A Bible woman told me of dreadful scenes where the women fight like cats and dogs, and the husband takes the part of the wife he loves the best and beats the others. One feels that the man often bears his own punishment for this state of things by being obliged to live amid such scenes.
In a city of Northern Syria where the Mohammedans are the most powerful class and their haughtiness and contempt of women so great that they will elbow a foreign woman into the gutter, not necessarily because she is a Christian, but because she is a woman, a Syrian woman whispered during a walk: "Look at that man over there, I'll tell you about him later." And afterwards she explained that the man was a neighbor and he had just taken his fourth wife, and she was only ten years old. He was an elderly man with gray hair.
One well-known and wealthy Mohammedan had splendid establishments in four different places and he is said to have had thirty sons. Another brought home an English wife, with whom he had lived ten years in England, and established her in an apartment just above the one in which one of several wives was living. Could English girls realize the misery in store for them in marrying Mohammedan husbands, they would be thankful for any warning. Even if the husband himself is kind, there are many painful things to undergo from his women relatives. And worse than all is the denying of Christ before men in the acceptance of Islam. One of these English women living in Syria as the wife of a Mohammedan, had her daughter married to an own cousin at the age of thirteen, another was obliged to give her ten-year-old daughter in marriage. I asked this last woman how she could do such a thing. "It is her father's will and I could do nothing." But she ran away the next day, so the man divorced her. This same daughter has been married and divorced twice since then, and is now living at home, and is at the head of a Mohammedan school for girls. Two other sisters have been divorced, and are at home, one with her child.
In Beirut, among the better classes girls are not married as young as they used to be, though occasionally you hear of instances, as in the case of a woman who had eight daughters and married two of them, twins, at the age of eight. She gained nothing by this cruel act as they were soon divorced and sent home. One reason for child-marriages among Mohammedans in Syria is the conscription which demands for the army every young man of eighteen. The one who cannot afford to escape conscription by paid substitutes or money may be exempt if he has a wife dependent upon him. When he is sixteen or seventeen his family send off to some distant town for a young girl who is a destitute orphan, and this child is married to the youth,—she may be ten years old, or nine, or even eight, and cases are known where a girl of seven has been married to a boy of sixteen.
One can hardly wonder that many of these girls are divorced, for they are simply untrained, naughty children, unable to grasp what the duties of a wife are, or that it is necessary to please their husbands or conciliate their mothers-in-law. Mohammedan women say that the happiness of a child-wife and her status in the family depend almost entirely upon her mother-in-law. It is a sad fact that these little brides—children in years—are very often old in knowledge of evil. Most Mohammedan children are brought up in an atmosphere of such talk that their natures seem steeped in vulgarity from their cradles and no mystery of life or death is hidden from them.
It makes one's heart sick to think of these children, so sinned against and so cruelly treated for being the products of this system. Sad stories are told of those who are put out to service, especially when they go to Turkish families. It is not very common, fortunately, for there is always the fear that the men in the family, regarding them as lawful prey, will ill-treat them. Girls disgraced in this way have a terrible fate.
A friend came to us one day, weeping because of a dreadful thing which had just come to her knowledge, too late, alas! for any help to be given. The daughter of a neighbor, a poor man, had been sent out to service, and the worst befell her. She was sent home in disgrace,—her father was obliged to receive her, but he would not recognize her or have anything to do with her till one day he ordered her to go out into the garden and dig in a spot he indicated. Each day he came to see what she had accomplished, till at last there was a hole deep enough for her to stand in, her full height. Her father then called his brothers, they brought lime, poured it over her, and then buried the child alive in the hole she herself had dug. She was only twelve years old! The neighbors found it out and informed the government. The parents and all concerned were imprisoned, and the father is still in prison, though the mother has been released.
The feeling is strong that such a disgrace can only be wiped out by death, and this is especially the case when there has been misconduct between a Mohammedan man and a Christian woman. In a Syrian city a Christian girl of aristocratic family was betrothed and was soon to be married when suddenly the engagement was broken. It could no longer be hidden that she had been guilty of wrong relations with some man, and the man proved to have been a Mohammedan. This disgrace was intolerable to the families involved, and before long a man connected with the family came to the girl with a glass of liquid, and said: "Here, drink this!" She took it, drank, and died. Comments on it showed that the sentiment of the community is in sympathy with such a course. "What else could be done?" they say.
Probably a Mohammedan would not see the inconsistency of condemning to death the child-victim of a man's lust, as in the first instance given, while practically the same thing is legalized in allowing the marriage of children with the probability of a divorce in the near future. How can they hope for the growth of purity among their women, or wonder when immorality and unchastity are discovered!
Frequent reference has been made to divorce. It is the weapon always at hand when a man is dissatisfied. His law allows him to divorce his wife twice and take her back, but if he divorce her the third time, he may not take her back until she has been married to another man and divorced by him. The ceremony is a simple one; repeating a formula three times in the presence of a witness not a member of the household, and telling the wife to go to her father.