When the day of the marriage approaches, invitations are sent out to all friends and relations for the specified days of feasting. First comes the day for taking the bride to the bath—this is considered a great function; then follows a week of excitement, dancing, singing, feasting, all forming part of the great event. All thoroughly enjoy themselves, even those who have to work the hardest in preparing the food. The guests are expected to remain from morning till sunset. Three meals are provided each day, the morning one consisting of bread, cream, butter, fruit, &c.; the midday meal is a substantial one of meat, cooked in various ways, rice, chicken, and vegetables according to the season. The evening meal is also a very heavy one, causing the guests to depart perfectly satisfied both with their dinner and themselves.
During the whole of the week the poor bride has to sit in the reception room on a cushion specially prepared for brides, and takes no part in the surrounding gaieties. Each day she appears in a fresh silk dress, and is often covered with golden jewellery. She is not supposed to speak till spoken to, and the guests do not take much notice of her beyond the usual kiss of salutation. At meal times she is “fed” by her relations, a bride being supposed to be too overcome to help herself or eat without assistance.
After the days of feasting are over, the bride takes her place in the house as “servant” to her mother-in-law. In a Moslem house the youngest and latest bride always becomes the servant of all for the first year of married life, or till another and younger one is brought to the home. Much depends on the mother-in-law’s character as to the happiness or otherwise of the inmates of the hareem. If they wish, they can make the lives of the young wives perfectly miserable, or the reverse.
The same custom of feasting for a certain number of days takes place too in connection with funerals. The guests who come to mourn sit in solemn silence all day long; their mourning does not lessen their appetite, however, for they thoroughly enjoy their “feast” of sorrow. After a death, the “wailers” are brought in. I went once to a Christian house of mourning to see these wailing women. It was a ghastly sight. The professional wailers sat on the ground in the centre of the relations and guests, and worked themselves and others into such a frenzy that I thought some would have fainted from exhaustion; slapping their knees, tearing their hair and clothes, till they resembled maniacs more than women.
A short time ago a very sad and sudden death took place in Mosul in a house very close to us. We were awakened one night, while sleeping on the roof, by hearing the terrible wailing sounds coming from our neighbour’s house. At the same time a messenger arrived in great haste, asking my husband to go at once to see the patient, as his relatives were not sure if he was dead or only in a fit. He had been out during the night to some Moslem religious function, and died quite suddenly on his return.
The wailing went on in the hareem for seven days, and was terrible to hear. The sound of the weird wailing of some hundred women is perfectly indescribable, always ending up with a piercing shriek which seems to rend the air and freeze one’s blood.
Being friends and neighbours, I paid daily visits to the mourners during that week, but did not sit amongst the guests, preferring to spend the time with the sisters of the deceased in a quiet room above the din and uproar of the courtyard. The wailing has such a hopeless sound, as of a lost soul in anguish. One longed for them to know of Jesus the Living One, and of the time when partings shall be no more.
After death has visited a family, the whole house in which the departed one lived is not swept for three days: this is because they believe that the angel of death is still hovering near, and they fear lest, while they are sweeping, others of the household may be swept from the house by the angel. So the house becomes very dirty, the carpets covered with cigarette ash and ends, but nothing can be touched till the third day is safely passed.
Amongst the Christians it is also the custom after the death of a relative, not to go to the hammam (bath) for six months, and for the men to go unshaven for at least six weeks. The women are very particular about not going to the hammam while mourning, as I found to my sorrow. Our woman servant Judy lost her father just before she entered our service, and she allowed a whole year to elapse before she could be prevailed upon to go to the bath. They are very particular, too, about wearing “deep” clothing—that is, dresses of some dark colour, not necessarily black.
I am sure that the custom of burying a few hours after death is often the cause of many people being buried alive. I have often been regaled by an old woman with horrible stories of how some friends of hers have just escaped being buried alive. For those who providentially escape being entombed alive one is thankful; but what of the many who most certainly are condemned to this awful fate. It is too terrible to contemplate. In a land where no medical certificates are required, and where the body is carried to the cemetery almost before it is cold, how can it be otherwise?