PERSIAN CLOTHES
Persian boys and girls are white, almost as white as ourselves, though
they generally have black hair and dark eyes. The chief difference in
appearance between Tommy Jones and ‘Ali Muhammad is that Tommy wears
trousers while ‘Ali Muhammad appears to wear a skirt. Tommy’s sister on
the other hand wears a skirt, and ‘Ali Muhammad’s sister wears trousers.
The fact is that if ‘Ali Muhammad is a poor boy, his trousers are short
and so very wide as to be practically a divided skirt. Indeed they
catch like a skirt in running, so that if he wants to go fast he pulls
one trouser-leg up out of the way. If he wears a coat at all, it is a
long cotton one, or more probably two long cotton ones, reaching nearly
to his knees and adding to the skirt-like appearance.
The sons of well-to-do men often wear frock coats with the skirts
pleated all round almost like a kilt, so that in spite of their longer
and narrower trousers they still have a look of wearing skirts.
[Illustration: LADIES’ OUT-DOOR AND IN-DOOR COSTUMES]
‘Ali Muhammad’s girdle too, which binds his coats to him and prevents
their blowing about in the wind, is more suggestive of a sash than
a belt. I once saw a little boy putting on his girdle on New Year’s
Day. It was a long folded scarf or _shāl_ and he put one end round
his waist while his brother took the other to the far end of the long
room and drew it tight. Then my little friend turned round and round,
so winding his _shāl_ round him, gradually moving up the room as the
length grew less, and he finished by tucking in the end. But whether
they wear long trousers or short ones, wide trousers or narrow ones,
the boys all fasten them by drawing them up with a string round the
hips--braces are not the fashion.
As we have found that, in spite of appearances, ‘Ali Muhammad after all
wears trousers, we may perhaps find that his sister, Rubabeh, wears a
skirt, and so indeed she does, but it is so short as not to be very
noticeable indoors, while out of doors it is completely hidden by the
big baggy over-trousers, gathered in at the ankles and footed, which
she wears when she goes in the street. An English missionary once
suggested to a young woman that a skirt reaching to the knees would
look better, but she said she was not an old woman yet. The old women
generally wear quiet colours and long skirts, reaching down to the
knee, but young women and girls like something more dressy. They like a
nice bright-patterned skirt about a foot long, but wide enough to reach
half across the room. This they draw up with a string over the white
cotton trousers, and the short shirt hangs loose outside. The shirt is
generally white but may be coloured, and a short coloured jacket is
worn over it, varying from plain coarse cotton to velvet embroidered
with gold and pearls.
The indoor _chādar_, or “prayer-_chādar_,” is often of pretty print or
muslin, and when Rubabeh puts on her clean white trousers, shirt and
headkerchief, with a bright frill of skirt round the waist and a pretty
jacket and _chādar_, she makes a very bright and effective picture.
But when she goes out she must put on dark over-trousers which cover
everything up to the waist, and over her head, in place of the pretty
prayer _chādar_, she must throw a large black _chādar_ which hangs over
everything, while a long strip of white cotton hangs down in front of
her face with drawn thread work in front of the eyes, so that she may
be able to see without being seen.
So, unlike our streets, the Persian ones get their colour from the men
and boys, while the women and girls supply the darker, duller element.
Bright blue is the commonest colour for the men’s coats, and green is
not uncommon, while, at the New Year, pink, yellow, lilac and other
colours make the streets very gay indeed.
The children are dressed just like their fathers and mothers, and
are little imitation men and women. The little tots look so funny
sometimes; tiny boys toddling about in long trousers, frockcoats, and
grown-up hats, and wee girls, who cannot yet speak distinctly, in the
long trousers, short skirts and _chādars_ of the women.
It seems to suggest that no great distinction is made between children
and grown-ups, and really there is not as much difference as we find
at home. The children are taught to take life very seriously and are
treated as little men and women before their time, and so they have no
time to grow up into proper men and women, and the result is that we
find the children too grown-up and the grown-ups too childish.
You will find, roughly speaking, if you look at animals that the higher
the animal, the longer its childhood lasts, because it has more growing
up to do. Caterpillars and tadpoles look after themselves from the time
of coming out of the egg, mice grow up in a few weeks, horses in a few
years, and man takes longer to grow up than any animal.
Now Muhammad, the false prophet whom the Persians believe in and obey,
had no such high standard to set before them, no such high ideal for
them to grow up to, as our Lord Jesus Christ set before His followers
and enables them to grow up to; and so his religion provides only a
short time for growing up, and stunts instead of assisting the growth
both of individual Muhammadans and of Muhammadan nations.
But we must get back to our Persian children and their clothes. Their
day-clothes we have seen; what about their night-clothes? They have
none. They just take off their outer garments and lie down in the rest,
and in the morning they just get up and put on their outer garments
again. Sometimes they do not put off anything.
“We are so tired,” said some ladies one New Year’s morning. “With all
our new clothes on we could not lie down, we should have crushed them,
so we sat up all night.”
You wonder why they were so foolish as to put them on on New Year’s
Eve in that case, instead of on the morning of the New Year itself. The
reason is simple. A Persian only puts on new clothes after a bath, and
a bath in Persia is not a mere matter of half an hour; it takes half a
day, and sometimes a whole one. Some of the richer people have baths in
their own houses, but most people go to the public baths.
All Persian women and girls love a day at the bath, and will not
shorten it if they can possibly help it. It is something like a Turkish
bath, and there they meet their friends and sit about in steamy rooms,
talking, laughing, gossiping. No wonder they look forward to it, for a
Persian girl has a much more secluded and restricted life than girls
in Europe and her intercourse with her friends is much less free. One
girl of fifteen told me that except for her weekly visit to the bath
she had only left her house once in a period of six months, and in her
own house she received very few visitors, the calls of her English
missionary friends being great events for the whole household.
At the bath they wash their hair, dye it with henna, and plait it up
in a dozen or more long plaits which hang down their backs under the
headkerchief and _chādar_, not to be undone again probably until the
next visit to the bath. The henna is a reddish dye and though it does
not show on black hair it turns fair or grey hair a carroty red. The
newcomer to Persia wonders to see so much red hair, till he finds that
this is the explanation. But the boys and girls nearly all have black
hair.
Boys have their heads shaved, though sometimes a handful of hair is
left over each ear, or a lock in the middle of the scalp. This shaving
is probably the reason why Persian boys always keep on their caps or
hats indoors and only take them off to sleep. Instead of taking off
their caps, Persian boys, and girls too, take off their shoes when
they come into a room, and this, together with the absence of chairs
and tables explains how Persian carpets last a hundred years. They are
actually more valuable after several years wear than when they were new.
Besides the hair, the fingernails, palms of the hands and soles of the
feet must, by Muhammadan rules, be dyed with henna. The richer bathers
have all these things done by the bath attendant, but the poorer ones
do it all themselves, and the very poor often omit the henna, except on
special occasions.
Just as no Persian likes to put on clean clothes without going to the
bath, so he will not go to the bath without putting on clean clothes.
“Khanum, give me a new shirt,” begged one old woman, displaying a
ragged one she had on. “For want of one I have not been able to go to
the bath since this was new.”
But where there’s a will there’s a way, and some people who are too
poor to have a change of clothes go to the bath, take off their clothes
and wash them, and then wait in the bath till they are dry.
There is a large tank in which the people wash and a ceremonial washing
requires a dip right under the water. The usual idea of changing the
water is to take out canfuls to water the tiles round, and then fill
up the tank again with clean water, so simply adding a little clean
water to the dirty.
During a cholera epidemic the Governor of a Persian town ordered that
the bath water should be changed at least once a month. One cannot
help wondering whether the monthly change was carried out as described
above, and I am sure you would prefer the little village baths where
there is often so small a tank that no one can get into it, and they
ladle out the water and wash in basins.
The common use of the one tank, with the only partial changing of the
water, and the general carelessness of infection, make the bath one of
the greatest means of spreading disease.
The Muhammadan religion provides strict rules as to clothes and baths
and washing. In the washings before prayers it even decides which
hand and which side of the face shall be washed first. And all this
the parents teach the children as carefully as, generally much more
carefully than, such matters as truthfulness, honesty and kindness.
Here again we see Muhammad giving his people what we may call “nursery
rules,” treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow
up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves.
As children we must live under detailed rules, but always with the
object before us of growing up right. The very fact that the detailed
rules of Muhammadanism are binding through life shows that the
Muhammadan is not expected to grow up as we understand growing up.