Читать книгу The Harim and the Purdah: Studies of Oriental Women онлайн

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One hears the word harim and instantly conjures up an Arabian Nights picture of rare hangings, subdued lights, beautiful odalisques lounging on soft divans, slaves, incense, and a general air of sensuousness pervading the entire place. I read a book not long ago written by a well-known woman writer who says, “I am thankful to say that I have never been within a harim except twice, and the memory of that dreadful place will rest with me for many years.” Yet she admits that on her first visit to this “dreadful place” she had no interpreter and could only draw upon her imagination to give the women she saw their position in the elaborate household. This imagination was evidently a vivid one, as she believed that many women she saw were “the poor deluded slaves” of the master of the house, while quite likely they were the innumerable relatives and woman-servants that always throng the rich man’s home.

In reality, in present-day modern Cairo, if one enters the harim of the better class, or of the official class, one is greeted by a hostess dressed in the latest French creation, tea is served, while the politics of the world are discussed easily in either French or English by the polished, up-to-date Egyptian women.