Haifa, March 1, 1884.—The ordinary tourists in Palestine who write books
of their experience have so little opportunity of knowing the conditions
which surround the daily life of a resident in a small country town,
that a few details of domestic existence here, as contrasted with those
of more civilized countries, may not be uninteresting. As a general
rule, the foreigner who comes to a native town to settle down as a
permanent inhabitant finds himself compelled more or less to adopt the
manners and customs of the richer class of Syrians, which gives him an
opportunity of becoming acquainted with their home life. Some of these
are wealthy merchants or large landed proprietors, with incomes varying
from $5000 to $15,000, though a man whose yearly revenue reached the
latter amount, of which he would not spend half, would be considered a
millionaire, and few small towns can boast of so great a capitalist. As,
owing to the march of civilization, the richer classes have of late
years taken to travel and the study of languages, persons occupying this
position generally speak either French or Italian, have visited Paris,
Constantinople, or Alexandria, and have a thin varnish of European
civilization overlaying their native barbarism.
The rich families of the Syrian aristocracy are almost invariably
Christians, but they have only recently shaken off the manners of their
Mohammedan neighbours and conquerors. The women associate far more
freely than they used to do with the men. They now no longer cover their
faces, and although they still wear the “fustan,” or white
winding-sheet, which serves as cloak and head-dress in one, it nearly
always conceals a dress of European make, while, instead of bare feet
thrust into slippers, they have Paris bottines and stockings. The men of
this class also dress in European garments, wearing, however, the red
fez cap.
The domestic arrangements of a family of this description are by no
means so refined in character as the external aspect of the house and
its proprietor, when he is taking his exercise on a gorgeously
caparisoned Arab horse, would suggest. If we are on sufficiently
intimate terms with him to stay as a guest in his house, we find that
his pretty wife, with her Paris dress and dainty chaussure, walks about
in the privacy of the domestic home with bare, or at best stockinged,
feet, thrust into high wooden pattens, with which she clatters over the
handsome marble hall that forms the central chamber of the house,
slipping out her feet and leaving the pattens at the door of any of the
rooms she may be about to enter. She wears a loose morning-wrapper,
which she is not particular about buttoning, but in this respect she is
outdone by sundry dishevelled maid-servants, who also clatter about the
house in pattens and in light garments that seem to require very little
fastening in front. As for the husband, who, when he called upon you,
might have come off the boulevards of Paris, barring always the red cap,
he has now reverted absolutely into the Oriental. He wears a long white
and not unbecoming garment that reaches from his throat to his heels,
and his feet are thrust into red slippers. As he sips his matutinal cup
of coffee and smokes his first narghileh of the day, there is nothing
about him to remind you that he knows a word of any other language than
Arabic, or has ever worn any other costume than that of his Eastern
ancestors. He is sitting in his own little den, with his feet tucked
under him on the divan which runs around the room, and with his wife in
close proximity, her feet tucked under her, and also smoking a narghileh
and sipping coffee.
Yet, if you call upon this worthy couple as a distinguished foreigner,
in the afternoon, accompanied by your wife, and are not on intimate
terms, you are received in a room which they never enter, except upon
such state occasions, by the same gentleman, in a perfectly fitting
black frock-coat and trousers, varnished boots, and a white waistcoat,
and by the same lady, in a dress which has been made in Paris.
The furniture consists of massive tables with marble tops, and handsome
arm-chairs and couches covered with costly satins. The walls are
resplendent with gilt mirrors and with heavy hanging curtains. The
floors are covered with rich carpets. There is a three-hundred-dollar
piano, on which the lady never plays; and there are pictures, of which
the frames are more artistic than the subjects—the whole having the air
of a show repository of some sort. Indeed, if your host is at all taken
by surprise, the first thing he does is to open all the shutters, as,
except upon such occasions, the apartment is one of silent and absolute
gloom. He has a guest-chamber, also furnished after a civilized style,
in which he puts you, if you are going to stay with him, and he has so
far adopted civilized habits that he sleeps on a bed himself, and not on
mats on the floor, like his forefathers. His dinner is served on a
table, which is spread as he has seen it spread in the houses of
foreigners, but he retains the native cooking, the huge pillaw of rice,
the chicken stew with rich and greasy gravy, the lamb stuffed with
pistachio nuts, the leben or sour milk, the indescribable sweet dishes,
crisp, sticky, and nutty, the delicious preserves of citrons, dates, and
figs, the flat bread and the goat cheese, and the wine of the country.
Altogether, he gives you plenty to eat, drink, and smoke, but his
conversational powers and ideas are limited, which is not to be wondered
at, considering that there is not a book in the house. He tells you that
the house cost him $9000, which does not seem likely to be an
exaggeration when we look at the handsome marble floors and staircase,
massive arches, and the extent of ground which is covered by spacious
halls and ample courts.
The kitchen and offices, if you have the curiosity to look into them,
are filthy in the extreme, and the process of cooking the dinner,
performed by a slovenly female, had better not be too closely examined.
His domestic establishment probably consists of four women and two or
three men who look after the stables, in which are three or four
handsome horses, and a garden requiring constant attention. He has no
wheeled vehicle, for there are no roads. The women rarely take any other
exercise than that of waddling on gossiping visits to each other, when
their conversation turns entirely on domestic subjects, on the marital
traits of their respective husbands, on congratulations on the arrival
of children, if they are boys, and condolences if they are girls, and on
hopeful speculation and encouragement if there are none at all; for of
all misfortunes which can befall a Syrian lady, to be childless is the
greatest. If there are grown-up daughters they are carefully protected
from intimacy with young men, and marriages are arranged by the parents.
The chances of making a good match depend more on the amount of the
marriage-settlement than on their looks. If the family happens to be a
large one it is not uncommon to see a young lady who has been brought up
in what, in Syria, is considered luxury, married to some poor and
distant connection, whose family live in the humblest manner. In such a
case the contrast is greater than can be imagined in our country. She is
transferred from the palatial residence I have described to a
one-storied house which probably does not consist of more than two
rooms, and where her husband's family live in the old style. Here she is
received, perhaps, by his mother and sister, with whom she is to live;
who wear the pure native costume; who have never had a shoe or stocking
on in their lives; who sleep on mats on the floor, for there are no
bedsteads; who partake of their meals squatting on their heels, for
there are no chairs or tables; and who eat with their fingers, for there
are no knives and forks.
If the newly married couple do not occupy the same room with the rest of
the family, they share the other one with the domestic animals. These
probably consist of a horse, a cow, and a donkey. For the sake of
security they are stabled in the room of the master of the house. Their
manger is on a level with the floor on which he and his bride sleep. I
have before now shared such a room with a young married couple—she, the
daughter of a wealthy man who lived in civilized style—and all night I
have been disturbed by the crunching of the animals feeding within a few
feet of where I was lying; with their constant rising up and lying down;
with the movements of my host and hostess, who would get up constantly
in the night, sometimes to feed the animals, which were required for
work before sunrise, sometimes to replenish the charcoal fire, sometimes
to attend to the baby, or to open the door and hold a whispered
conference with some nocturnal visitor. As there is no undressing on
going to bed, among these people, and as they indulge in long snoozes
during the day, the night does not seem to be so especially devoted to
sleep as with us. They appear to think that, as going to bed simply
consists in lying down on the floor in your clothes, one part of the
twenty-four hours will do as well for sleep as another, and their nights
are restless accordingly. As a general rule, for persons who have not
been long enough in the country to get used to insects, the nights are
made restless from other causes.
It is curious, in the case of such a marriage as I have described, to
see the change which takes place when the young wife leaves the retired
village to which she has been banished, owing to the impoverished
circumstances of her husband, to pay a visit to her own family. I
scarcely recognize her when I meet her again. When last I saw her in her
humble home her costume consisted of a thin sort of chemisette, a pair
of full, baggy trousers fastened at the knee, leaving the legs and feet
bare, and over these a skirt, and we were dipping our fingers amicably
into the same dish of rice. Now I would walk down Broadway with her on
my arm, and be rather proud of her fashionable “get up” than otherwise;
and she handles her knife and fork with far greater dexterity than I did
my fingers.
The wave of civilization is, however, rapidly encroaching upon these
humbler classes. It is only natural that a girl brought up in this way
should endeavour to introduce innovations into her husband's home.
Within the last few years there has been a marked change in this
respect, particularly in a town like Haifa, where the Christian
population largely predominates. A veiled face is rarely to be seen,
while women, even of the poorer classes, are introducing the fashion of
wearing gowns, adding a table and a few chairs to their domestic
furniture, and have even gone the length of sleeping on bedsteads,
though I have not yet pried sufficiently into nocturnal mysteries to
know whether, when they go to bed, they have progressed in civilization
so far as to undress.