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Unhappy marriages are a natural result of the seclusion of women in Egypt. It would be highly improper for a man to see his bride until after he had married her. He has not even had the privilege of choosing her. His mother did that for him, and it goes without saying that the young man is not always suited. The story is told of a young man who at his wedding feast was sitting so glum and silent that his young friends teased him by saying, "Brother! brother! Why so sad on this joyous occasion?" In answer he said, "I have just seen my bride for the first time and I am woefully disappointed. She is ugly! tall, thin, and weak-eyed." The tall "daughter-of-the-gods-girl" is not admired in Egypt. Her short, fat, dumpy little sister is much more according to Egyptian ideas of beauty. "Cheer up! cheer up!" said his friends, "you are not such a handsome fellow yourself that you should have such a handsome wife!" Shaking his head sadly, he said, "I feel like heaping ashes on my head. If you don't believe me that she is ugly, go upstairs and peep in at the Harem window and see for yourselves." Glad of the chance of such a privilege, they did so and came back saying, "Brother, heap more ashes on your head!"

Frequent divorce is a natural result of these unhappy marriages. Divorce in any land is a social evil but in Egypt it is especially so, because the divorce laws are such that in a peculiar way woman is degraded by them.

It is difficult to obtain exact figures regarding the percentage of divorce, as all cases are not recorded. There are some who say 50 per cent. of marriages end in divorce, others say 80 per cent., and a prominent Moslem when asked said 95 per cent. An experienced missionary when asked her opinion, said, "Divorce is so common that to find a woman who lives all her life with one husband is the exception."

In fact it is such an exception that it is a subject for remark, and a visitor in a house where such happy conditions exist never fails to be told about it.

Many women have been divorced several times, and a woman of twenty years of age may be living with her third husband.

A native Bible woman who had worked among Mohammedans for fourteen years when asked, "How many men or women of twenty-five years of age she thought likely to be living with their original partners?" said, "Do you mean that they should have kept to each other and that neither has been divorced or married anybody else?"—"Yes." She laughed and said, "Perhaps one in two thousand."

This was probably an exaggeration, but it shows that divorce is very common, and that the percentage is even higher than those who love Egypt and her people like to admit. It almost seems that the history of one's Mohammedan acquaintances in Egypt might be given in an endless stream of incidents about divorce and the intrigue and hate and jealousy attendant on this, the greatest social evil of Egypt.

Many a young man has no hesitation about marrying and divorcing, keeping up the process for a year or so till he at last finds a wife to suit him. If it didn't degrade those he has cast aside, he might be excused for doing so, as he has had no chance to choose his wife intelligently.

A young man of some spirit was determined to have a wife to please him and who would be congenial to him. Seeing no other way to accomplish it, he married and divorced in rapid succession six times. The seventh was a queenly young woman, gentle and refined in all her ways, in whom the heart of her husband might well rejoice, yet the terror daily hung over her that she might be divorced in time like the other six. It was pathetic to see how she tried to cultivate every little feminine art to please her husband, how she tried to improve her mind so as to be a companion to him, but constantly with the fear of divorce lurking in her tender and loving heart.

Among the lower classes marrying and divorcing in rapid succession is a form of dissipation. When pay-day comes, instead of going off on a big drink (which, to the credit of Islam, is forbidden), they use their money to defray the expenses of a season of debauchery, marrying and divorcing as many wives as possible while the money lasts. Picture the degradation of the poor women who are the victims (often unwilling victims) of such orgies.

It would be interesting to bring in here everything that Mohammedan law says about divorce, but the rules are many and complicated and almost too revolting to put into words. It is enough to say that the husband may divorce his wife without any misbehavior on her part or without assigning any reason. It is all left to the will and caprice of the man, and he has only to say, "Woman, thou art divorced," or he can even use metaphorical language which must be understood by the ever-on-the-alert wife to mean divorce, as when he says, "Thou art free!" "Thou art cut off!" "Veil yourself!" "Arise, seek for a mate!" etc., etc. A certain man had been away for a week or so on a business trip. He came home and the first words he said to his wife, were, "I thought you had gone home to your father's house!" She understood him to mean, and rightly too, "I divorce thee!" so she packed up her things and went off.

If a man pronounce his sentence of divorce only once or twice it is revocable, but if he pronounces it three times it is irrevocable, and the divorced wife cannot be taken back by her husband till she has been married to another man, has lived with him and been divorced; then her former husband can take her back. This is the most revolting and degrading of all the divorce laws, and the prophet Mohammed instituted it thinking that the very repulsiveness of it would act as a restraint, but strange to say it only seems to give more license.

A man will get into controversy with his friends perhaps. To strengthen his statements he uses all sorts of oaths, the strongest of which is, "I divorce my wife by the triple divorce." It takes legal effect. The poor man is in great distress, for he really loves his wife. What is he to do? He must go through the process of law to get her back. He hires a servant or a strange peasant to marry her. The revolting part is that the poor woman has to live with this hired husband till he is again hired to divorce her, when she is free to go back to her former husband. This case actually happened, and many like it with varying circumstances might be related, although it can gladly be said that the irrevocable divorce is not of such frequent occurrence as the revocable.

Some incidents will illustrate the various circumstances which cause divorce or are excuses for it.

Abraham, the carpenter, came to his employer one day asking for an advance of wages. "Why?" was asked. "I am going to get married," he said, "and it costs much money." Then he proceeded to relate his domestic troubles, how he had lived with his one wife sixteen years, explaining that he deserved much credit for doing so, seeing that his father during his lifetime had indulged in thirty-nine wives, but that he had come to the point where he must divorce this wife as she really did talk too much, so of course he would have to marry another.

A happy young mother had one little son whom she loved dearly. He was accidentally burned to death. The poor grief-stricken mother mourned and wept so much and so long that she became nearly blind. Because she had no more children, her husband divorced her. In time she talked of marrying again. The missionary who had visited her often and comforted her in her sorrow, remonstrated on the grounds of her former experience. She answered by saying, "A divorced woman must either marry again or else live a life of sin."

A poor little child-wife received such injuries at the birth of her first child because of the ignorance of those who attended her at the time that she became an invalid, consequently her husband divorced her. She heard of the Mission Hospital, where she might receive kindly treatment. She was admitted and cured by an operation. Her husband then restored her to his loving heart and home.

In a certain town there was a little family where there seemed to be plenty of conjugal happiness in spite of so much that is often said about the impossibility of such a thing in a Moslem family. The little wife was beautiful, bright, and intelligent, being fairly well educated; and was able to make her house into something like a real home. They were blessed with a family of interesting and promising children. The father was wont to boast that he a Mohammedan could verify the fact that such a thing as a perfect home could exist under Islamic conditions. But temptation came his way. He divorced his beautiful unoffending wife to marry the temptress, who though rich and of a high family (which was her recommendation and considered sufficient excuse for his base action), was ignorant and ugly, the only thing which seemed to give him any pangs of regret.

There was a man who was fairly well-to-do and was considered by his neighbors as being very respectable. The first wife was a very nice woman but had no son, so her husband divorced her and married a second. Still there was no son, so he married a third. It was believed he did not really divorce the second wife, but pretended to do so to please the third, who would not consent to being one of two wives. After a while a son was born to the third, and so his first wife was brought back to the house as nurse to the child. She was the most ladylike of the three wives, but she had to carry the baby and walk behind the mother like a servant. When the baby died the parents quarrelled. Number three left the house and went into the country. The husband at once brought back number two, whereupon number three returned in a rage and number two was turned out of the house. On the next quarrel with number three the man married a fourth time—a girl younger than his daughter by his first wife. About this time he met the Bible woman in the street and asked her why she did not visit his house as usual. She replied, "I do not come because I never know which lady to ask for."

The house of Ali might be supposed to be rather a religious one, for the mother of the family has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the sons is a howling dervish. Here we were introduced to a young bride, wife of a brother of the dervish. Calling again a few months later we found another bride, the one we had seen on our former visit having been divorced. The third time we went the first wife was there again and the second had been divorced. The woman had been married to another man and divorced by him during the short time of separation from the first husband, and when the latter wished to have her back her parents could not agree about allowing the marriage and quarrelled so much that they divorced each other! The time occupied by these proceedings was between a year and eighteen months. Here were six persons concerned, and four marriages and four divorces had taken place. A baby had arrived on the scene, but its parentage was a mystery in the mix-up.

It is quite usual for a woman to be divorced before the birth of her first child, and we could not but feel sympathy with the poor young mother who under such circumstances called her baby "Vengeance."

Love, the best and most holy of human joys, has been almost strangled to death in Egypt by the institution of divorce, and the family can seldom be considered a community of common interest. As one woman was heard to say, "We go on the principle of trying to pluck or fleece our husbands all we can while we have the chance, since we never know how soon we may be divorced."

It has been said that the character of a nation cannot rise above the character of its women. What can be expected of a nation when hate and jealousy are the ruling passions of its women, of its mothers who nurture and train up its young!

The question has been asked what is the condition of the children of divorced parents. According to the law the mother is given an allowance by her former husband on which to bring up their children to a certain age; then they are his. If they are girls they often are allowed to become servants to the mother's successor, although there are fathers who do have enough natural affection to give the daughters of a former wife the proper place in the house. The allowance given a divorced woman when she has children is most often a mere pittance and too often she never gets one at all. She marries again and the children live with grandparents or other near relations or even alternate between the houses of the remarried father and mother, thus becoming mere little street waifs who have no definite abiding place. They certainly do suffer from neglect, but seldom are they victims of deliberate cruelty, although such cases are not unheard of.

The distressing screams of a child once attracted the attention of a family; on investigation it was discovered that the Mohammedan neighbor, who had just brought home a new wife encumbered with her little four-year-old daughter, had been cruelly ill-treating the little mite by shutting her in a dark cellar for hours at a time.

The moral effect of divorce on the children is very bad. They often seem to have an inborn passion of hatred and jealousy. The head mistress of a school for girls said she had often noticed how little gentle affection and love seemed to exist between Mohammedan sisters. These passions are also trained into them, for they constantly hear their parents spoken against and see the jealousy that exists between their mothers and the wives who have supplanted them.

The children of divorced parents, being neglected and not having any settled home, generally grow up in ignorance, because they do not stay long enough in one place to go to school regularly. A school was established in a Mohammedan quarter of a large city with a view to reaching the people in that district, but they were of a class whose social system was in such a constant state of upheaval by divorcing and marrying new wives that it was quite impossible to keep the children in school long enough at a time to make any impression upon them. When asked why a certain Zeinab had not put in her appearance, "Oh, she has gone to see her mother who lives across the canal."—"Where is Tantaweyah to-day?"—"Gone to stay with her father awhile in another village."—"What can be the matter with Kaleela?" the teacher asks. She knew Kaleela loved school and would not stay away without an excuse, and she knew that her father wanted her to stay in school, but she had a suspicion that the new wife at home had been the means of putting a stop to Kaleela's schooldays. Her suspicion was true, for the new wife's new baby required a nurse.

The institution of polygamy like that of divorce is a natural consequence of the strict seclusion of woman, for it would be unfair to a man to be put under the necessity of taking a wife he had never seen without allowing him some license should he be disappointed in her. In fact, polygamy was the original institution, a relic of the ancient and more barbarous times, Jewish as well as Heathen. By making polygamy a religious institution, the Prophet preserved a relic of barbarism.