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

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Her cousin, who told me the story and who was a witness to the scene, said to me: “It is impossible for a Western woman to understand a Moslem woman. Perhaps because of our exclusion and the lack of means of self-expression, we have over-developed our inner emotional natures, which at times of sorrow burst forth like a hidden flame. We not only gave our lives in those dread days of Tabriz, but what is worse, we gave the lives of those we loved—and still lived on.”

The women of Egypt have as yet had no reason to rise up en masse and show what they may do in times of national distress. It is unusual for the women of any Mohammedan land to usurp the prerogatives of men. They are fundamentally intensely feminine, the home their only domain. Sa’adi, the Persian poet, said:—

No happiness comes to the house of him whose hen hath crowed like a cock.

It will be many years before the Egyptian woman joins the ranks of the militant suffragettes, and tries to blow up the Pyramids or deface the walls of Egypt’s famous temples in the spirit of emulation and zeal for the Cause.