“I have one time two wife. Now I have one wife. One wife make house enough warm. Two wife make house so hot you bake bread in all times and no fire. You have three wife,—Bismillah,—house hot so no man live there.”
The mother-in-law has the same popularity among husbands in Moslem countries that she enjoys in more western lands. Most men there prefer to marry women whose mothers are dead and who have no near relatives of their own sex, and some husbands forbid their wives to see any women except those who are related to the lord and master of the house. But this latter rule is very seldom enforced.
CHAPTER LIII.—WINTER ON THE NILE—THE KHAMSEEN AND ITS EFFECTS—BEDOUIN LIFE.
Winter in Egypt—A soft and balmy air—A Rainstorm on the Nile—An Asylum for Invalids—The Month of Flowers—The “Khamseen” What is it?—A blast as from a Furnace—Singular effects of the South Wind—A Sun like Copper and a Sky like Brass—A cloud of Sand—Eating Dirt—Fleeing from the Khamseen—How the Laboring classes live—Hungry but not Cold—Oriental Houses—An Excursion to Heliopolis—Habits of the Bedouins—A Fastidious People—Life in a Bedouin Encampment—Among the Obelisks—How they were brought Five Hundred Miles—The Madonna-Tree.