Fig. 49. Weaving. Behind the three women is finished blanket, in front the threads of the warp
Fig. 50. Marriageable girl of thirteen cooking rice in antique brass pot
It is the women’s business to strike and pitch the tents. In the village this is done not only on arrival and departure, but after the tent has stood some time in one place it is shifted to a fresh site by way of a “spring cleaning.”
Old women and children drive the goats out to “graze” in the desert in the early morning and may feed and tether them on their return, but, as already remarked in Chapter III, a peculiar superstition declares that men must do the milking. They also bring water from the well, in goat-skins on donkeys.
Women suffer sometimes from a mysterious disease, the symptoms of which seem closely to resemble those of the “vapours” of our ancestresses. The help of a female shêkh has to be called in, sometimes at great expense. First seeing the patient she prescribes what articles of clothing, especially what ornaments, are to be worn, and then goes off alone into the desert, where, according to my informant, she behaves like a maniac, apparently invoking good and exorcising evil spirits. “Vapours” would of course yield most easily to suggestion, and the little break in the monotony of life, the fuss and mild excitement, are quite enough to bring about a cure.
In my demonstration of the independence of women even in a Moslem community I am conscious that the less agreeable side of their character becomes unduly prominent. I would now leave on record that in many cases the standard of wifely duty is far above what one has any right to expect from the conditions of their lives.
The best women are often the least conspicuous members of any community, but their presence is made evident in the existence of any kind of prosperity or real happiness. I conclude my account by saying that in this village amid all the laxity of an Oriental civilisation bordering on savagery, in spite of its desolation and poverty, lack of defence against either the dreadful heat of summer or the cold of winter, the hunger that makes men eat the food of cattle, and where fresh water is often an unattainable luxury, men find the happiness of home in a way which multitudes of our own urban poor do not know. Where this is so goodness must necessarily be; though its laws differ from those we ourselves know, its presence is none the less evident.
Plate XXIV
