Children of Persia

by Mrs. Napier Malcolm

Boys have their heads shaved, though sometimes a handful of hair is left over each ear, or a lock in the middle of the scalp. This shaving is probably the reason why Persian boys always keep on their caps or hats indoors and only take them off to sleep. Instead of taking off their caps, Persian boys, and girls too, take off their shoes when they come into a room, and this, together with the absence of chairs and tables explains how Persian carpets last a hundred years. They are actually more valuable after several years wear than when they were new.

Besides the hair, the fingernails, palms of the hands and soles of the feet must, by Muhammadan rules, be dyed with henna. The richer bathers have all these things done by the bath attendant, but the poorer ones do it all themselves, and the very poor often omit the henna, except on special occasions.

Just as no Persian likes to put on clean clothes without going to the bath, so he will not go to the bath without putting on clean clothes.

“Khanum, give me a new shirt,” begged one old woman, displaying a ragged one she had on. “For want of one I have not been able to go to the bath since this was new.”

But where there’s a will there’s a way, and some people who are too poor to have a change of clothes go to the bath, take off their clothes and wash them, and then wait in the bath till they are dry.

There is a large tank in which the people wash and a ceremonial washing requires a dip right under the water. The usual idea of changing the water is to take out canfuls to water the tiles round, and then fill up the tank again with clean water, so simply adding a little clean water to the dirty.

During a cholera epidemic the Governor of a Persian town ordered that the bath water should be changed at least once a month. One cannot help wondering whether the monthly change was carried out as described above, and I am sure you would prefer the little village baths where there is often so small a tank that no one can get into it, and they ladle out the water and wash in basins.

The common use of the one tank, with the only partial changing of the water, and the general carelessness of infection, make the bath one of the greatest means of spreading disease.

The Muhammadan religion provides strict rules as to clothes and baths and washing. In the washings before prayers it even decides which hand and which side of the face shall be washed first. And all this the parents teach the children as carefully as, generally much more carefully than, such matters as truthfulness, honesty and kindness.

Here again we see Muhammad giving his people what we may call “nursery rules,” treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves.