Except in the highest classes Persian women go about a good deal, but always have to wear a veil in the street or draw the chādar over their faces.
The man is absolute master in his own house, and unless his wife has powerful relations he may do what he likes to her and her children, and no one will take any notice.
I knew one woman whose husband treated her like a slave. He forced her not only to do all the work of the house, but the work of the stable too, for he was well enough off to keep a horse. He killed one child in her arms, and twice stole another away from her, sending it once to a town a week’s journey off, and once to another part of the town. Finally he divorced her, without giving any reason, and left her ill and destitute. And she had at no time any redress.
Certainly Muhammadanism does not tend to make good husbands, nor perhaps good wives either. The Persians are many of them kindly people, however, and treat their wives better than Muhammad taught them to do. Otherwise the lot of women in Persia would be harder than it is. One great evil they are spared, for the widows are not despised and ill-treated as the Hindu widows are, but are allowed to marry again, and generally do so if they are of a suitable age.
Still the condition of girls in Persia is not a happy one, and I think that all of you who have Christian mothers, and know what the love of such a mother can be, will have something to pray about, when you think of mothers and their children in Persia.
CHAPTER XV
SICK CHILDREN
Measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, Persian children have them all. Typhoid fever, diphtheria, rheumatic fever are all common. But almost the commonest illness of all is smallpox.
A woman brought a child into the dispensary waiting-room one day covered with a smallpox rash. The doctor, new to the country, ordered her out, condemning her reckless disregard for infection. “Is there anyone who has not had smallpox?” she asked, looking round at the thirty or forty other people in the room. As she expected, all had had it, and she came in.
It is considered a children’s illness, because people hardly ever grow up without having had it. In fact, their parents take care they shall not, for they are so afraid they will take it badly at an awkward time that they choose a convenient time, and either put the child with a person who has smallpox mildly, or, oftener, inoculate him with it, just as we inoculate our babies with vaccine.