The lady, no doubt greatly benefited by this application, is then wrapped in her bathing dress, the borders of which are worked with gold, and is ready to leave the bath. Previous to doing so, she must make a round of the baths, and kiss the hands of all the elderly ladies, who say to her in return “shifalou olsoun.”[22] Refreshments are offered in abundance to the guests during the ceremony, which lasts the greater part of the day. These formalities are only de rigueur at the birth of the first child; at other times they are optional.
The cradle (beshik) plays a great part in the first stage of baby existence. It is a very strange arrangement, and, like many Turkish things and customs, not very easy to describe. It is a long, narrow, wooden box fixed upon two rockers, the ends of which rise a foot and a half above the sides, and are connected at their summits by a strong rail, which serves as a support to the nurse when giving nourishment to the child. The mattress is hard and no pillow is allowed. The baby lies on its back with its arms straight down by its sides, its legs drawn down, and toes turned in.
It is kept in this position by a swathe, which bandages the child all over to the cradle. A small cushion is placed on the chest, and another on the knees of the child, to keep it in position and prevent the bandage from hurting it. The infant thus secured becomes a perfect fixture, the head being the only member allowed the liberty of moving from side to side. This strange contrivance (called the kundak) has a very distorting effect, and is one of the principal causes of the want of symmetry in the lower limbs of the Turks and of the Armenians (who are reared in the same fashion), who are, as a rule, bow-legged and turn their toes in. I believe the kundak system is going out of fashion among the higher classes, but it is still resorted to by the lower, who find it extremely convenient on account of the leisure it affords to the mother. The child, thus disposed of, is left in the cradle for five or six hours at a time; it is occasionally nursed, and in the intervals sucks an emsik composed of masticated bread and sugar, or some Rahat lakoum (Turkish delight), tied up in a piece of muslin.
All Turkish mothers and many Armenians of the lower orders administer strong sleeping draughts, generally of opium, poppy-head, or theriac, to their infants; some carry the abuse of these to such an extent that the children appear always in a drowsy state, the countenance pale, the eyelids half closed, the pupils of the eyes contracted, the lips parched and dry, and a peculiar hazy expression fixed upon the face; all the movements are lethargic, in marked contrast to the sprightly motion of a healthy European child. The natural baby-cry is replaced by a low moan, and no eagerness is shown for the mother’s milk, only an inclination to remain listless and inactive. I have known mothers give as many as five opium pills to a restless child in one night. Besides the stupefying effect of these opiates on the brain, they are highly injurious to the digestive organs, occasioning constipation, which, treated under the designation of sangyu (colics), is increased by frequent employment of heating medicines, such as spirits of mint, camomile, or aniseed. A Turkish mother never thinks of giving her child an aperient; almond oil is the nearest approach to a remedy of this kind.
Sleeplessness, uneasiness, or slight indisposition in babies is generally put down to the effects of the evil eye. Any old woman, whose nefs, or breath, is considered most efficacious, is called in. She takes hold of the child, mutters prayers over it, exercising a sort of mesmeric influence, and blowing it at intervals, a remedy that results in soothing the child to sleep for a while. Should her breathing powers prove inefficacious, the Sheikh (whose nefs is held in the highest esteem) is called in. The magnetizing powers of the latter are increased by the addition of a muska (amulet) hung round the neck of the child, for which a shilling is paid. When all these remedies prove unavailing, the doctor is applied to, but his advice, generally little understood and less credited, is never thoroughly carried out. The Turks have no faith in medicine or doctors—“kismet” overrides all such human efforts.
No régime is followed with regard to the food of a child. It is allowed to eat whatever it can get hold of, and digest it as best it can. The excesses into which children are liable to fall by the indulgence of sweets and other unwholesome food often lead to serious consequences. I have seen a splendid child two years old die, after an illness of seven hours, from indigestion caused by eating an undue quantity of boiled Indian corn, a favorite dish among Turkish children. I have also witnessed two other similarly painful cases; one of a girl nine years of age, who, after consuming a large quantity of heavy pastry, was found dead, crouched up in a corner of a room; the other of a boy seven years old, whose partiality for pickles brought on inflammation of the bowels, from which, after forty days, he died.
Turkish children are nursed up to the age of eighteen months, and even to three years. Some foolish mothers will nurse their children as long as Nature supplies them with the necessary nourishment. I knew a boy of five years of age who was still being nursed. The strangest part of this case was that his foster-mother, a woman with whom I was personally acquainted, had never had a child of her own, but, determining to participate in part in the sweets of maternity, had adopted a baby, which she perseveringly nursed till Nature by some strange freak provided her with milk!
Weaning is perhaps the most critical period of babyhood. A little basket is provided by the tender parents, into which all kinds of fruits and sweets are heaped, and left at the child’s disposal to eat as much as it likes. The consequence of this injurious custom is the complete derangement and distension of the stomach, the effects of which are often noticeable in after-life. Rice and starch, boiled in water, are the ingredients Turkish women sometimes use for baby-food, feeding them invariably with their fingers; but it is impossible to say what they do or do not feed them with, for there is no notion in Turkey of a regular system for bringing up children.
A rite of childhood which must not be passed over, since it is accompanied by curious ceremonies, is circumcision. The obligatory duty of parents in this matter falls heavily on the middle classes and entails great expense upon the budget of the wealthy. When a Turk of some standing is expected to have a Sunnet Duhun, the coming event is watched for by a number of persons who cannot afford individually to undertake the responsibility of the outlay the ceremony would involve. All such individuals send in the names of their children, begging that they might be allowed to participate in the ceremonial rite. The grandee appealed to fixes the number of these according to his means or his generosity. When the ceremony takes place in the imperial palace, the Sultans have not the liberty of limiting the number of applicants, which sometimes amounts to thousands, and occasions a very heavy drain upon the treasury.
The Sunnet Duhun begins on a Monday and lasts a whole week. The ages of the candidates range from four to ten years. The boys are sent to the bath, where the uncropped tufts of hair left on the crown of their heads are plaited with gold threads allowed to hang down their backs up to the moment of initiation. The chief candidate is provided with a suit of clothes richly worked with gold and ornamented on the breast with jewels in the shape of a shield; his fez is also entirely covered with jewels. The number of precious ornaments necessary for the ceremony is so great that they have in part to be borrowed from relatives and friends, who are in duty bound to lend them. The caps and coats of all the minor aspirants are equally studded with gems. They are provided with complete suits of clothes by the family in whose house the Sunnet Duhun is held, by whom also all other expenses connected with the ceremony are defrayed.