THE KHAN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN ON THE ROAD TO 144 ARRIVAL OF A CARAVAN OF MERCHANTS IN A KHAN IN CHAPTER I ABOUT HUSBANDS AND WIVES Verily the resigned men and the resigned women, The believing men and the believing women: The devout men and the devout women: The truthful men and the truthful women: The patient men and the patient women: The charitable men and the charitable women: The fasting men and the fasting women: The chaste men and the chaste women: And the men and women who often remember God, For them hath God prepared forgiveness and a mighty recompense. KORAN. ON a certain occasion when my husband had preceded me to England, leaving me to the amenities of an oriental winter, the first condolences I received were from two women, both in our employment, who awaited my return from the railway station enjoying a gossip together the while. The one was an Arab brought up in a Protestant Institution, the other the wife of the Haj. A Haj is, in the first place, one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and in the second is, or was, the equivalent of an army pensioner and often serves as a door-keeper. His reputation for piety entitles him to abjure work for the rest of his life. When one paid a visit to a public institution, or to a house of the better class, it was generally more useful to call out Haj! than to ring the door-bell. This would elicit a Soudanese, or an Arab, or a Berber-clean, smiling, and well-dressed in a cotton kumbaz, woollen jacket, and white turban. They were commonly respectful, orderly, and faithful, but inconveniently religious. They might go errands, or do light jobs about the house, when not reading the Koran or saying their prayers, the hour for which generally occurred when they were needed. Moreover, on Fridays and festivals and feasts, which are numerous, they absented themselves the whole day. Nevertheless they were a pleasant element in the population, and far more picturesque than a slovenly maid unwillingly forced into cap and apron. Mrs. Haj is black as night. She has no children and devotes herself to cats, two facts which did much to strengthen our friendship. She came hugging a kitten as black as herself, with blue beads to avert the evil eye. "Has the howajah gone? she cried. "Wallah! O my lady, my dear one, may evil be far from you. The house without the husband is as the morning without the dew. There is no more gladness. I will speak to all the ladies of the effendis that they shall take you to smell the air, to make fantasias. Sadly art thou forsaken, O lady, O beloved!" Then came the other in untidy, ill-fitting European clothes, her skirts trailing-it was before the War shortened our petticoatsher blouse trimmed with lace, but unbelted and awry. She is a good soul and has done her best for a growing family of girls and an idle husband, a Greek from Cyprus, who calls himself a British subject, and, if not precisely a Levantine, behaves like one. "Is the howajah gone?" was her opening remark also. "What matter? Surely the good God will now visit the house." "But I should like to have the good God and the Howajah too," I protested. May not one have God and a husband as well?" 66 66 Ah, but surely. But they are not often in the house at the same time! " I have heard missionary ladies seriously maintain that they had never seen a Muslim wife that was not miserable. My own experience in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey, is so precisely the contrary that I am at times inclined to feel with Dr. Johnson that marriages would turn out just as well if they were made by the Lord Chancellor. It is, on the one hand, however, fair to say that I have known a great number of Christian marriages, even among the better classes, arranged with as little reference to the persons concerned as among the Muslims (and which have often turned out well) and on the other, that the tradition that a Muslim bridegroom has no acquaintance with his wife before marriage, was always greatly exaggerated, and of late years has had very little foundation, though it is possible that in cases in which they are not nearly related, they may not have met since the girl was old enough to be veiled, that is for three or four years. A native woman of good family, brought up in a mission school and for many years employed as what is called an "evangelist,' told me that never had there been so much discontent among the young married people, and so much quarrelling and jealousy among the unmarried, as now, when, as she said, in a shocked undertone," they meet and flirt, and sit on the same divan, and even embrace before they are married! " Clay Trumbull, an American writer on Palestine, who has observed carefully, maintains that the home of romantic love and marriage is to be found in the East. Although I take it he refers also to recent times, he unfortunately takes his examples from the stories of Jacob and Rachael, of Shechem and Dinah, of David and Abigail, of Adonijah and Abishag, all of them Jews. Still, like the Arabs, they are Semites. We have, too, the Assyrian legend of Ishtar seeking her loved one in the realms of the dead; we have Izdubar, the Epic of the Chaldeans, where the wisdom of Ea-bani's heart vanishes in the presence of Harimtu; we have in an Egyptian papyrus of the time of Moses, the story of a princess who was so enamoured of an unknown hero that she cried, "By the Sun if he is slain-I will die too!" Above all, we have the Thousand and One Arabian Nights! "The heart knows no boundary lines," said a young effendi to me after we had been discussing a common friend married to a European wife, though he is a strong nationalist. I suggested that patriotism or chauvinism, or whatever that often mis-directed emotion may be called, might oblige him, under present circumstances, to supplement her with a lady of his own faith. "Madame," said my friend very seriously, "we say Everything is in the shop of the drug-merchant, but Love-me-byforce is not there." It is, of course, orthodox to believe that every Muslim has a handsome selection of wives, whom he divorces at will for an ill-cooked dinner, or for the misfortune of having no sons. I have scarcely met a Muslim, except in the poorest agricultural classes, with more than one wife, nor have I met one among the Arabs who was divorced. The existence of a higher moral sense, such as would make the cases which appear daily in our own law courts impossible, may be perhaps enforced by the religious law against alcoholic drink. I have seen much divorce among the less conservative and more Europeanised Turks, but, in Palestine, divorce and polygamy were confined mainly to the Jews. I have seen a Rabbi, holding a high position, tottering into his grave, like David under the same circumstances, add a young girl to his three existing wives, perhaps to be passed on to his brother by the still active law of levirate at his death, which occurred very shortly. I am concerned only with the Arab population, as that which for thirteen hundred years has occupied Jerusalem, but in seeking an illustration of certain conditions under which a second wife may be taken, I shall not wander far from my path in telling the story of a Yemenite Jew. As their name indicates, the Yemenite Jews have inhabited Arabia so long that their origin is practically unknown, but they claim to belong to the |