‘One day he said to me: “Mohammed, I have always loved you as if you were a son of mine, and as I have still an unmarried daughter, it would add to my happiness as well as to yours if you became my son-in-law. I shall only ask a small dowry of you, whereas if I were to marry her to the one-eyed Mustâpha, he could and would give a much larger one. She is young and beautiful, and has the sweetest disposition; and while I kept you waiting in the hôsh the other day, it was but to give her an opportunity of gazing on you through the mushrbiyeh. You can divorce your Rasheeda and live happily with my Fâtimah.”
‘This sounded very well, and I tried to get the old man to fix the sum I should have to pay as the dowry. He kept telling me of the price one-eyed Mustâpha was prepared to pay; but I wanted to know nothing about Mustâpha, and have since found out that this was all lies. After many days he agreed to content himself with ten pounds, and I paid him half that sum, the other half, as you know, to be paid when the marriage had taken place.
‘I had done well that season, and spent much of my earnings on the wedding; when I left my friends below to go to the hareem, I gave my bride a handsome present as “the price of the uncovering of the face,” and when I threw back the shawl, and saw her for the first time, I nearly fainted.’
It was as much as I could do not to laugh, but the poor fellow seemed so overcome in recalling his bad bargain that I tried to look sympathetic.
‘I thought of divorcing her there and then,’ he went on, ‘but I had not the heart to pronounce those terrible words on the day of the poor creature’s wedding. She was ugly and old—at least thirty—and had as brown a face as I have.’
After a pause he went on. ‘Her father—may Allah blacken his face!—did not lie as regards her temper; but even the best of tempers could not withstand the jeering and scoffing to which Rasheeda used to treat her. My mother used to take her part, and we had more rows between Rasheeda and my mother. When I could stand it no longer, I went with two witnesses to the Kadi’s court and had her written a nashizeh, and she returned to her own people. Fâtimah tried to mother our little Hassan, but she could not console him. He got ill, and I was afraid we might lose him. I then took a room near Saida Zenab, and fetched Rasheeda away from her people, and she and the child are now living there. My life has been more peaceful since then, but the cost of two households makes me a very poor man. I assure you, Mr. Tyndale, that though I did very well last season, I hardly know where to turn for a piastre.’
It would be two months or more before the next season would be in full swing, so we arranged that he would accompany me during that time, and would procure me some one else while he was engaged with the tourists. He promised to be in good time the next morning, and took his departure.
Probably nothing has tended more to separate the East from the West than their differing views as to the relation of the sexes. Such education as there is has until quite recently been entirely confined to the sons of the more well-to-do, and even at present the instances of a girl being taught to read or write are very rare. It therefore follows that as only one parent has had any mental training, the offspring has less mental capacity to inherit than where both parents will have had some form of schooling. The religious instruction which forms so large a part of a Moslem’s training is almost entirely withheld from the girls, which accounts no doubt for the erroneous idea held by Europeans that Mohammedans believe women to have no souls. Religious text-books give pages as to a child’s duty to its father, and they sum up in a couple of lines the duty to the mother. Educated Egyptians will often complain that their wives are no companions to them, but what can they expect when their womenkind are brought up in a manner so distinctly inferior?
Polygamy is less common than is generally supposed, but a man can divorce his wife so easily that he has not the necessity of keeping more than one at a time. It is true that a father will hesitate to give his daughter to a man who has often used the divorce court, and that he will also advise his son to keep to one wife if he possibly can.
A young doctor, who appeared to be happily married, told me of the advice his father gave him previous to the wedding. ‘Don’t be foolish enough, O my son, ever to take a second wife; for if you do, trouble is sure to begin. Should you tire of Zenab, get her another dress; women are all much the same, it is the clothes which make the difference.’ I asked if this plan had succeeded. ‘Yes, only too well,’ said my friend, ‘for she is continually encouraging me to get her a new dress.’ He also told me that previous to his wedding he had not even seen his wife veiled, though they were brought up in the same town. His sisters had described her so well to him that when he saw her for the first time, she was very much like what he had anticipated.