Children of Persia

by Mrs. Napier Malcolm

Even the grown-up mothers are often very careless. One woman I knew laid her baby, not quite a year old, on a chair, and left it there. Of course it fell off—it was sure to; and yet she did this over and over again, and a few days later dropped it into a stream of water. She was very much surprised that it began to have fits at this time, and she said she could think of nothing to account for them.

A new missionary, who did not know the ways of Persians, went one day to see another woman and found her in bed, that is, lying on a mattress on the floor under a large quilt. Her friends invited the missionary to sit on the quilt beside her, for they do not use chairs in most Persian houses. After she had sat for some time she enquired for the baby. They pointed to a little lump in the quilt, and there, close beside her, entirely covered up and invisible, was the baby, and it gave the poor missionary a terrible shock to see how near she had been to sitting down upon it. After that, she always asked to see the baby before she sat down.

A baby less than a week old was brought one day to the Julfa hospital with its face badly torn by a cat. A few days later the doctor went into the ward and found the mother smoking and gossiping with the other women, but the baby was nowhere to be seen. “Where is the baby?” “It is all right,” said the mother; “I put it under the bed.” And sure enough, a little way off, under a bed (this time an English bed) lay the poor little bundle, its arms bound to its sides, only its little face exposed, or rather half-exposed, for the torn half was covered with a dressing, while close at hand there prowled in search of food a large half-wild cat, which frequented the hospital and had slipped in at an open door.[A]

When they get a little older the babies are laid in broad comfortable leather hammocks slung between rings let into the walls of the room. Most Persian rooms have these rings in the walls. These hammocks save the Persian mothers a great deal of trouble, for a single push will set the hammock swinging for a long time and keep the baby quiet or send it to sleep.

No baby may be left alone in a room till it is forty days old.

From the very first the baby is given kaif every-day, that is, something to make it sleep; this kaif is almost invariably opium. After the first week most babies are also given tea every day, without milk but with a great deal of sugar in it, or better still sugar-candy. This is considered specially good for babies, but it takes a long time to dissolve. Both opium and tea are very bad for the baby’s digestion, so we are not surprised to find that nearly all Persians suffer from indigestion.

A BABY IN HAMMOCK

There is one Persian custom connected with babies that boys and girls of other lands would probably like to introduce into their own country. The newly-arrived baby is weighed and its weight in sweets is handed round to the people in the house, and it is supposed to bring bad luck to the baby if anyone refuses its sweets. Plenty of people always drop in when they hear that a new baby has arrived.

Another Persian rule for babies would not please your mothers at all. After the first bath no baby must be washed all over till it is a year old. One Persian lady, who was better educated than most, and had been reading about European ideas on health and cleanliness, told the missionaries that she was bringing up her little boy just like a European baby. She said she gave him a bath every day and generally let him kick instead of tying his legs up to make them straight. She was delighted and triumphant when, instead of getting crooked, his legs grew so strong that he walked at about half the usual age. But when he was nearly a year old his body became covered with sores and the missionary doctor told the mother to wash them not with ordinary water in the bath, but with a lotion. “I should never think of washing them in the bath,” she said. “His body must not be washed till he is a year old.” “But I thought,” said the doctor, “that you gave him a bath every day.” “Oh dear no,” she replied; “I don’t wash his body. It is his legs that I wash every day.”