Divorce is fearfully common and easy. Plurality of wives is an awful curse. The chief features of home-life are quarrels, intrigues, attempted poisonings, and rankling bitternesses.
Slavery is more common than in other countries so near the borders of civilization, and the possession of these human chattels denotes the measure of worldly prosperity. Occasionally they find a kindly master, but, more often, are inhumanly treated and regarded as so much property. We are frequently urged to treat the slave for illness and so increase her market value, while the wife, or wives, may suffer unnoticed and unassisted.
The Moorish woman has little part in religious life. She has no merits or opportunity of attaining such, unless she be a well-known lineal descendant of their prophet. Very few learn the prescribed form of Moslem prayers and fewer still use them. Once and again we find one going through the positions of prayer and accompanying set phrases. These women are usually the most difficult to deal with and least ready for the hearing of the Gospel. One of them, during a medical visit, drew her prayer mat to a distance lest I defile it and closed her ears with her fingers to shut out my words. Undoubtedly the very best, and often only, way of reaching them is through the dispensary.
Their lives centre largely round the three annual feasts, in preparation for and enjoyment of them. Every birth, circumcision, wedding, death, and even serious illness, is an opportunity, for those allowed sufficient freedom, to receive and pay visits, feast, enjoy the accompanying minstrels, appear in their most gorgeous dress and criticise that of others. Meanwhile they engage in empty and profitless conversation, which too often passes into the injurious both for body and soul, of young and old, hostess and guests. Much attention is paid to fashion, and Moorish etiquette is not to be lightly treated or easily fulfilled.
Some of the women figure in the weird orgies of religious sects of a private and public character. Their wild, dishevelled, and torn hair is prominent in the Satanic dance of the Aisowia Derwishes, and they vie with the men in its frenzied freaks, falling finally exhausted to the ground, unable to rise. But this class fortunately is not numerous. I was visiting in one of these houses last year in Fez. The occupants were strangers and had come pleading me to relieve one in very acute pain. The atmosphere of the room hung heavily over me, I knew not why. Taking my colloquial Gospel, I spoke of Christ and asked to read. A blank refusal was the answer. Then the storm broke and during my second visit I had to rise and leave, asserting my union with Christ and the impossibility of having me or my drugs without the message of my Master and Saviour. They have since been, when the violent pain returned, pleading for relief, but not again inviting to their house. Such uncanny sense of the immediate presence of the evil one, I have never experienced, as when under their roof, nor would wish to again. It was an intense relief to breathe freely in the open air afterwards. Yet two of our recent converts, and one of them among the most promising, have belonged to these followers of Satan! Their wild hair is now neatly braided and they are clothed and in their right minds, sitting with their converted sisters to learn more of Jesus and lifting up voices in prayer to Him.
Female slaves, from the far Soudan, are betimes among our bitterest and loudest opponents during Gospel teaching. They have more courage than their mistresses and are more outspoken. Yet, even among them, we have seen notable changes. One, exceptionally well-taught and able to quote the Koran, met me first with loud contradiction in her Fez home. Frequent attendance at our medical mission wrought a marvellous change. Open opposition first ceased. Then an awakening, and at least intellectual, acceptance of the vital truths of Christianity and readiness to explain them to newcomers. When she had to follow her master to the south, we were conscious of losing a friend and helper. She took with her a Gospel and was followed by our prayers.
A Bedouin Girl from North Africa
Classes for sewing, reading, and singing are important factors as means of reaching the women and girls. The first of my four years at the Tulloch Memorial Hospital, Tangier, brought me in contact with a most interesting woman. Many years she had been under Mrs. Mensink's teaching and otherwise had known the missionaries. A gradual awakening was manifest, until, during that year, when ill with pneumonia, I found her apparently trusting Jesus. One difficulty haunted her, she was ignorant, could not even read, and her teachers told her Jesus was not the Son of God;—must they not know best? A few days before her death she joyously told me of a dream she had had and assured me her last doubt had gone. In it Jesus appeared to her and proclaimed Himself the Son of God. No after-cloud damped her joy. The death-bed was that of a consistent Christian. Her relatives would not own it and buried her as a Moslem in their own cemetery, with her face towards Mecca.