Daliet-el-Carmel, Nov. 7.—An incident so highly characteristic of Druse
life and manners has just occurred here that it seems worthy of
narration. About three months ago I was invited to be present at the
ceremony of the betrothal of the son of the richest man in the village,
by name Sheik Saleh, with the daughter of a neighbour called Kara, whose
wife was a sister of Sheik Saleh. The affair came off in the house of
the former, a small mud-built cottage situated in a court, with the
usual arched roof, and floor of a rough kind of cement, on which were
spread rugs and mats for the guests who crowded in to witness the
ceremony. This took place at nine o'clock at night, and was performed by
the khateeb, or spiritual sheik. It consisted in his joining the hands
of the future bridegroom and bride's father—the bride herself was not
present—and in his repeating several formulas in Arabic, among which I
detected some of the verses of the Koran. A small sum of money was then
paid over to the family of the bride, the khateeb took his fee out of
it, refreshments were brought in, and the rite was over.
It was a relatively tame performance, and not to be compared with an
actual wedding of another couple which took place shortly afterwards,
when the festivities lasted three days and nights, during which time the
bride, loaded with her dowry, which consisted chiefly of silver coins
formed into a head-dress and breastplate, danced incessantly in the
centre of admiring circles of girls who danced round her, while the men
were also making the night resound with their discordant clamour to the
utter destruction of slumber, firing off guns, making bonfires, and
singing. In fact, at the end of the three days the whole village, but
especially the bride, were utterly exhausted by their protracted
gaieties. At the end of this time she was put upon a horse and marched
in solemn procession to the door of every house in the village, followed
by a bevy of damsels screaming and clapping their hands. Each house was
expected to contribute a small sum—make a wedding-present, in fact, to
the newly-married couple. In this way she was finally conducted to the
bridegroom's house, where he was waiting for her with a capacious
mantle, in which, on her arrival, he enveloped her, and then carried her
into his house triumphant.
To go back to the episode of the betrothal. It is the Druse custom for
the father of the bridegroom to pay a sum of money to the bride's
family—in other words, he buys his son a wife. Now, in this case,
although I saw some money pass on the occasion, it was a mere formality.
The father of the bride had, in a fit of generosity, probably
interested, refused a sum of 2000 piastres, or about $75 for his
daughter. He proposed instead that he should form a partnership for
agricultural operations with Sheik Saleh, who, being rich, would be an
advantageous partner. This Sheik Saleh agreed to, and the arrangement
was completed, when it was objected to by Sheik Saleh's wife, who, being
a woman of character and resolution, induced her husband to break it
off. This made Kara furious. He is a man of ungovernable temper, and he
determined that his daughter should never wed Sheik Saleh's son. But a
betrothal of the kind I had witnessed is a very solemn ceremony, and the
only person who can break it is the betrothed bridegroom. The girl and
her family are powerless in the matter. Kara was so maddened by what had
occurred that, rather than let his daughter marry the son of the man by
whom he felt himself to have been outraged, he determined to kill her.
This was an odd resolution to arrive at. One would have thought he might
have gratified his vengeance better by killing Sheik Saleh or his son.
Druse passion, however, runs in curious channels, and he appears to have
been exasperated because his daughter did not share in his fury against
her cousin.
So he led her out to slaughter, riding his horse and armed with his gun,
and driving the poor girl, who was weeping and wailing bitterly, before
him. Many of the villagers saw him, and were well aware of his
intention, but shrank from interfering. The place which he had selected
for the execution was just at the bottom of the hill upon which my house
is situated, and the hour at which he was bent upon this bloody errand
was eight in the evening. Now, it so happened that I have a Druse
servant who has been with me for more than a year, a powerful man, a
splendid sportsman, a most courageous fellow, and, what perhaps was of
more importance, a near relation of Kara's. He chanced to be passing at
the time, and knowing his relative's furious temper, and perceiving that
he really intended to murder his daughter, he interfered at the risk of
his own life, and succeeded in rescuing the girl. Kara, however, was
still too angry to be reasonable. He returned to his house foaming with
passion, and finding his wife—who had lived with him for many
years—weeping bitterly over the whole occurrence, he accused her of
sympathy with her brother's family, and in the heat of the moment
pronounced the fatal words which, according to Druse custom, constitute
a divorce.
The trouble about a Druse divorce is, that the sentence which bids a
woman return to her family, once pronounced by her husband, is
irrevocable. Not only can he never take her back again as his wife, but
he can never, in this life, so much as even speak to her again. If he
sees her at the other end of the street he must turn away to avoid
meeting her. Nor may he enter a house in which he has reason to think
that she is. A man may, therefore, in a moment of passion ruin his own
happiness for life, and this is what Kara did. The whole occurrence only
happened two days ago, and Kara has been in the deepest distress ever
since. Had he killed his daughter, he said, it would not have mattered.
He would scarcely have missed her, and if she were to marry Sheik
Saleh's son she would be dead to him any way; but to be deprived of a
wife, against whom he had never had a complaint to make, who had loved
him and served him faithfully all these years—this was a loss that
nothing could replace.
When I heard that he had spoken in this cold-blooded way about his
daughter, and had alluded to the intention, which he admitted he had
entertained, of killing her, without a shadow of compunction, I half
regretted that he had not been allowed to die the other day of a leech
which he had in his throat. He sent word that he was dying, and a
medical friend who is staying with me went to see him, and found him in
the last stages of exhaustion from a leech which had been sixteen days
fastened too far down his throat to be liberated. These cases are not
uncommon, and are due to the water of some of the springs in the
neighbourhood. We have had five cases this year, but none so bad as
Kara's, which was the first. Salt and all the usual means were tried in
vain, and, as the doctor was anxious to get some leeches to experiment
with, Kara's wife and daughter, who both exhibited the greatest
distress, were despatched to a spring three miles off to get them. The
alacrity they displayed in his service were ill requited by his
subsequent conduct towards them. Here I may remark that large doses of
turpentine, taken internally, proved completely successful. There is
little doubt that, had the leech not succumbed to this treatment, in two
days more Kara must have succumbed to the leech.
The daring with which Druses resort to acts of violence is to be
accounted for by the fact that they can always escape justice. The
moment a Druse commits a crime he flies to the Hauran, which he can
reach with hard travel in eight-and-forty hours. Here he takes refuge
among his coreligionaries of the Jebel Druse Mountain, over whom the
Turkish government exercises only a nominal authority, and where pursuit
is impossible for any Ottoman official.
Meantime there is to be a great gathering of the village elders to
consider whether it is possible to arrange the feud between Sheik Saleh
and Kara. One of the uses to which Druse Khalwès, or places of worship,
is put, is to discuss every question which is of interest to the
village. For instance, should I desire to buy a tract of land from the
village held by many proprietors, they would hold a secret council in
the Khalwè to discuss the best method of cheating me. What passes at
these meetings is considered absolutely secret, and the minority are
bound to accept the opinion of the majority, and afterwards to act with
it. This imparts a wonderful unanimity to all their proceedings with
outsiders, though they quarrel very much among themselves, and these
Khalwè meetings sometimes lead to serious feuds and bloodshed. It seems
likely to do so in this case, for it has been reported to me that Kara
announced that if the decision of the meeting went against him, he would
commit such an act as should prevent it—in other words, murder either
his own daughter or her betrothed.
I was considering how I could best interfere to prevent such a
catastrophe, when I received a few hours ago a visit from Kara himself.
The purport of it, as usual, was to borrow money. I told him I could not
possibly lend money to a man who first decided to kill his own daughter,
and then for no cause divorced his wife. He replied that when he had
committed these acts he was possessed of the devil and unconscious of
what he was doing. I told him that to lend money to a man who was
subject to such demoniac possession was like lending money to the devil
himself, and this I declined to do. He assured me that the devil had
left him so completely that there was no fear of his getting hold of it.
I said I required proof of this, and he could furnish me with it by
assuring me of his readiness to allow his daughter to marry her
betrothed. He said that was a matter in the hands of Allah. “Then,” I
said, “under these circumstances you are prepared, I presume, to accept
the decision of the village as the decision of Allah.”
“Yes,” he replied, “if they decide also that Sheik Saleh is to pay me
fifty Turkish pounds for my daughter.”
“I am sorry,” I remarked, “that Allah has just decided that I am not to
lend you the money you want to borrow from me, and it will depend
entirely upon the extent to which you allow the devil to influence you
against the will of Allah how I treat you for the future.”
With that he took his departure; but I saw enough of his cowed temper
for the present to hope that the matter may be arranged with a little
judicious financial management. It does not give an encouraging view of
human nature to discover how potent a factor money is in its affairs,
even in a primitive Druse village.
In many respects Kara is a superior man, decidedly better than his
enemy, Sheik Saleh, who will also have to be dealt with, and who behaved
badly in backing out of an arrangement which had already been concluded,
for no valid reason. Owing, however, to the position which I occupy
financially to the village, they are all more or less under control, and
I have it in my power to exercise a pressure which even the Khalwè would
find it difficult to resist.
Unfortunately, I shall be obliged to leave instructions with regard to
this delicate matter, as my stay in Palestine for the present is about
to draw to a close, and with it must terminate this record of my
experiences in a country which, in spite of its many drawbacks,
possesses in my eyes superior attractions as a residence to any other in
which my lot has been cast.