Thus in the immediate neighbourhood of this village there is a plain called the Drowned Meadow, from the fact that during a great part of the year it is a marsh, and therefore unavailable for crops. Could it be drained it would add some thousands of acres of arable land to the village to which it belonged. Not long ago I was consulted in regard to the possibility of its being drained, and an engineer even went so far as to make an estimate of the probable cost of the operation. Although the sum charged was very moderate, it was more than the capitalists could venture upon, but the very fact that they could entertain such an idea was a marked evidence of progress on the part of men whose only notion of drainage heretofore had been confined to their neighbours' pockets.
Although probably I should have seen a splendid specimen of a native magnate's establishment, I found that a halt at Zeba would have lost me a day, and I therefore pushed on without allowing the sheik to suspect my proximity to his hospitable abode, still keeping to bypaths instead of following the beaten track to Jenin, the ancient Engannin, or Spring of Gardens. From thence, in a day's journey across the plain of Esdrælon, I reached Haifa.
[A DRUSE FATHER'S VENGEANCE.]
Daliet-el-Carmel, Nov. 7.—An incident so highly characteristic of Druse life and manners has just occurred here that it seems worthy of narration. About three months ago I was invited to be present at the ceremony of the betrothal of the son of the richest man in the village, by name Sheik Saleh, with the daughter of a neighbour called Kara, whose wife was a sister of Sheik Saleh. The affair came off in the house of the former, a small mud-built cottage situated in a court, with the usual arched roof, and floor of a rough kind of cement, on which were spread rugs and mats for the guests who crowded in to witness the ceremony. This took place at nine o'clock at night, and was performed by the khateeb, or spiritual sheik. It consisted in his joining the hands of the future bridegroom and bride's father—the bride herself was not present—and in his repeating several formulas in Arabic, among which I detected some of the verses of the Koran. A small sum of money was then paid over to the family of the bride, the khateeb took his fee out of it, refreshments were brought in, and the rite was over.
It was a relatively tame performance, and not to be compared with an actual wedding of another couple which took place shortly afterwards, when the festivities lasted three days and nights, during which time the bride, loaded with her dowry, which consisted chiefly of silver coins formed into a head-dress and breastplate, danced incessantly in the centre of admiring circles of girls who danced round her, while the men were also making the night resound with their discordant clamour to the utter destruction of slumber, firing off guns, making bonfires, and singing. In fact, at the end of the three days the whole village, but especially the bride, were utterly exhausted by their protracted gaieties. At the end of this time she was put upon a horse and marched in solemn procession to the door of every house in the village, followed by a bevy of damsels screaming and clapping their hands. Each house was expected to contribute a small sum—make a wedding-present, in fact, to the newly-married couple. In this way she was finally conducted to the bridegroom's house, where he was waiting for her with a capacious mantle, in which, on her arrival, he enveloped her, and then carried her into his house triumphant.
To go back to the episode of the betrothal. It is the Druse custom for the father of the bridegroom to pay a sum of money to the bride's family—in other words, he buys his son a wife. Now, in this case, although I saw some money pass on the occasion, it was a mere formality. The father of the bride had, in a fit of generosity, probably interested, refused a sum of 2000 piastres, or about $75 for his daughter. He proposed instead that he should form a partnership for agricultural operations with Sheik Saleh, who, being rich, would be an advantageous partner. This Sheik Saleh agreed to, and the arrangement was completed, when it was objected to by Sheik Saleh's wife, who, being a woman of character and resolution, induced her husband to break it off. This made Kara furious. He is a man of ungovernable temper, and he determined that his daughter should never wed Sheik Saleh's son. But a betrothal of the kind I had witnessed is a very solemn ceremony, and the only person who can break it is the betrothed bridegroom. The girl and her family are powerless in the matter. Kara was so maddened by what had occurred that, rather than let his daughter marry the son of the man by whom he felt himself to have been outraged, he determined to kill her. This was an odd resolution to arrive at. One would have thought he might have gratified his vengeance better by killing Sheik Saleh or his son. Druse passion, however, runs in curious channels, and he appears to have been exasperated because his daughter did not share in his fury against her cousin.
So he led her out to slaughter, riding his horse and armed with his gun, and driving the poor girl, who was weeping and wailing bitterly, before him. Many of the villagers saw him, and were well aware of his intention, but shrank from interfering. The place which he had selected for the execution was just at the bottom of the hill upon which my house is situated, and the hour at which he was bent upon this bloody errand was eight in the evening. Now, it so happened that I have a Druse servant who has been with me for more than a year, a powerful man, a splendid sportsman, a most courageous fellow, and, what perhaps was of more importance, a near relation of Kara's. He chanced to be passing at the time, and knowing his relative's furious temper, and perceiving that he really intended to murder his daughter, he interfered at the risk of his own life, and succeeded in rescuing the girl. Kara, however, was still too angry to be reasonable. He returned to his house foaming with passion, and finding his wife—who had lived with him for many years—weeping bitterly over the whole occurrence, he accused her of sympathy with her brother's family, and in the heat of the moment pronounced the fatal words which, according to Druse custom, constitute a divorce.
The trouble about a Druse divorce is, that the sentence which bids a woman return to her family, once pronounced by her husband, is irrevocable. Not only can he never take her back again as his wife, but he can never, in this life, so much as even speak to her again. If he sees her at the other end of the street he must turn away to avoid meeting her. Nor may he enter a house in which he has reason to think that she is. A man may, therefore, in a moment of passion ruin his own happiness for life, and this is what Kara did. The whole occurrence only happened two days ago, and Kara has been in the deepest distress ever since. Had he killed his daughter, he said, it would not have mattered. He would scarcely have missed her, and if she were to marry Sheik Saleh's son she would be dead to him any way; but to be deprived of a wife, against whom he had never had a complaint to make, who had loved him and served him faithfully all these years—this was a loss that nothing could replace.
When I heard that he had spoken in this cold-blooded way about his daughter, and had alluded to the intention, which he admitted he had entertained, of killing her, without a shadow of compunction, I half regretted that he had not been allowed to die the other day of a leech which he had in his throat. He sent word that he was dying, and a medical friend who is staying with me went to see him, and found him in the last stages of exhaustion from a leech which had been sixteen days fastened too far down his throat to be liberated. These cases are not uncommon, and are due to the water of some of the springs in the neighbourhood. We have had five cases this year, but none so bad as Kara's, which was the first. Salt and all the usual means were tried in vain, and, as the doctor was anxious to get some leeches to experiment with, Kara's wife and daughter, who both exhibited the greatest distress, were despatched to a spring three miles off to get them. The alacrity they displayed in his service were ill requited by his subsequent conduct towards them. Here I may remark that large doses of turpentine, taken internally, proved completely successful. There is little doubt that, had the leech not succumbed to this treatment, in two days more Kara must have succumbed to the leech.
The daring with which Druses resort to acts of violence is to be accounted for by the fact that they can always escape justice. The moment a Druse commits a crime he flies to the Hauran, which he can reach with hard travel in eight-and-forty hours. Here he takes refuge among his coreligionaries of the Jebel Druse Mountain, over whom the Turkish government exercises only a nominal authority, and where pursuit is impossible for any Ottoman official.