Читать книгу The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women - Elizabeth Cooper - Страница 7

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When first one visits Egypt, romance seems to peer from beneath the veil of each black-robed figure, and mystery lurks behind the intricate carving that covers the windows where one is sure some languid beauty sits waiting for the moment when her lord and master will be gone, that she may wave a white hand to the passionate suitor below. This idea of Egypt is generally derived from highly coloured and erotic novels which always make this country alluring and often sensual. To one who has been given this highly seasoned food for his imagination to feed upon the modern Egypt, with its great glaring hotels, its motor-cars, its shops that might be in London or New York, is a great disappointment.

Illusions will again be lost if one is permitted to enter the beautiful homes on the fashionable drives of Cairo, for they are not Eastern in any sense, nor is there anything about them to indicate that their owners are Orientals. They express no individuality, and might belong to any person of means whether in the East or the West. The drawing-rooms are furnished in French fashion, with gilded chairs, a grand piano, hangings and curtains made in England or France. Great glass chandeliers holding the glaring electric lights express the cosmopolitanism which the mistress feels she must show the world, in order that she may not be considered as belonging to the old school of Egyptian womanhood.

One hears the word harim and instantly conjures up an Arabian Nights picture of rare hangings, subdued lights, beautiful odalisques lounging on soft divans, slaves, incense, and a general air of sensuousness pervading the entire place. I read a book not long ago written by a well-known woman writer who says, “I am thankful to say that I have never been within a harim except twice, and the memory of that dreadful place will rest with me for many years.” Yet she admits that on her first visit to this “dreadful place” she had no interpreter and could only draw upon her imagination to give the women she saw their position in the elaborate household. This imagination was evidently a vivid one, as she believed that many women she saw were “the poor deluded slaves” of the master of the house, while quite likely they were the innumerable relatives and woman-servants that always throng the rich man’s home.

In reality, in present-day modern Cairo, if one enters the harim of the better class, or of the official class, one is greeted by a hostess dressed in the latest French creation, tea is served, while the politics of the world are discussed easily in either French or English by the polished, up-to-date Egyptian women.

The word harim is much misunderstood by the people of the Western world. The Arabic word harim simply means the women’s quarters. The selam-lik are the apartments in which the men of the household have their business offices, receive their friends, and pass their time, while the harim-lik are the apartments reserved for the female members and children of the family. The literal meaning is exclusiveness, seclusion, privacy. In its restricted sense it embodies the two meanings of the women of the household and their exclusive apartments. In the wider acceptance of the term we understand by harim an established social system deriving its sanction from a body of laws promulgated by the Arabian prophet Mohammed. When a woman is harim it means that she is secluded, and we hear the expression in regard to schoolgirls. “Yes, my daughters go to school,” a mother will say, “but they are kept harim.”

In Persia and Turkey the word zenana is used, and in India the common form of expression for the woman who is not seen by any male except those of her immediate family is, “She is purdah-nashim, or simply purdah.” The purdah is the screen that shuts her from the outside world, and the Oriental, whatever his race, whether in Egypt, Turkey, or India, whether he calls it the harim, purdah, or zenana, speaks of it in his literature and poetry as the “Sanctuary of Conjugal Happiness.”

One can live years in the East and get little idea of the life of the Moslem woman of the better class. In Egypt ten million out of the twelve million inhabitants are followers of the prophet Mohammed, and to understand at all the Eastern woman one must learn something of the religion that dominates the entire life of the Mohammedan. The actions of the Moslem woman, whether in India, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, or Algiers, are controlled and forced to comply with the laws made by the Arabian prophet of the seventh century, and even to-day his word practically governs each act of the domestic life as well as the world outside the home.

Before Mohammed’s time there were no social, religious, nor educational institutions in Arabia, as we understand them. Unlimited polygamy, slavery, drunkenness, polytheism, gambling, child murder, and plunder existed. He taught that there was but one God, forbade child murder, limited the number of wives to four, forbade the use of intoxicating liquors, gambling, usury, and gave women a definite legal status.

The reforms inaugurated by this wonderful man effected vast and marked improvement in the position of the women of the Eastern world. Her status had degenerated from that held in ancient times until her position was extremely degraded. She was the chattel of her father, brother, or husband, like his camel or his sheep, and could be bought and sold as any other chattel. She was an integral part of her husband’s estate and was inherited by his heirs. The son inherited his father’s wives and often married them. This Mohammed severely censured, and laid down most exacting laws in regard to the women lawful for a man to marry. He says:—

And marry not them whom your fathers have married; for this is a shame and hateful, and an evil way—though what is past may be allowed. Forbidden to you are your mothers and your daughters, and your sisters, and your aunts, both on your father’s and your mother’s side, and your foster-mothers and your foster-sisters, and the mothers of your wives, and your stepdaughters who are your wards, born of your wives, and the wives of your sons, and ye may not have two sisters.

He is severely criticized that he authorized polygamy, but when one remembers the wild, lawless people whom he governed, it seems that he showed extreme moderation in limiting the number of wives to four. He added that a man might possess the slaves within the household, and his followers say he was compelled to put in this postscript in order to quiet the unrest that was caused by the new domestic regulation which was so contrary to all ideas then controlling his immediate world.

He expressly stated that if a man could not deal justly and love equally all his wives, he must then marry but one. All true believers quote this as meaning that Mohammed really intended his people to be monogamous, as it was fully known that no man could love four women with equal ardour. The husband is also enjoined to partition his time equally amongst his families, and there is a saying that if a man inclines particularly to one of the women of his household, in the day of judgment he will incline to one side by being a paralytic.

He allowed women to inherit property, although he gave a girl only half the inheritance of a boy. A wife may inherit one-fourth of her husband’s estate if there are no children, and one-eighth if there are children; if there is more than one wife, the eighth is divided equally amongst them. A man may inherit one-half of his wife’s property in the event of her being childless, but only one-quarter if she leaves children, and neither one can disinherit the other.

Yet the laws show clearly that a woman was not legally the equal of a man, as it takes the testimony of two women to equal that of one man, and the price of a woman’s life was only fifty camels instead of the hundred camels demanded for the life of a man. There is a reason for this other than the mere disregard of women. Those days were lawless days, when tribe was fighting tribe and the non-fighting women were naturally not held in such esteem as were the men who were needed to fight in the continuous tribal wars.

Moslems claim that the Mohammedan woman is more truly protected by the laws of Mohammed than are the women of Western countries. She can dispose of any property that she may receive, either from her family or her husband, as she sees fit. She is not responsible for the debts of her husband; she can sue and be sued; or she can make contracts or enter into any business undertaking without consulting her husband; and she may even take him before the courts if he does not live up to an agreement he may have made with her.

Yet this wily Eastern prophet did not believe in the absolute equality of women; as he says:—

Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God hath gifted one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make from their substance for them;

and he warns his followers from making too large settlements on them or in giving them too many valuable gifts:

And entrust not to the incapable the substance which God hath placed with you for their support; but maintain them therewith, and clothe them, and speak to them with kindly speech.

A Moslem woman is supposed to share the responsibilities of life as well as its pleasures. In the case of destitute parents, sons are required to contribute two-thirds towards their support, while the daughters must add their third. This is a very wise law, because Egypt, like practically all Oriental countries, makes no provision from its public funds for the maintenance of the poor or old. Each family must care for its own helpless.

Many reasons are given for the laws compelling the women of Mohammedan lands to be veiled and to pass their life within the inner apartments reserved for their especial use. Some say that Mohammed caused women to be veiled because of his jealousy of his young wife Ayesha; others claim that the prophet, becoming enamoured by the beauty of his adopted son’s wife, caused her to be divorced, afterwards marrying her, contrary to the laws he himself had made; he wished to protect men from being subjected to the temptation which had overtaken him and had brought upon him the displeasure of his people. But the seclusion of women was found in Asia, in ancient Rome, in Syria, and even in Athens, long before the time of Mohammed. It was in practice amongst many Oriental nations from the earliest times, and quite likely Mohammed simply adopted the customs of the people with whom he came in contact on his conquering tours.

The seclusion of women, especially among the nomads, can be traced to the warlike habits of the people. In times of war the enemy would first of all carry away the women, children, and cattle of the tribe with whom they were fighting. In order to protect the helpless they were kept in inner rooms. The richer and stronger the family, the more secluded were the women, and it became a mark of caste to be kept within the women’s quarters, or protected. Thus what first originated as a necessity became afterwards a matter of aristocracy, and the man who could keep his women strictly harim was looked upon as higher in the social scale than one who was compelled, from economic reasons or otherwise, to allow the females of his household to come and go freely in the world.

An Egyptian woman, from the time when she is seven or eight years old, never shows her face unveiled to any man except her father, her brother, or her husband. No chance is given the followers of the Arabian prophet to have the little flirtations that are so dear to the heart of many of her Western sisters. Mohammed says:—

And speak to the believing women that they refrain their eyes and display not their ornaments, except those which are external; and that they throw their veils over their bosoms, and display not their ornaments except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husbands’ fathers, or their sons, or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves or their children. And let them not strike their feet together so as to discover their hidden ornaments.

The present-day Mohammedan woman observes this law more strictly than was at first intended, even to not being seen by the father of her husband. I know an Egyptian woman who is never seen by her father-in-law except on the first day of the year, when he calls upon her to wish her the joys of the coming year. She enters the room closely veiled and offers him the season’s greetings, then leaves without further conversation. I was calling upon an Indian Mohammedan woman who could not enter the room until her father-in-law had left it, as it would have been a serious breach of etiquette for him to see her.

This seclusion does not rest heavily upon the Mohammedan woman, as she considers it the desire of her husband to protect her, and she would be the first to resent the breaking of her seclusion, as showing that she had lost value in his eyes. She lives for no one except her family, is supposed to be of no interest to any one else, it being a great breach of social decorum for any male member of a family to even inquire about her. A man would never say to another man, “Is your wife well?” He would say, “Is your household well?” And the husband would never speak of his “wife” to another man, but would speak of his “house,” which would naturally include the female occupants.

The harim is the “Holy of Holies” in the Moslem world. Even a police official would hardly dare to penetrate the women’s quarters in search of a criminal. When a man has retired to his harim he is free from any disturbing influence from the outside world. If a friend or enemy should call and servants would say that the master was in the harim, the caller would be compelled to leave or wait until the master was disposed to enter again the selam-lik, or rooms assigned to the male members of the household.

The greatest evil in the harim life lies in the dreadful seclusion and the paralysing monotony. Many of the older women are unable to read and write, and they pass their days in weary idleness and a vacuous routine which is only broken by visits to women friends as mentally impoverished as themselves. Not being allowed the friendship of the opposite sex, they are denied the stimulation of the mind which would no doubt result from the interchange of ideas with men who come in contact with the outside world. Naturally the intellectual development is restricted, and this starving of the mentality of the women must have a result detrimental to the rising generation.

Seclusion also makes a woman very much more the actual possession of her husband than she would be if allowed to come and go in the world, to know her rights and the means by which to enforce them. Although the laws are very much in her favour, in regard to property rights especially, it takes a woman of more than ordinary courage and intelligence to break away from the walls which encircle her and parade her troubles in open court. We are told of the wonderful laws allowing the woman to dispose of her property as she wishes; but we are not told that she may give this property to her husband, and when once within the harim, pressure is often brought compelling the woman to give all that she possesses to her husband, making her doubly helpless and wholly within his power.

They have a proverb that a woman must always answer the call of her husband, “even if she is at the oven.” Her happiness depends entirely upon the treatment she receives from him. His visits to the harim are the only breaks in the monotony of her life, and he brings to her the only touch she may have with the great man-world outside. By a few men the wives are treated as if they were intellectual equals, but these are few and far between. The average Oriental treats his womenfolk as if they were upon a lower plane than himself, “brought up amongst ornaments and contentious without cause.”

One would judge that, handicapped as they are, Moslem women would take no part in the political or social life of their country, but facts prove that they can rise to great heights and exhibit rare courage and executive powers in time of need. Ayesha, the favourite wife of Mohammed, showed an instance of bravery and courage that might belong to women of any land. When Ali, the cousin of the prophet, rebelled against the successors of Mohammed, Ayesha took the field against him, commanding the troops in person at the “Battle of the Camel,” and in later days they have shown that the restrictions of the harim do not deaden the fires that burn in women’s breasts when tyranny or oppression rules their land.

In Persia, where Mohammedanism in its strictest sect has sway, the women have been known to rise in force and demand the rights of their people when all the efforts of the men have failed. In 1861, at the time of the great famine, foodstuffs rose to an exorbitant price, because of a few greedy officials who were enriching themselves at the expense of their starving countrymen. It was impossible to bring the matter before the Shah by the methods generally employed, but the women rose, and one day thousands of them surrounded his carriage as he was returning from a hunting trip, and stating the wrongs of his people, demanded that he should make an investigation. The Shah was thoroughly frightened at the sight of this unprecedented exhibition on the part of his usually unseen subjects, and promised all they asked, and, what was more wonderful, kept his promise. The leaders of the party who were causing the distress were beheaded, and the price of bread was diminished by half within twelve hours. It is only a few years ago that the women of Persia confronted the President of the Assembly in his hall, and tearing aside their veils and producing revolvers, confessed their decision to kill their husbands and sons and add their own dead bodies to the sacrifice if the deputies should waver in their duties to uphold the liberties of the Persian people.

A WATER-CARRIER.

To face p. 36.

These Moslem women display a fortitude and courage that is almost fanatical in times of persecution. Thousands in Persia have given their lives for their faith in Baha Ullah, the leader of a sect of reformed Mohammedans. They have been dragged from the harims to the public market-places, where they have been subjected to unheard of indignities before having the privilege of dying for their faith. They have also been compelled to sit in rows facing the public execution grounds while their husbands and sons were beheaded before their eyes, but even the torture and death of those they loved did not cause them to waver from what they believed to be right. The story of one woman exemplifies the fanatical courage that will dominate such a shut-in woman, when in some dim, tragic hour she has been compelled to give her contribution in the life she loved to her religious cause. In Tabriz one day a crowd of women were seated facing the executioner’s block, and amongst them a delicate, dainty woman who had been protected all her life within the harim of one of the prominent men of Tabriz, but whose death had left his women helpless to bear the brunt of his enemy’s wrath. Chance had made this enemy the city Governor, and he remembered that the family of the man he hated even in death were followers of Baha Ullah. On this morning in June the mother was brought to see the death of her fourteen-year-old son, her only child. When the executioner had done his work, the head was tossed into her lap, and she was told “Take back your son.” She stood up, and holding the loved head in her hands, held it towards the sky, as if to give it as an offering to the God who seemed to have deserted her in her hour of need, looked long into the closing eyes, then threw it to the official’s feet, saying, “I do not take back what I give my God!” and turning quickly, took her place among the sorrow-maddened women.

Her cousin, who told me the story and who was a witness to the scene, said to me: “It is impossible for a Western woman to understand a Moslem woman. Perhaps because of our exclusion and the lack of means of self-expression, we have over-developed our inner emotional natures, which at times of sorrow burst forth like a hidden flame. We not only gave our lives in those dread days of Tabriz, but what is worse, we gave the lives of those we loved—and still lived on.”

The women of Egypt have as yet had no reason to rise up en masse and show what they may do in times of national distress. It is unusual for the women of any Mohammedan land to usurp the prerogatives of men. They are fundamentally intensely feminine, the home their only domain. Sa’adi, the Persian poet, said:—

No happiness comes to the house of him whose hen hath crowed like a cock.

It will be many years before the Egyptian woman joins the ranks of the militant suffragettes, and tries to blow up the Pyramids or deface the walls of Egypt’s famous temples in the spirit of emulation and zeal for the Cause.