One only wishes that the other social reforms, splendidly started in Constantinople, had not been so long interrupted. But like education, and all other real progress, they cannot survive long wars. What criminal waste that means for mankind!
I have talked with many Turkish brides, received many confidences, and the whole question of marriage in Turkey has always interested me immensely.
The first Turkish bride I ever met, long years ago, had never seen her husband before marriage, and detested him from the first. “There is nothing the matter with him,” she admitted, “except that I don’t like him.” Ultimately she managed to escape, married a man of her own choice, and was twenty times more unhappy.
Another bride told me that, as a great favour, she was allowed to see her future husband, and has regretted it ever since. “The dreadful imprudence seems to have robbed life of all its romance!”
Yet one more confession! “I peeped through the lattice-window to look at him as he walked past. Quite an uninteresting little man, but he was ‘my fate’ and I might have ‘been given’ something worse.” But, at her wedding, I found a tall and handsome bridegroom. “What does this mean?” I asked. “What has happened?” And she answered quite calmly: “I must have looked out at the wrong man.”
Tewfik Rushdi Bey declares that it is “easy divorce” in Turkey which makes their marriages so happy and lasting. I gladly pass on the paradox to all English advocates for “marriage reform”; only bidding them remember that Turkish husbands accept big risks at the start. They never hesitate about trusting their mothers to “pick a winner in life’s handicap”; and, since young Western people, one and all, prefer their own way to their parents’, all the “wisdom of the East” may leave them cold.
European bridegrooms must always experience a sense of being “outsiders” at their own weddings; but at least we expect them to be there! In Turkey, the signatures of bride and bridegroom are not affixed to the contract in each other’s presence, and often not even on the same day. It is scarcely necessary to add that the guests belong to the bride’s party, and are entertained at her house. To us it certainly is strange to hear the solemn questions addressed to the bride by the Imam that pledge her life to an “absentee” partner, whom she has never set eyes on. I can still remember a beautiful wedding-dress of white satin brocade, embroidered with silver stars, over which sparkled a large diadem of diamonds. All brides, too, wear a shower of silver threads round the neck, from which they pull out threads to give their friends for “good luck.”
“Good luck” at a wedding naturally means a good husband, and from the number of threads I have received, there should be at least fifty “eligible partners” somewhere in waiting for me.