
And their powers of feeling: do their faces look as if these have been
crushed out by a life of servitude? Not a bit of it. No European who has
not lived among them can have any idea of their intensity: love, hate,
grief, reign by turns. Anger and grief can take such possession of them
as to bring real illness of a strange and undiagnosable kind. We have
known such cases to last for months; not unfrequently they end fatally;
and more than one whom we have met has gone stone-blind with crying for
a dead husband who probably made things none too easy while he lived.
And then their will power: the faces tell of that too. The women have
far more backbone than their menkind, who have been indulged from
babyhood; their school of suffering has not been in vain. In the
beautiful balance of God's justice, all that man has taken from them in
outward rights has been more than made up in the qualities of endurance
and sacrifice that stand, fire-tried, in their character.
And down beyond these outward capacities, how about their spirit-nature?
It may be hard to believe at home, but it is a fact that just as the
parched ground of August is the very same as the fertile earth of
spring, so these souls are the very same as other souls. God is "the God
of the spirits of all flesh." "He hath made of one blood all the
inhabitants of the earth." For IMPRESSIONABLENESS on the Divine side,
they are as quick as in enlightened lands: I think, quicker. It is only
that as soon as the impression is made "then cometh the devil" with an
awful force that is only now beginning to be known in Christian
countries, and there is not enough of the Holy Spirit's power to put him
to flight. There will be when the showers come!
As yet the soil is dry: the womenkind are a host of locked-up
possibilities for good and sadly free possibilities for evil.
The dark side lies in untrueness born of constant fear of the
consequence of every trifling act, moral impurity that steeps even the
children--wild jealousy that will make them pine away and die if a rival
baby comes. Their minds are rife with superstition and fertile in
intrigue.
And while all this has full play, unchecked and unheeded, the latent
capacities for serving God and man are wasting themselves in
uselessness, pressed down by the weight of things. There is something
very pathetic in watching the failing brain-power of the girls. Until
fourteen or fifteen years they are bright, quick at learning; but then
it is like a flower closing, so far as mental effort goes, and soon
there is the complaint: "I cannot get hold of it, it goes from me." Once
grown up, it is painful to see the labor with which they learn even the
alphabet. Imagination, perception, poetry remain, and resourcefulness
for good and evil, but apart from God's grace, solid brain power dies.
Probably in the unexplored question of heredity lies the clue; for at
that age for generations the sorrows and cares of married life have come
and stopped mind development till the brain has lost its power of
expansion as womanhood comes on. Life is often over, in more senses than
one, before they are twenty.
The story comes before me of three warm-hearted maidens who a few years
ago belonged to our girls' class: the eldest came but seldom, for she
was toiling over shirtmaking for the support of her mother and sister.
This sister and a friend made up the trio.
Their mothers were "adherents"--we had hoped at one time MORE than
adherents, but compromise was already winning the day: the daughters had
open hearts towards the Lord, all of them in a child-like way.
Where are they now?
They came to marriageable age, and Moslem etiquette required that they
should marry. We begged the mothers to wait a while and see if some
Christian lads were not forthcoming: but no, fashion binds as much in a
Moslem town as in the West End of London.
The eldest girl was carried out fainting from her home to be the wife of
a countryman. He was good to her: his mother became madly jealous.
Within two years the bride fell into a strange kind of decline; when
death came there were symptoms showing that it was from slow poison.
The second to marry was the little friend. At her wedding feast those
who had forced the marriage on, drugged her with one of their terrible
brain-poisons. The spell worked till she could not bear the sight of us,
and hated and denounced Christ.
It wore itself out after a few months and light and love crept back. We
went away for the summer. Before we returned she had been put to death
by her husband. Through the delirium of the last day and night her one
intelligible cry was "Jesus"; so the broken-hearted mother told us. She
was an only child.
The third is still alive, a mere girl. She has been divorced twice
already from drunken, dissolute husbands. Long intervals of silent
melancholy come upon her, intense and dumb, like threatening
brain-trouble. She was playful as a kitten five years ago.
Poor little souls--crushed every one of them at sixteen or seventeen
under the heel of Islam. Do you wonder that we do not consider it an
elevating creed?
And yet they have gone under without tasting the bitterest dregs of a
native woman's cup; for (save a baby of the eldest girl's who lived only
a few weeks) there were no children in the question. And the woman's
deepest anguish begins where they are concerned. For divorce is always
hanging over her head. The birth of a daughter when a son had been hoped
for, an illness that has become a bit tedious, a bit of caprice or
counter-attraction on the husband's part--any of these things may mean
that he will "tear the paper" that binds them together, and for eight
francs the kadi will set him free. This means that the children will be
forced from the mother and knocked about by the next wife that comes on
the scene; and the mother-heart will suffer a constant martyrdom from
her husband if only divorce can be averted. The Algerian women may claim
the boys till seven and the girls till ten or twelve; the countrywomen
have no claim after the little life becomes independent of them for
existence.
Look at the awful and fierce sadness of this face: more like a wild
creature than a woman.[D] She has probably been tossed from home to
home until she is left stranded, or wrecked on rocks of unspeakable sin
and shame: for that is how it ends, again and again.
[D] See illustration opposite page 294.
Turn from her: we cannot have her to be the last. Look once more at a
girl, untroubled as yet. If you want to see what the women could be if
but the social yoke of Islam were loosed from their shoulders, study the
little maidens upon whom it has not yet come. Take one of them if you
can get hold of her--even a stupid one, as this one may be with all her
soft grace--let her expand for a few weeks in an atmosphere of love and
purity. Watch the awakening: it is as lovely a thing as you could wish
to see, outside the kingdom of God.
[Illustration: A YOUNG GIRL OF THE ABU SAAD TRIBE]
And if this budding and blossoming can come with the poor watering of
human love, what could it be with the heavenly showers, in their
miracle-power of drawing out all that there is in the earth that they
visit. Oh the capacities that are there! The soil is "only dry."
And in the very fact of its utter dryness lies our claim upon God. "I
will make the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers
of blessing," is His promise. The "season" for the showers in these
southern lands, is the time of utmost drought. It is not in July when
the gold lingers in the grass, but in September when the tangle of the
spring has sunk to ashen gray, ready to crumble at a touch--it is then
that we know the rains are nearing. God's "season" comes when all has
gone down to despair.
So we look round on our Moslem field, and triumph in the dryness that is
so like death, for it shows that we need not have long to wait.
* * * * *