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

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Theatrical entertainments are held in the courtyards, or in the large guest-room. Dancing girls dance and jugglers perform, while food is most plentifully provided, but there is no drinking of intoxicating liquors in the home of a follower of Mohammed. In the place of wines, sherbets, fruit juices, and coffee are served.

The culmination of the festivities comes when the bride in a gaily decorated carriage is conducted to her new home. In the streets of any large city one often sees these processions, the band leading the march, dozens of singers preceding the carriage, and friends following, all trying to show their joy in the happy event.

According to Western ideals there is one great bar to the lasting happiness of the Moslem woman, and that is the question of divorce. It is said that 90 per cent. of the marriages in Egypt end in divorce, and that two people who live to an old age together without one of them being divorced are rarely found. Mohammed has been severely censured because of this great blot upon the progressive laws he made for his people, but before his time there was no check on divorce; a man could divorce often and for no reason, and a woman was helpless. This wise man laid down laws far in advance of his time on this subject, and (what was then an unheard of thing) allowed a woman to divorce her husband for explicitly stated causes.