Chapter VI: Daily Life—women

Theoretically the women are supposed not to shew their faces and to be hidden from the world, liable to divorce at the caprice of the husband, and to be their downtrodden mindless slaves. As a matter of fact so far from men having four legal wives and numerous concubines, practically every marriage is monogamous. A tribe of nomads cannot enclose their women within high walls, and as for veiling, the most that is done is to hold a corner of their robe over the mouth, or perhaps between their teeth, and this is probably done as much to ward off the evil eye as from any ideas of modesty. No woman will, however, enter the yard enclosing my workshops without urgent cause, and if brought into my office by her husband she covers her face completely and squats out of sight behind my writing table, whence the husband must cuff her on to her feet before business can proceed.

As a general rule the manner and look of the women is as of persons who know they have rights and a position, and who habitually make themselves heard in the family councils. Often I have been aware of the idea in a man’s mind which in English might be expressed by “I must ask the Missis,” and often it is bluntly put into words. Indeed, among these Northern tribes the women have a remarkable freedom, too much for the characters of many of them, as some subsequent anecdotes shew.

In any dispute brought before me, formally or informally, I find that, though it appears to be between men only, and to deal with men’s concerns exclusively, a woman turns up sooner or later, and often that complainant’s whole case has been put into his mouth by his wife or some female relative. It is safe to say that if the men only went to law on their own account, and were left to settle things their own way, the hard lot of the magistrate would be much lightened. While blaming the women, it is only fair to say that the men shew themselves born lawyers in their statements of a case. The complainant’s account of a transaction makes things look black for the defendant, and certainly justifies his being sent for, even if a hundred miles away, but on his arrival one frequently finds that, though containing no direct lies, the complainant’s story will bear a different interpretation.

As for divorce, and the consequent laxity of the marriage tie, all natives feel the difference between a regular marriage and an irregular alliance, and, if an individual did not, the wife’s father and brothers would soon point it out. Indeed, a wife can keep her husband in due subjection by appeals to her relatives.

One morning, after we had been out at sea since sunrise, when I gave the signal for breakfast, one of my sailors remarked, “That is good news; we _are_ hungry this morning.”

“Why more than usual?”

“We were out with you yesterday till seven o’clock so when we got home there was no supper.”

“But you are married men; did not your wives have anything ready for you?”

“Oh no, they had eaten their own suppers and gone to sleep. Women do as they like with us. You see, in a town we could go out and buy something ready cooked, but that is not possible here.”

The idea that wifely duty involved getting up and providing something, rather than that a husband who had been kept at sea overtime should go hungry to bed, seemed to them a sweet, but unattainable ideal. I deprecate wife-beating, but I asked “Did you not feel inclined to strike them?” but that course would have meant settling with the father and brothers-in-law, the explanation that the husbands had come in hungry from the sea and had found no supper provided being, to their ideas, adequately met by the retort, “You must let them do as they like, that is the custom of our tribe and you must do as others do.”

_Plate XXII_

Marriage is by purchase, and though the bride has no choice, brothers and sons-in-law are carefully chosen. I once ventured on the impertinent question, “Now that your sister’s marriage with so-and-so is not to take place who will she marry?”

“It is so hard to find a husband who will treat her well.”

“Oh yes, of course you don’t want her to marry a man who might beat her.”

“No I don’t, for if he did it would be my business to beat him, and I do not intend to have that bother put upon me,” brotherly love being thus seen to have a practical side.

I know of few cases of legal polygamy and but one or two of concubinage. One of the former cases is that of my oldest skipper, a really good old man, whose one grief is that he remains childless near the close of life.

Divorce was suggested in a case of persistent causeless desertion, but the husband’s reply was, “I took her when she was such a little thing, so I love her.”

In another case the woman is a hopeless imbecile. Relatives begged me to fire a gun close to her head in the hope of awaking her senses, which I declared useless and dangerous, and refused to do. “She is my cousin, so I cannot divorce her,” said the husband, an elderly man who shews her every kindness.

After some months of consultations, in which I shared and tried to act as peacemaker, one case actually did lead to divorce, and the lady was known as “the mother of Ali’s child” instead of as Ali’s wife. In a few weeks, however, Ali came begging for advance of wages. This being refused he entered into explanations, “You see I am going to take my wife back. Being divorced, she has had nothing to eat for a month, so now I must give her a good feed.” This literal translation of his speech must evidently be taken in the spirit, for the lady still lives.

Pecuniary questions are so intimately associated with all matters of marriage and divorce that men’s actions must not be read as though they indicated feelings only. In the same way the women’s independence is not only due to their knowledge of their value as women but also to the fact that the husband, if of the poorer class, paid, say, six goats, a camel, and four pounds in cash for them, besides providing for the wedding feast, this involving a debt which will take him a year or two to pay off, sometimes many years.

Ibrahim’s story is a good illustration of the freedom of women, which is often abused, and the subjection in which they keep their men folk. It gives an instance also of the pagan devil worship which is the real belief of these Muslim when faced by calamity.

Ibrahim is a simple kindly old man, one of four brothers, all of whom have passed their lives upon the sea. They are old men now, and their sons are sailors too. The portrait of one of the four is on Plate X, and decrepit though he looks he still goes to sea in his own boat, or rather canoe, taking the few goats which are his wealth across to an island where a shower has fallen. There was a touch of heroism when he came to me saying, “If you will give me work as a sailor you will see I am quite strong still. I used to be captain, but I cannot be that now as my eyes have gone dim, but try me as a sailor.”

Coming of such a family Ibrahim easily obtained the post of skipper of my little schooner when it became vacant in my absence. But though conscientious according to his lights, and a good sailor in native fashion, he turned out to be not quite the man we needed. He would travel two hundred miles to fetch the letters, the arrival of which made a gleam in the darkness of isolation in which we live here. His arrival was the event of the month—or should have been, but his reply to the demand was often “Letters? I forgot.” People who have never been quite alone for even one month cannot imagine the disappointment, though they may gauge the effect upon business.

As is so often the case here he was an elderly man when he married a girl of fourteen or less.

I once asked, “Do you think it really quite right for a white-haired old man to take a little girl like that?”

“If he has the money of course it is quite right” was the expected reply.

Marital love seems almost unknown, but family affection sometimes rises strong in later years, apart from its normal origin in the mutual love of young man and maid, but if the marriage is childless, or circumstances make it uncomfortable, the worst results follow in many cases.

His young wife, as wives often do here, one day decided that to live with her father’s people in the hills would be more agreeable than with her husband by the sea. By and by Ibrahim began begging for leave to go to see her, his appeals that she should return to him having been in vain.

Her replies, as he repeated them to me, were certainly explicit. “I have only got a couple of girls by you. That’s no good, so I don’t want _you_ any more.”

Cases like this give rise to an immense amount of solemn conference between relatives to the _n_th degree and the village elders[38], in spite of the fact that many women go their own way in any case. The stages were reported to me at intervals, and in the end the woman reappeared of her own accord. Alas, her motive soon became obvious, for she was illegitimately “burdened,” i.e. pregnant. So poor Ibrahim’s joy was turned to anger and perplexity. He dearly loved his two little daughters, the two who were held as “not good enough” by their mother, and wished to keep them while divorcing the mother. My advice being asked (though I am about half the age of complainant) I was in a quandary, since the infants were not old enough to do without a woman’s care and Ibrahim was not prepared with a substitute.

At this point I came home on leave, and on my return three months later I found that Ibrahim had actually become reconciled to his faithless wife; the child of “some young fellow in the hills” had been born a week or so, and the old man rejoiced over him as though he had been his own son.

A week later, and surely the hand of Providence was visible even to fatalists.

“Please come and see Ibrahim’s wife, she is very ill.” Even I could see that the woman was dying, and that nothing could be done for her, but at least I succeeded in saving the child from being fed on “samin,” stinking native butter, which might soon have killed him.

The inconceivable stagnation of life in a desert coast village makes any event a godsend. Illness brings joy to all, even the sufferer seeming to be supported by the knowledge that he is a benefactor to the public. He is invariably surrounded by a deeply interested crowd, and never fails to shew appropriate symptoms.

In case of wounds the men are absolutely stoical, where a white man could not restrain evidence of suffering, and the application of a red hot nail, which is a frequent treatment for most complaints, is borne without a murmur. And so the gentle groaning of the sick is never allowed to become indecorous, but merely serves to prove that the host and patient is conscious of, and means to fulfil, his duty to his guests.

In this case things were very different, the woman was beyond even involuntary groans. The first thing to do was to send a boat for Ibrahim, who was absent on an island ten miles away. His return was delayed a full day by his going another five miles down the coast to the next village, where he spent a month’s wages on new clothes and borrowed all the jewellery he could. With these his dying wife was decked out, as a means of persuading the evil spirit, which had caused her illness, to depart. At home meanwhile drums were being vigorously beaten outside the tent, a few feet away from her unconscious head, in the hope that what suasion could not effect in the mind of the malignant spirit might result from fear.

A stifling crowd of women and children filled the tiny tent, crowding upon the dying, while behind, in the shade, another party were making tea very cosily, around one who appeared to be already sewing the shroud.

The day after Ibrahim arrived the shrieks of this crowd of women suddenly announced the death. Within half an hour the body was buried and the mourners were about their ordinary occupations. Ibrahim wept like a child, though why he should grieve for such a wife it is hard for a white man to say.

Negro women, being escaped or liberated slaves, and so having no relatives who can settle disputes with their husbands, sometimes come in to complain of being beaten, though they owe protection to the fact that negro women are fewer than the men, so that a husband who is disagreeable to his wife runs the risk of losing that valuable property. Hamitic women only come to try and get an increased allowance from their husbands rarely to complain of ill-treatment, from which they are protected by their relatives.

The making and mending of clothes, that great part of women’s daily work, is non-existent with us, for, as before stated, the lengths of flimsy cotton are worn as they come from the shop. Washing is often in progress, rather a miserable business in sea-water without soap, but the thinness of the stuff makes it easier[39].

Besides cooking and the care of children and animals the women have certain manufactures. The palm-leaf matting for the outer covering of the tents and houses is bought ready made, but the inner coarse blanket material is woven at home from the hair of the owner’s goats, which is collected and spun into coarse thread as it becomes available. The spinning is entirely by hand, the thread being merely wound on a dangling stick which is kept spinning by hand. When a dozen or so large balls of this grey-black and brown thread have accumulated, a rough weaving frame of three sticks is pegged out on the sand, and weaving goes on for some days. Neighbours are called in to help, three to six women generally working together.

Any man passing near women who are working at blanket making must beware lest they should throw the balls of wool at him. If he is struck by one the women have the right to demand a present, which is divided among the helpers.

The palm-leaves used in basket making and for the “Serîr” or sleeping mat are brought from Suakin, no palms growing in all our country. These baskets are so closely woven that when once the fibres are thoroughly wetted they become watertight. The figures on Plate XVI illustrate a milk-bowl made in this way; the other baskets have covers and are used to keep women’s trinkets &c., or the fragile earthenware coffee-pot, one being ornamented by the interweaving of strips of thin leather, the other by pieces of red flannel and tufts of camels’ hair. In other cases the leaves are bought ready dyed and the resulting basket displays bands of colour.

In making a “Serîr,” or sleeping mat, a woman slits up the midribs of palm leaves and provides a number of goat-skins scraped free of hair. These skins are cut into narrow strips like string and woven in and out between the palm midribs which are laid side by side, and the number of skins used in making one mat is surprising. The work is tedious, and she gets neighbours’ help; the result, as an addition to comfort, seems hardly worth the labour.

_Plate XXIII_

It is the women’s business to strike and pitch the tents. In the village this is done not only on arrival and departure, but after the tent has stood some time in one place it is shifted to a fresh site by way of a “spring cleaning.”

Old women and children drive the goats out to “graze” in the desert in the early morning and may feed and tether them on their return, but, as already remarked in Chapter III, a peculiar superstition declares that men must do the milking. They also bring water from the well, in goat-skins on donkeys.

Women suffer sometimes from a mysterious disease, the symptoms of which seem closely to resemble those of the “vapours” of our ancestresses. The help of a female shêkh has to be called in, sometimes at great expense. First seeing the patient she prescribes what articles of clothing, especially what ornaments, are to be worn, and then goes off alone into the desert, where, according to my informant, she behaves like a maniac, apparently invoking good and exorcising evil spirits. “Vapours” would of course yield most easily to suggestion, and the little break in the monotony of life, the fuss and mild excitement, are quite enough to bring about a cure.

In my demonstration of the independence of women even in a Moslem community I am conscious that the less agreeable side of their character becomes unduly prominent. I would now leave on record that in many cases the standard of wifely duty is far above what one has any right to expect from the conditions of their lives.

The best women are often the least conspicuous members of any community, but their presence is made evident in the existence of any kind of prosperity or real happiness. I conclude my account by saying that in this village amid all the laxity of an Oriental civilisation bordering on savagery, in spite of its desolation and poverty, lack of defence against either the dreadful heat of summer or the cold of winter, the hunger that makes men eat the food of cattle, and where fresh water is often an unattainable luxury, men find the happiness of home in a way which multitudes of our own urban poor do not know. Where this is so goodness must necessarily be; though its laws differ from those we ourselves know, its presence is none the less evident.

_Plate XXIV_