RENEWAL OF MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MOHAMMED BROWN AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON
MATRIMONY
Now the first thing to do was to look up my former servant, Mohammed
el-Asmar, now a dragoman known as Mohammed Brown, the surname being the
English interpretation of Asmar. I have described him fully in _Below
the Cataracts_, a previous book I have written when Egypt was much
newer to me than at present.
I went to that haunt of the dragomans, the pavement outside the terrace
of Shepheard’s hotel, late enough to have allowed for the post-prandial
nap. I found one or two hanging about on the chance of some tourist who
might be taking Cairo on his way home from yet hotter climates.
They had not seen Mohammed lately and did not know to what part of
Cairo he had moved; but one of them knew a relation of his and promised
that he should be made to know that I was in Cairo.
That same evening Mohammed was awaiting me in the hall of the hotel.
After the first greetings I remarked on what a swell he had become, and
asked him why he should have an English covert-coat over his becoming
oriental dress, on so hot an evening as it was. Instead of the old red
slippers, he wore European tanned-leather boots, and the turban was
replaced by the hideous _tarbouch_. He had forgotten my dislike for
this half-and-half get-up, and he told me it was now quite ‘the thing’
amongst the better-class dragomans.
I was glad, however, to find that the seven seasons during which he had
been preying on the tourists had not, apart from these changes in his
garments, altered him much for the worse.
‘Well, how is the baby?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, he is getting a big boy
now.’ ‘And the wife?’ I ventured this time. A rather crestfallen look
prepared me that something was wrong. ‘Which wife, sir, do you mean?’
‘You must be doing uncommonly well if you can afford two wives,’ I
said; ‘most of us who have to earn our living in England find one as
much as we can manage; besides, Mohammed, you used to agree with me
that it was a very foolish thing for any one to have more than one.’ He
certainly seemed to agree with me now, for it was evident that trouble
began when number two made her appearance.
‘It came about like this,’ he went on. ‘You remember I told you that
my first wife, the mother of our Hassan, was very pretty, and that I
loved her very much.’ ‘Yes, I remember she was very pretty, for you
know I caught sight of her that day my wife and I dined at your house.’
He smiled, but shook his head, as much as to say that he, a Moslem,
ought not to have allowed his wife to be seen unveiled. As I, however,
was not a Moslem myself, he tried to console himself that he had not
transgressed Mohammedan law.
‘A pretty face, sir, she still has, but her tongue gets worse and
worse.’
I asked the foolish young man if he expected to improve her tongue by
introducing her to a second wife. ‘I have been a great fool,’ was his
mournful reply; and after a pause, ‘I think I shall have to divorce
her; but I love her very much in spite of her temper.’
‘Well, now, about number two?’ I asked. ‘It came about like this,’ he
began again. ‘You must remember Ahmed Abd-er-Rahman, the old dragoman
that used to come here.’ ‘I don’t remember him, but no matter.’ ‘Well,
I asked his advice about curing a wife’s temper, but got little
encouragement from him. The few remedies he suggested, and which I
tried, only made matters worse.
‘One day he said to me: “Mohammed, I have always loved you as if you
were a son of mine, and as I have still an unmarried daughter, it would
add to my happiness as well as to yours if you became my son-in-law. I
shall only ask a small dowry of you, whereas if I were to marry her to
the one-eyed Mustâpha, he could and would give a much larger one. She
is young and beautiful, and has the sweetest disposition; and while I
kept you waiting in the _hôsh_ the other day, it was but to give her an
opportunity of gazing on you through the _mushrbiyeh_. You can divorce
your Rasheeda and live happily with my Fâtimah.”
‘This sounded very well, and I tried to get the old man to fix the sum
I should have to pay as the dowry. He kept telling me of the price
one-eyed Mustâpha was prepared to pay; but I wanted to know nothing
about Mustâpha, and have since found out that this was all lies. After
many days he agreed to content himself with ten pounds, and I paid
him half that sum, the other half, as you know, to be paid when the
marriage had taken place.
‘I had done well that season, and spent much of my earnings on the
wedding; when I left my friends below to go to the _hareem_, I gave my
bride a handsome present as “the price of the uncovering of the face,”
and when I threw back the shawl, and saw her for the first time, I
nearly fainted.’
It was as much as I could do not to laugh, but the poor fellow
seemed so overcome in recalling his bad bargain that I tried to look
sympathetic.
‘I thought of divorcing her there and then,’ he went on, ‘but I had
not the heart to pronounce those terrible words on the day of the poor
creature’s wedding. She was ugly and old--at least thirty--and had as
brown a face as I have.’
After a pause he went on. ‘Her father--may Allah blacken his face!--did
not lie as regards her temper; but even the best of tempers could not
withstand the jeering and scoffing to which Rasheeda used to treat her.
My mother used to take her part, and we had more rows between Rasheeda
and my mother. When I could stand it no longer, I went with two
witnesses to the Kadi’s court and had her written a _nashizeh_, and she
returned to her own people. Fâtimah tried to mother our little Hassan,
but she could not console him. He got ill, and I was afraid we might
lose him. I then took a room near Saida Zenab, and fetched Rasheeda
away from her people, and she and the child are now living there. My
life has been more peaceful since then, but the cost of two households
makes me a very poor man. I assure you, Mr. Tyndale, that though I did
very well last season, I hardly know where to turn for a piastre.’
It would be two months or more before the next season would be in full
swing, so we arranged that he would accompany me during that time, and
would procure me some one else while he was engaged with the tourists.
He promised to be in good time the next morning, and took his departure.
Probably nothing has tended more to separate the East from the West
than their differing views as to the relation of the sexes. Such
education as there is has until quite recently been entirely confined
to the sons of the more well-to-do, and even at present the instances
of a girl being taught to read or write are very rare. It therefore
follows that as only one parent has had any mental training, the
offspring has less mental capacity to inherit than where both parents
will have had some form of schooling. The religious instruction which
forms so large a part of a Moslem’s training is almost entirely
withheld from the girls, which accounts no doubt for the erroneous idea
held by Europeans that Mohammedans believe women to have no souls.
Religious text-books give pages as to a child’s duty to its father,
and they sum up in a couple of lines the duty to the mother. Educated
Egyptians will often complain that their wives are no companions to
them, but what can they expect when their womenkind are brought up in a
manner so distinctly inferior?
Polygamy is less common than is generally supposed, but a man can
divorce his wife so easily that he has not the necessity of keeping
more than one at a time. It is true that a father will hesitate to give
his daughter to a man who has often used the divorce court, and that he
will also advise his son to keep to one wife if he possibly can.
A young doctor, who appeared to be happily married, told me of the
advice his father gave him previous to the wedding. ‘Don’t be foolish
enough, O my son, ever to take a second wife; for if you do, trouble is
sure to begin. Should you tire of Zenab, get her another dress; women
are all much the same, it is the clothes which make the difference.’ I
asked if this plan had succeeded. ‘Yes, only too well,’ said my friend,
‘for she is continually encouraging me to get her a new dress.’ He also
told me that previous to his wedding he had not even seen his wife
veiled, though they were brought up in the same town. His sisters had
described her so well to him that when he saw her for the first time,
she was very much like what he had anticipated.
[Illustration: AN ARAB WEDDING PROCESSION]
I have described more fully elsewhere a marriage to which my wife and
I were invited as guests, and as such full details of the ceremonial
are given in Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_ I shall not dwell on it here.
Lane’s argument to those who severely condemn Islamic marriage laws
is this: ‘As Moses allowed God’s chosen people, for the hardness of
their hearts, to put away their wives, and forbade neither polygamy
nor concubinage, he who believes that Moses was divinely inspired to
enact the best laws for his people, must hold the permission of these
practices to be less injurious to morality than their prohibition,
among a people similar to the ancient Jews.’ This sounds fairly
plausible, but we must not forget that Mohammedans accept Christ as
a prophet as well as Moses, and also avow that each prophet taught
them something higher than the preceding one had done, and there is
certainly no licence as to polygamy or concubinage allowed in the
teaching of our Lord. Their last prophet, and according to them their
greatest, Mohammed, had overlooked this, and probably only codified
what had more or less become a common practice in his day.
As the modern Jews now hold to one wife just as do the people amongst
whom they live, so it is possible that in time the Moslems may also
modify their marriage customs. Supply and demand has already had
its effect, for with the restrictions on slavery, concubinage has
of necessity lessened and respect for the husband of one wife is
increasing amongst the better educated classes.
I started on a subject on the following morning, of an old house built
alongside and overhanging an entrance to a mosque. A little coffee-shop
under an archway, on the opposite side of the street, made an excellent
point of vantage from which I could do my work without attracting too
much attention. Mohammed, who accompanied me, made arrangements with
the owner of the stall for my accommodation, and sat on the high bench
near me, so as to keep off the more inquisitive. An ideal post for
him, for he could smoke a _nárgeeleh_, sip coffee, and chat with the
other clients as much as he pleased. He would brush away the flies with
one end of his whisp, and poke with the other end any small boy who
ventured too near me. ‘If one comes it may not matter, but if one stays
fifty others will come also,’ he would say, as the stick of the whisp
and a boy’s head came in contact.
It was also in the interest of the owner of the coffee-shop,--as
Mohammed was careful to explain to him,--to make things comfortable
for me, as I should spend many mornings here if I were not molested
in my work. Besides my subject, which was a very beautiful one in
itself, this was a useful perch from which to make studies of the
people and animals which passed. It was in the Nahasseen, one of the
busiest thoroughfares of Cairo, and scarcely an hour would go by
without hearing the _zaghareet_, the shrill cries of joy which told of
the approach of a bridal procession, or the doleful chorus, ‘Lá iláha
illa-lláh,’ would prepare one for the passing of a funeral.
It has happened that the _zaghareet_ was not always the accompaniment
of the more cheerful procession, for these shrill cries of joy replace
those of lamentation when a _welee_, a person of great sanctity, is
carried to his last resting-place. The idea conveyed is that the joys
now awaiting him more than compensate those he has left behind for
his loss. There is a curious superstition, or maybe some other cause
which we cannot explain, that if these cries of joy cease for more
than a minute the bearers of the corpse cannot proceed. It is also
maintained that a _welee_ is able to direct the steps of his bearers
to a particular spot where he may wish to be buried. Lane tells the
following anecdote, describing an ingenious mode of puzzling a dead
saint of this kind. ‘Some men were lately bearing the corpse of a
_welee_ to a tomb prepared for it in the great cemetery on the north of
the metropolis; but on arriving at the gate called Bab-en-Nasr, which
leads to this cemetery, they found themselves unable to proceed further
from the cause above-mentioned. “It seems,” said one of the bearers,
“that the sheykh is determined not to be buried in the cemetery of
Bab-en-Nasr; and what shall we do?” They were all much perplexed; but
being as obstinate as the saint himself, they did not immediately yield
to his caprice. Retreating a few paces, and then advancing with a quick
step, they thought by such an impetus to force the corpse through the
gateway; but their efforts were unsuccessful; and the same experiment
they repeated in vain several times. They then placed the bier on
the ground, to rest and consult; and one of them beckoning away his
comrades to a distance, beyond the hearing of the dead saint, said to
them, “Let us take up the bier again, and turn it round quickly several
times till the sheykh becomes giddy; he then will not know in what
direction we are going, and we may take him easily through the gate.”
This they did; the saint was puzzled, as they expected, and quietly
buried in the place he had striven to avoid.’
I witnessed a similar thing in Japan, a year or two ago; but in that
case it was an idol which showed a similar obstinacy. It was at the
‘Gion Matsuri,’ which annually takes place at Kyôto, when the Shinto
god Susa-no-o is carried to his O Tabisho--that is, his sojourn in the
country with his goddess.
No sooner had the god been placed on his portable throne than the
wildest excitement was manifested by his bearers; some wished to carry
him one way and some another, while others seemed rooted to the ground.
A Japanese gentleman, who was with me, explained that until all the
bearers felt drawn to pull one way, it was not known by which route the
god had decided to go.
It is singular that a similar superstition should obtain with people
differing as much as the Egyptians do to the Japanese.
The constant funerals which passed between me and my subject seemed
little heeded by Mohammed and the other frequenters of the café, except
when the chorus mentioned the name of the prophet, some would murmur,
‘God bless and save him’--‘Salla-lláhu-’aleyhi wasellem.’
The bridal procession, on the contrary, seemed to have a very
depressing effect on my man, and he would hardly cheer up till a
distant wail suggested another funeral.
On one occasion I recognised the camels with the magnificent trappings
used when the holy carpet is conveyed to Mecca; they were doing duty as
a kind of vanguard to a bride who followed in a litter swung between
two other camels. It was a most picturesque sight, and one to take
as many notes of as possible for reference to in a future picture.
Fortunately the progress of the procession is slow, the traffic of the
street compelling it frequently to stop. This would enable me to get
ahead of it and jot down some of the arrangements of colour. The heavy
gold and crimson trappings of one camel, a combination of green and
gold on a second, while the gold brocade of a third was in a purple
setting; all this in a blaze of sunshine, yet subdued compared to the
light caught by the brass kettle-drums. The background in some places,
too cut up in violent patches of light and shade by the awnings over
the shops or too intricate with the drawing of a saracenic mosque
entrance, filled me with confusion as to how I could ever treat such a
subject.
When the broad plain surfaces of Barkûk’s and Kalaûn’s shrines made a
setting to this gorgeous procession, I felt that my task had become
more hopeful.
The number of facts I had to crowd into my memory in a half-hour or so,
I found more exhausting than a long morning’s work on a subject such
as the one I had left to pursue this one. To return to the little café
where I had left Mohammed in charge of my painting materials, pack up
my traps and go back to the hotel, was about as much as I was fit for
during the rest of that morning.