Sometimes the expense of this zeffeh, or bridal procession, is shared by two parties, and I have seen two brides walking under the same canopy, but going to different husbands. The public is not excluded from an interest in these weddings. The house of a bridegroom, near the Mooskee, was illuminated a night or two before the wedding, colored lanterns were hung across the street, and story-tellers were engaged to recite in front of the house. On the night of the marriage there was a crowd which greatly enjoyed the indelicate songs and stories of the hired performers. Late in the evening an old woman appeared at a window and proclaimed that the husband was contented with his wife.
An accompaniment of a bridal procession which we sometimes saw we could not understand. Before the procession proper, walked another, preceded by a man carrying on his head a high wooden cabinet, with four legs, the front covered with pieces of looking-glass and bits of brass; behind him were musicians and attendants, followed by a boy on horseback, dressed richly in clothes too large for him and like a girl's. It turned out to be a parade before circumcision, the friends of the lad having taken advantage of the bridal ceremony of a neighbor to make a display. The wooden case was merely the sign of the barber who walked in the procession and was to perform the operation.
“I suppose you are married?” I ask Hadji when the procession has gone by.
“Yes, sir, long time.”
“And you have never had but one wife?”
“Have one. He quite nuff for me.”
“How old was she when you married her?”
“Oh, I marry he, when he much girl! I tink he eleven, maybe twelve, not more I tink.”
Girls in Egypt are marriageable at ten or eleven, and it is said that if not married before they are fourteen they have an excellent chance of being old maids. Precocious to mature, they are quick to fall away and lose their beauty; the laboring classes especially are ugly and flabby before eighteen. The low mental, not to say physical, condition of Egyptian women is no doubt largely due to these early marriages. The girl is married and is a mother before she has an opportunity to educate herself or to learn the duties of wife or mother, ignorant of how to make a home pleasant and even of housekeeping, and when she is utterly unfit to have the care and training of a child. Ignorant and foolish, and, as Mr. Lane says, passionate, women and mothers can never produce a great race. And the only reform for Egypt that will give it new vitality and a place in the world must begin with the women.
The Khedive, who either has foresight or listens to good advice, issued a firman some years ago forbidding the marriage of girls under fifteen. It does not seem to be respected either in city or country; though I believe that it has some influence in the city, and generally girls are not married so young in Cairo as in the country. Yet I heard recently in this city of a man of sixty who took a wife of twelve. As this was not his first wife, it could not be said of him, as it is said of some great geniuses, that he struck twelve the first time.