They are just as good-looking and intelligent as their husbands, and young women and girls are often very pretty, the former in spite of their nose rings. But the circumstances of their lives often give the older women a hard expression, though I know of old women living in the most abject poverty who remain models of genial good-nature.
The fact that the northern[16] and southern tribes, otherwise of similar customs and beliefs, differ altogether in such a fundamental matter as female morality, is instructive. In the south a girl who became pregnant illegitimately would run a great risk of death at the hands of her relatives, in the north it would be easily condoned. Not only so, but a woman is the more valued by her husband if she gives proof of her attractiveness to other men, even by adultery; he has no resentment against his wife, his honour being satisfied by an attack with his dagger on the first meeting with his rival.
The explanation that suggests itself is that the lesser rainfall of the north, making the country able to support but a sparse population, necessitates a greater restriction of the natural increase than in the more habitable south. In the northern deserts war is unknown, pestilence cannot flame from end to end of so scattered a people, and local famines can be more or less avoided by nomads, the men of whom are so inured to hard fare as to be able to travel for days on dry uncooked “dûra” corn alone. Hence the postponement of marriage which, combined with oriental licence, brings about the result with equal certainty, and greater misery, than do that awful trinity, War, Pestilence, and Famine.
The women may easily excuse themselves to the western critic by asking why they should be faithful to a contract in the making of which they had no voice, and sexual immorality cannot here be condemned as a sin against the race as it is in the West.
In spite of the use of weapons, in private or in tribal quarrels, examples of which I describe later, I consider no really lawless or unintelligent race could have built up, and maintained, the administration they have, under the circumstances of desert life. They are elaborately subdivided into tribes and family groups under Shêkhs[17], of superior and subordinate ranks, whose decisions they respect as a rule. The Government has found the system workable, and on the whole confines its attention to perfecting and supplementing it where necessary. Cases brought before a magistrate are often, after hearing, referred back to a Shêkh, whose decision is, if necessary, backed up by the Civil Power. No Englishman need carry any arms in living in or passing through their country, and, at least in the north, he need have no fear of theft. They are perfectly contented with the Government and respect all its agents, pay their taxes and obey the decisions of either magistrates or their own Shêkhs. They have a lively recollection of the Mahdist General, Osman Digna, and their gratitude for, and jubilation over his downfall is still expressed in ordinary conversation. I had polite enquiries for him the other day, with remarks on the impoverishment of the country which he caused. I fear my sailor was disappointed to hear that he was not yet dead. Osman Digna’s men, “fuzzies” though they were, were either foreigners brought into the country and living upon its already poor inhabitants, or conscripts taken more or less by force. In any case there was very little fighting so far north as my station.
Arms, though but rarely used, are regarded as indispensable, and no native goes a mile or two away from the towns unarmed. A leather belt, generally a very broad heavy affair, ornamented with patterns cut into it, carries the typical curved knife or “khangar[18]”; or a straight dagger may be carried in a sheath which is tied round the arm immediately above the elbow. One of these together with a very hard heavy stick, slightly curved, and not used as a walking-stick, is the ordinary man’s equipment, but if he goes on a journey he takes as well a round leather shield and long sword or a spear. If afoot he carries the former on his back, the sword under his arm like an umbrella. Perhaps the fact that he does not carry them after the style of the hero of romance only emphasises the fact that they are carried as a matter of sober business. The wounds that I have dealt with have been mere flesh wounds and apparently had been inflicted with the curved khangar, which seems beautifully adapted to give showy wounds without going so deep as to endanger life. In two cases, the jugular or carotid had been aimed at, but missed, though the great angular gash resulting was a sufficiently disgusting sight. Almost all the natives one meets have great scars and the reasons they give for them are generally “only a little talk,” but of course women are concerned with most. Trivial private quarrels have a way of becoming inter-tribal in our neighbourhood, as we are on the boundary between the Bisharia and Amarar. For instance two of the more serious cases which have come about during my residence here arose as follows:
A man drawing water for his camels fell into the well and another laughed at him. Unfortunately the two men were of different tribes and a fight resulted, one man was knocked senseless by a blow given end-on by one of their thick and heavy sticks, and two more were badly cut about with knives. The former was expected to die at any moment, and his death would confer on his relatives the right and duty of killing the murderer, or, failing him, his next of kin. They declared their intention, as soon as the man should die, of coming for two of my employés, who were related to the murderer but who had been at work with me during the fight, so I was appealed to. I proposed to send the threatened men away by boat, but to pass the reefs by night was a difficulty. All the head boat men declared it impossible and declined the risk except one, the younger and more adventurous, who took them through and has gloried in the feat since.
Plate XI
Fig. 21. Our postman, starting for his hundred mile ride, armed with sword and shield