The Women of the Arabs

by Henry Harris Jessup

In some parts of the country the little boys and girls swear so dreadfully that you can hardly bear to be with them. Especially among the Nusairîyeh, they think that nothing will be believed unless they add an oath. Dr. Post once rebuked an old Sheikh for using the word "Wullah" so often, and argued so earnestly about it that the man promised never to use it again. The old man a moment after repeated it. The doctor said, "will you now pledge me that you will not say 'Wullah' again?" He replied, "Wullah, I will."

Sometimes a donkey-driver will get out of patience with his long-eared beast. The donkey will lie down with his load in a deep mud-hole, or among the sharp rocks. For a time the man will kick and strike him and throw stones at him, and finally when nothing else succeeds he will stand back, with his eyes glaring and his fist raised in the air, and scream out, "May Allah curse the beard of your grandfather!" I believe that the donkey always gets up after that,—that is, if the muleteer first takes off his load and then helps him, by pulling stoutly at his tail.

I told you that one of the girls who bring us milk, is named "Lokunda," or Hotel. She is a small specimen of a hotel, but provides us purer and sweeter cow's milk than many a six-storied hotel on Broadway would do. You will say that is a queer name for a girl, but if you stop and think about many of our English names you would think them queer too. Here in Syria, we have the house of Wolf, the house of "Stuffed Cabbage," Khowadji Leopard, the lady "Wolves," and one of our fellow villagers in Abeih where we spend the summer is Eman ed Deen "faith-of-religion," although he has neither faith nor religion.

Among the boys' names are Selim, Ibrahim, Moosa, Yakob, Ishoc, Mustafa, Hanna, Yusef, Ali, Saieed, Assaf, Giurgius, Faoor, and Abbas. I once met a boy at the Cedars of Lebanon, who was named Jidry, or "Small-Pox," because that disease was raging in the village when he was born. It is very common to name babies from what is happening in the world when they are born. A friend of mine in Tripoli had a daughter born when an American ship was in the harbor, so he called her America. When another daughter was born there was a Russian ship in port, so he called her Russia. There is a young woman in Sûk el Ghurb named Fetneh or Civil War, and her sister is Hada, or Peace. An old lady lately died in Beirût named Feinûs or Lantern. In the Beirût school are and have been girls named Pearl, Diamond, Morning Dawn, Dew, Rose, Only one, and Mary Flea. That girl America's full name was America Wolves, a curious name for a Syrian lamb!

Sometimes children are named, and if after a few years they are sick, the parents change their names and give them new ones, thinking that the first name did not agree with them. A Druze told me that he named his son in infancy Asaad (or happier) but he was sickly, so they changed his name to Ahmed (Praised) and after that he grew better! He has now become a Christian, and has resumed his first name Asaad.

I once visited a man in the village of Brummana who had six daughters, whom he named Sun, Morning, Zephyr breeze, Jewelry, Agate, and Emerald. I know girls named Star, Beauty, Sugar, One Eyed, and Christian Barbarian. Some of the names are beautiful, as Leila, Zarifeh, Lûlû, Selma, Lucîya, Miriam and Fereedy.

All of the men are called Aboo-somebody; i. e. the father of somebody or something. Old Sheikh Hassein, whose house I am living in, is called Aboo Abbas, i. e. the father of Abbas, because his eldest son's name is Abbas. A young lad in the village, who is just about entering the Freshman class in the Beirût College, has been for years called Aboo Habeeb, or the father of Habeeb, when he has no children at all. Elias, the deacon of the church in Beirût was called Aboo Nasif for more than fifty years, and finally in his old age he married and had a son, whom he named Nasif, so that he got his name right after all. They often give young men such names, and if they have no children they call them by the name of the son they might have had. But they will not call a man Aboo Lûlû or Aboo Leila. If a man has a dozen daughters he will never be called from them. They are "nothing but girls." A queer old man in Ghurzûz once tried to name himself from his daughter Seleemeh, but whenever any one called him Aboo Seleemeh, all the fellaheen would laugh as if they would explode, and the boys would shout at him "there goes old Aboo Seleemeh," as if it were a grand joke.

The Moslems and Druzes generally give their children the old unmixed Arabic names, but the Maronites, the Greeks, and the Protestants often use European names. A young lady named Miss Mason was once a teacher in the Sidon Seminary, and spent the summer in the mountain village of Deir Mimas. One of the women of the village liked her name, and named her daughter "Miss Mason," and if you should go there you would hear the little urchins of Deir Mimas shouting Miss Mason! to a little blue-gowned and tarbooshed Arab girl.

What noise is that we hear down in the village, under the great jowz (walnut) trees by the fountain? It rolls and gurgles and growls and bellows enough to frighten a whole village full of children. But the little Arab boys and girls are playing around, and the women are filling their jars at the fountain just as if nothing had happened. But it is a frightful noise for all that. It is the bellowing of the camels as their heavy loads are being put on. They are kneeling on the ground, with their long necks swaying and stretching around like boa constrictors. These camels are very useful animals, but I always like to see them at a distance, especially in the month of February, for at that time they get to be as "mad as a March hare." They are what the Arabs call "taish," and often bite men severely. In Hums one bit the whole top of a man's head off, and in Tripoli another bit a man's hand off. I once saw a camel "taish" in Beirût, and he was driving the whole town before him. Wherever he came, with his tongue hanging down and a foaming froth pouring from his mouth as he growled and bellowed through the streets, the people would leave their shops and stools and run in dismay. It was a frightful sight. I was riding down town, and on seeing the crowd, and the camel coming towards me, I put spurs to my horse and rode home.

When camels are tied together in a long caravan with a little mouse-colored donkey leading the van, ridden by a long-legged Bedawy, who sits half-asleep smoking his pipe, you would think them the tamest and most innocent creatures in the world, but when they fall into a panic, they are beyond all control. A few years ago a drove of camels was passing through the city of Damascus. The Arabs drive camels like sheep, hundreds and sometimes thousands in a flock, and they look awkward enough. When this drove entered the city, something frightened them, and they began to run. Just imagine a camel running! What a sight it must have been! Hundreds of them went through the narrow streets, knocking over men and women and donkeys, upsetting the shopkeepers, and spilling out their wares on the ground, and many persons were badly bruised. At length a carpenter saw them coming and put a timber across the street, which dammed up the infuriated tide of camels, and they dashed against one another until they were all wedged together, and thus their owners secured them.